Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Common house permitting and Cities

[Herveys (hervey]

One issue that hasn't come up in this discussion of ADA specified
requirements is that, like all legislation, ADA is rife with compromises.
One we encountered while attempting to design our Common House kitchen to be
inviting for all was the specified counter height.  Standard counter height
is something like 36".  ADA was either 34 or 32", I don't remember.  When we
asked members and friends who "live" in wheel chairs, they said that 30" was
much more workable.  We tried sitting in chairs and found that 29" was even
better for folks who aren't yet wheel chair bound, but would rather sit that
stand, (or half stand on a stool). (We designed a two height cutting table
to provide both 36" and 30" places to work.)

Another item to watch out for is the terminology you use.  We wanted the
downstairs of all units to be "visitable" and wanted downstairs bathrooms to
be at least "adaptable".  Our architect took that to mean that we wanted all
downstairs bathrooms to be ADA.  In my opinon, this resulted in lots of
wasted space in 10 of our units.  (One of our members with 3 kids in wheel
chairs approved of several different designs, that saved much space - but
the architect claimed large redesign costs would need to be levied and that
we had agreed to ADA.  Which technically we had, but it had not been the
intent we expressed.  She just translated our intent to her terminology and
we didn't understand the implications.)

Richard Hervey
Ever wish you could live next door to your best friends? 
<http://www.cohousing-corvallis.com/index.shtml>