Our renovation plans contain a new laundry room. Woohoo! Can't wait.
Anyway, it will be on the first floor, and I want a laundry chute from the girls room on the second floor. Due to layout, this will not drop vertically but will have a slight bend in it. Any advice on what, if anything, to line it with? There seems to be kit for this but looks like very heavy industrial stuff.
Any other general laundry room/chute advice?
wait.
Should it not run from the Maid's Quarters to the Laundry Room?
AWEM
What 's wrong with getting a bag and carrying it downstairs .What are you living in ...a hostel ? LOL
What wrong with creating a laundry chute when we have the opportunity? It's simple to do.
My concern with a chute from a bedroom down to a room containing equipment would be transfer of noise. Maybe the chute should go in a bathroom or in a hallway?
Thanks, that's constructive.
Would or should there be concerns about smoke getting up the chute to the BR in the event of a fire in the laundry room .?
Depending on its size, you can get bottomless interlinking buckets that are used to create chutes from the top of scaffolding down to skips.
Some sort of plastic laminate finish would probably be useful.
It's a shame you can't have a straight drop as then you could put a small dumbwaiter lift in. Much more useful as you can then send the clean laundry back up, as well as other things.
Why can't they just throw their clothes over the bannisters like normal kids?
Owain
anything thats slippery and cleans easily... take your choice. Melamine's one option.
A chute takes up room and isnt movable, whereas a trapdoor in the floor takes no space up, and you can put things under or over it any time if you prefer.
if you've got 3 floors of house, you could have bedroom at the top, bath on the middle floor, clothes laid out downstairs and food by the door. Then in the am you just fill the bath, drop each girl down the first chute directly into the bath, and from there down the 2nd (towelling lined) chute to her clothes, then out the door :) There'd be no problems with getting up in the morning.
NT
For further ideas, see any Wallace and Gromit film..
Nice idea, maybe it could be fitted in somewhere else.
The kids are normal, why wouldn't they be? It's my idea, as it's muggins that has to pick them up. Why not reduce labour with a simple addition to the plans?? Why has this idea got so much hostility? Work smarter, not harder, that's my motto.
Very good point. I recently witnessed a gas tumble drier catching alight. Immense amounts of smoke with very little flame. Quite scary to imagine that in a basement funnelling up into a kids room.
I would use 500g - thicker if you can find it - layflat polythene tube - available as a packaging material in sizes at least up to 36" wide. That will give you a slippy, snag-proof lining to whatever you make the chute from and, if it does ever wear out, you simply replace it with another length.
Colin Bignell
The chute could lead to a wheeled basket that is kept in a closed compartment at the end of the chute - avoiding the spread of smoke and, if it is fire resistant, even that of flame.
Colin Bignell
This is what I had in mind. A standard cupboard with a laundry basket instead of shelves. However, talking about fire makes me worried. I'll look more closely at the industrial stuff as they have tight fitting metal doors.
A wooden FD60 door with intumescent strip would probably be as good and a lot less than a steel door and frame. Looking at US sites might yeild more info as laundry chutes are pretty rare in the UK still although my Nans old flat in London had a rubbish chute from 1910!
As for the "hostility"... it's because your doing something most others only dream of. Go build the biggest chute you can, stick all your laundry down it and post pictures, that'll really upset them ;-)
I looked into doing this myself once, from a bathroom down to a boile cupboard, and i would have made the chute out of MDF, its very smooth
-- Nick H
I think I would ensure the cupboard that the chute discharges into is reasonably fire resistant (line the doors and inside with plasterboard for example, stuff any gaps with iso/rockwool).
The chute lining could be something cheap and simple like hardboard, or at the other extream stainless steel sheet. I quite like Colin's idea of a plastic tubular secondary liner since it is easy to replace, and if anything ever did snag all you need to do is give it a quick tug from above.
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