I was hoping this would be about public restrooms, but alas -- it's about increasing numbers of bathrooms in suburban homes.
The article seems to take a subtle tone that this is bad... but as far as resource overconsumption goes, this would seem to be the least of worries.
It's not like it's taking up space that would otherwise go to something else. This is the suburbs, not Manhattan.
And let's face it: shared bathrooms are probably a top-5 source of family/marital stress, whether it's needing to use them at the same time while trying not to be late for work/school, dealing with soggy bathmats and strange smells, and just general overcrowding and messiness of hygiene products.
So hey: if you've got the money and have the time/money to keep them clean... it actually seems like one of life's luxuries that really does make your life better, no?
> shared bathrooms are probably a top-5 source of family/marital stress,
Huh, this is apparently one of those shared experiences that I have absolutely no experience with. I can't even imagine anyone in my family getting upset about a bathroom.
Obviously everyone's different. :) But there seem to be countless articles titled "Are Separate Bathrooms The Key To A Happy Marriage?" [1] -- even Michelle Obama has made the claim about her marriage to Barack. So if you're curious about other people's relationships, it's a good place to start.
Okay, but that only matters if you read my comment ultra-pedantically. Given the comment I was responding to, I should think it's obvious that you can extend my statement to: "I can't imagine anyone in my family getting stressed over a bathroom"
Bathrooms are also a high margin item for homebuilders. Adding the rough-in plumbing for another bathroom takes minimal labor while a house is still being built, and builder-grade fixtures can probably be had for under $1000.
But because adding plumbing is an absolute pain in the ass after the house is built, and because the real estate industry has "more bathrooms = higher resale" programmed deep within its fabric, builders can charge several thousand dollars for them as an upgrade.
A big part of that cost is probably permits (and costs of compliance with new rules). I know someone (a do-it-yourselfer) who added a bathroom to their house in california and it required multiple inspections at various stages of construction. I know another person in the same city who has added bathrooms to houses he rents out and I'm fairly sure he doesn't bother with permits or inspections and his costs are minimal, getting a closet converted in a weekend.
A review before you begin, and independent reviews of the all the systems you hack by specialists of those systems - before you make it so you can't see anything - and followed by a final review stating the work was done correctly (for insurance) is the complaint? It seems your friend looked at the cost of a toilet and tile and thought in Home Depot, "I can do this," not realizing the TCO.
Well in defense of my friend, he is a mechanical engineer and certainly could do it, and did. He added an entire master bedroom and bath to an old house, doing most of the interior stuff himself. However some of the hoops he had to jump through were pretty silly. I'm sure there was plenty of regulatory capture by builders and contractors.
California is stereotyped as being the most burdensome when it comes to this sort of thing. I don’t know if that’s warranted, but it does seem so when hearing from people who live in urban areas who have dealt with this.
On the other hand, I live in a “city” in Arkansas. According to the municipal code here, most residential electrical and plumbing work can be done by the owner of the property without obtaining a permit beforehand. While the code requires that the work be inspected prior to closure - e.g., we’re supposed to have electrical work inspected before subflooring is laid or drywall is hung - my experience is that it’s not only not required, they don’t even have a process in place to meet that requirement.
My home was damaged by a fire a few years before I purchased it. In fact, that was one of the reasons I bought it; while the home was built in the late 1960, all of the electrical and almost all of the plumbing was stripped out and redone in ~2008. That work was inspected... and it was very bad work, honestly.
Since buying the home I’ve reinstalled every outlet (properly) and re-run about 1/3 of the Romex in the walls and below the house. I spoke with the city inspector and he was incredulous when I asked when he’d be available to come look at it - he advised me that there was no such requirement unless I had paid someone to do it. He said he’d never had someone ask him to inspect work done by the homeowner. After a few minutes’ discussion at his office about what I had changed and why, his answer? “You obviously know what you’re doing, so you don’t need me to come out. If you want me to file an inspection certificate I will based on your word, but it’s not worth my time to drive out to your house to look at it. Don’t worry about it.”
Outside the municipal limits, to my knowledge there is no requirement at all for inspection.
Furthermore, my homeowner’s insurance specifically allows for improvements made by the homeowner so long as they “comply with applicable local codes and regulations”. In my case that means a document that I had to track down and modify for my situation, the inspector signed without ever having visited the property, and I had to physically take to the city clerk. If my home were 100 yards further South (and therefore outside city limits) there would be no documentation required at all.
So, in short... for a lot of the country, the TCO of a new toilet is the cost of the toilet. Maybe the cost of a new wax ring as well if the homeowner is experienced enough to realize that the old one is going to fail eventually if they re-use it, so they go ahead and buy a new one at the same time.
> I know another person in the same city who has added bathrooms to houses he rents out and I'm fairly sure he doesn't bother with permits or inspections and his costs are minimal, getting a closet converted in a weekend.
I'm sure his insurance company loves him. As will any future owners of his buildings.
There are many competent DIYers, but there are many more who are not. For some, code is simply a suggestion or goal to strive to reach (eventually).
Hm, article talks about new homes coming with 10 to 20 bathrooms. I have never seen or heard of such a thing. There's no way that's for normal houses. If the ultra rich want mansions with 20 bathrooms, that's their business. There are worse things one could spend their money on.
I have always lived in places with around 1 bathroom per 2 persons. Sometimes though you'll have say 5 people in the house and 2 of them are using both bathrooms, both doing things that take a long time. At this point when a third person needs to use the bathroom, they are stuck with holding it or having to go outside. So I can see that getting closer to 1 bathroom per person can be reasonable. Not all the bathrooms need to be full baths. Having a utility bathroom near the front door for guests with just a toilet and limited storage or room to do things helps maintain a bathroom that isn't going to be occupied for a long time.
I think the premise of "bathrooms per person" is wrong, from a European standpoint, or only transitively by "square meters => probably x people in this house/apartment".
Nearly all the people I know who have a small house in southern Germany have 1-2 "real" bathrooms, with toilet and shower/bathtub and another extra small toilet, often right at the entrance.
Bigger flats of 90m2+ often have a second bathroom, it can be just a toilet, or with a shower if the main one has a bathtub.
What I'm saying is.. 2 from a certain size is totally normal. 3 is rare, but possible. I've never seen 4. But the houses have 2-5 people. I simply doesn't matter, we have such small houses (in cities) that you'd have the same size house with zero children or with up to 3 children. The number of bathrooms won't change unless you add one yourself, but there are not so many spare rooms... (Bit different if one floor is walled off completely to be a separate apartment, but I guess we can ignore these). (My parents' house was right in the middle here. One proper bathroom with toilet+shower, one additional small one with just a bathtub, a very small one with just a toilet next to the entrance. And the 2nd floor was supposed to be a separate apartment, thus another smallish one with toilet+shower).
But probably still 1-2 less than American houses...
> home that listed for $49.9 million. It featured eight bedrooms—and 20 bathrooms. By any rational assessment, this is a ludicrous use of money, space, and plumbing.
Assuming eight of those bathrooms are essentially unavailable to guests (because they are accessible only through the associated bedroom), and that a resident wants to throw a raucous party for Dunbar's number of people, the other 12 seem... adequate, I guess. Maybe. :)
Maybe I just missed it amid all the overly florid prose, but I didn't see any actual numbers in there. The closest I noticed was this:
> “We went from two people per bathroom to one person per bathroom in the last 50 years,” says Jeff Tucker, an economist at Zillow. “That’s amazing, because postwar America was already rich and booming, and we just, you know, kept building more bathrooms.”
In the last 50 years the average age of the mother at the birth of her first child has risen from the 22-24 range (sources differ) to 27-30 now. Young homeowners taking longer to have children would lower the average number of persons per bathroom.
If you want actual numbers, follow the link the article gives in this sentence:
> Across the country, bathrooms are multiplying—including in apartments and condos—even as American families and households are getting smaller
The link is on "apartments and condos" so you might expect that it is only about apartments and condos, but it actually goes to the "Characteristics of New Housing" page at census.gov [1], which contains a whole bunch of XSL downloads containing data over time on various characteristics of new housings, both single-family houses and multifamily units.
Eyeballing the "Bathrooms", "Bedrooms", and "Bathrooms by Bedrooms" downloads, it looks to me like much of the growth in number of bathrooms comes from growth in the number of bedrooms. Perhaps the question should be why is the number of bedrooms going up?
I don't know, but I don't think that having a single bathroom (I mean including both toilet and sink and shower or bath) is "typically" american.
I struggle (and I am 50+) to remember any house in Italy with a "full" bathroom but separate toilet room (and BTW at least one bathroom in the house has now a bidet).
Very poor houses (old and not renovated) had often once "minimal" toilets, with the WC but always with - even if minimal - washbasin.
Later some bathrooms (still mostly including a bidet) had not a shower like we are used to now, with a plate and glass/plastic cabin, but rather in the middle of the room with the bathroom tiles converging to a drain.
While Europe may be more judicious with their allocation of bathrooms, in Canada – Vancouver, at least – they’ve proliferated in newer homes. A lot of newer 3 bedroom condos on the market cram 3 bathrooms into ~1100 square feet – often with one bathroom including a separate shower and bath.
While this drives up the quantity of bathrooms on the real estate listing, the tight quarters mean that the other rooms are even smaller, while each bathroom lacks enough cupboard or shelf space for anything more than a couple towels and a spare roll of toilet paper. It’s an odd tradeoff.
Same in Toronto. Saw many 1+den with 2 bathrooms. A way to sell the den as a second bedroom and you end up with 2 shitty small bathroom with no storage. Not a fan of this layout.
For those who have been to South Korea, you may have noticed not all stores have a bathroom. Many retail stores and restaurants are units of a larger multi story building that often has a shared public bathroom.
You lose the convenience of having a bathroom attached directly to the store itself, but gain the convenience of many more public bathrooms that don’t require a purchase.
I think most malls all over the world have something like this. I think the plumbing effort to give each store its own fresh- and waste water plumbing would create extra cost and source of problems.
The fact that it allows them to put the pipes needed for all those items in the same place probably also helps. In a lot of places near me, the kitchen sink shares a wall with the bathroom because it's cheaper to do the plumbing that way. If the bathroom and kitchen were on opposite sides of the place, that means more work plumbing wise.
Plus, walls take up a lot of space. If we put the toilet in a different room, that would mean losing more space to walls (and configuration options). In my bathroom, the sink is in the front followed by the toilet followed by the shower. Walls (and the clearance that the doors would need) would mandate using a lot more space. Plus, you'd need more space for each bit not to feel claustrophobic. You don't feel like you're in a tiny box at the sink in my bathroom because it's open to the toilet and shower. If each section was only 3ft wide, it would feel really claustrophobic.
I was hoping this would be about public restrooms, but alas -- it's about increasing numbers of bathrooms in suburban homes.
The article seems to take a subtle tone that this is bad... but as far as resource overconsumption goes, this would seem to be the least of worries.
It's not like it's taking up space that would otherwise go to something else. This is the suburbs, not Manhattan.
And let's face it: shared bathrooms are probably a top-5 source of family/marital stress, whether it's needing to use them at the same time while trying not to be late for work/school, dealing with soggy bathmats and strange smells, and just general overcrowding and messiness of hygiene products.
So hey: if you've got the money and have the time/money to keep them clean... it actually seems like one of life's luxuries that really does make your life better, no?
Yes this one is definitely a feature not a bug.
> shared bathrooms are probably a top-5 source of family/marital stress,
Huh, this is apparently one of those shared experiences that I have absolutely no experience with. I can't even imagine anyone in my family getting upset about a bathroom.
Obviously everyone's different. :) But there seem to be countless articles titled "Are Separate Bathrooms The Key To A Happy Marriage?" [1] -- even Michelle Obama has made the claim about her marriage to Barack. So if you're curious about other people's relationships, it's a good place to start.
[1] https://www.google.com/search?q=Are+Separate+Bathrooms+The+K...
The connotations of "stressed" and "upset" are totally different.
Okay, but that only matters if you read my comment ultra-pedantically. Given the comment I was responding to, I should think it's obvious that you can extend my statement to: "I can't imagine anyone in my family getting stressed over a bathroom"
Bathrooms are also a high margin item for homebuilders. Adding the rough-in plumbing for another bathroom takes minimal labor while a house is still being built, and builder-grade fixtures can probably be had for under $1000.
But because adding plumbing is an absolute pain in the ass after the house is built, and because the real estate industry has "more bathrooms = higher resale" programmed deep within its fabric, builders can charge several thousand dollars for them as an upgrade.
A big part of that cost is probably permits (and costs of compliance with new rules). I know someone (a do-it-yourselfer) who added a bathroom to their house in california and it required multiple inspections at various stages of construction. I know another person in the same city who has added bathrooms to houses he rents out and I'm fairly sure he doesn't bother with permits or inspections and his costs are minimal, getting a closet converted in a weekend.
A review before you begin, and independent reviews of the all the systems you hack by specialists of those systems - before you make it so you can't see anything - and followed by a final review stating the work was done correctly (for insurance) is the complaint? It seems your friend looked at the cost of a toilet and tile and thought in Home Depot, "I can do this," not realizing the TCO.
Well in defense of my friend, he is a mechanical engineer and certainly could do it, and did. He added an entire master bedroom and bath to an old house, doing most of the interior stuff himself. However some of the hoops he had to jump through were pretty silly. I'm sure there was plenty of regulatory capture by builders and contractors.
California is stereotyped as being the most burdensome when it comes to this sort of thing. I don’t know if that’s warranted, but it does seem so when hearing from people who live in urban areas who have dealt with this.
On the other hand, I live in a “city” in Arkansas. According to the municipal code here, most residential electrical and plumbing work can be done by the owner of the property without obtaining a permit beforehand. While the code requires that the work be inspected prior to closure - e.g., we’re supposed to have electrical work inspected before subflooring is laid or drywall is hung - my experience is that it’s not only not required, they don’t even have a process in place to meet that requirement.
My home was damaged by a fire a few years before I purchased it. In fact, that was one of the reasons I bought it; while the home was built in the late 1960, all of the electrical and almost all of the plumbing was stripped out and redone in ~2008. That work was inspected... and it was very bad work, honestly.
Since buying the home I’ve reinstalled every outlet (properly) and re-run about 1/3 of the Romex in the walls and below the house. I spoke with the city inspector and he was incredulous when I asked when he’d be available to come look at it - he advised me that there was no such requirement unless I had paid someone to do it. He said he’d never had someone ask him to inspect work done by the homeowner. After a few minutes’ discussion at his office about what I had changed and why, his answer? “You obviously know what you’re doing, so you don’t need me to come out. If you want me to file an inspection certificate I will based on your word, but it’s not worth my time to drive out to your house to look at it. Don’t worry about it.”
Outside the municipal limits, to my knowledge there is no requirement at all for inspection.
Furthermore, my homeowner’s insurance specifically allows for improvements made by the homeowner so long as they “comply with applicable local codes and regulations”. In my case that means a document that I had to track down and modify for my situation, the inspector signed without ever having visited the property, and I had to physically take to the city clerk. If my home were 100 yards further South (and therefore outside city limits) there would be no documentation required at all.
So, in short... for a lot of the country, the TCO of a new toilet is the cost of the toilet. Maybe the cost of a new wax ring as well if the homeowner is experienced enough to realize that the old one is going to fail eventually if they re-use it, so they go ahead and buy a new one at the same time.
> I know another person in the same city who has added bathrooms to houses he rents out and I'm fairly sure he doesn't bother with permits or inspections and his costs are minimal, getting a closet converted in a weekend.
I'm sure his insurance company loves him. As will any future owners of his buildings.
There are many competent DIYers, but there are many more who are not. For some, code is simply a suggestion or goal to strive to reach (eventually).
Hm, article talks about new homes coming with 10 to 20 bathrooms. I have never seen or heard of such a thing. There's no way that's for normal houses. If the ultra rich want mansions with 20 bathrooms, that's their business. There are worse things one could spend their money on.
I have always lived in places with around 1 bathroom per 2 persons. Sometimes though you'll have say 5 people in the house and 2 of them are using both bathrooms, both doing things that take a long time. At this point when a third person needs to use the bathroom, they are stuck with holding it or having to go outside. So I can see that getting closer to 1 bathroom per person can be reasonable. Not all the bathrooms need to be full baths. Having a utility bathroom near the front door for guests with just a toilet and limited storage or room to do things helps maintain a bathroom that isn't going to be occupied for a long time.
I think the premise of "bathrooms per person" is wrong, from a European standpoint, or only transitively by "square meters => probably x people in this house/apartment".
Nearly all the people I know who have a small house in southern Germany have 1-2 "real" bathrooms, with toilet and shower/bathtub and another extra small toilet, often right at the entrance.
Bigger flats of 90m2+ often have a second bathroom, it can be just a toilet, or with a shower if the main one has a bathtub.
What I'm saying is.. 2 from a certain size is totally normal. 3 is rare, but possible. I've never seen 4. But the houses have 2-5 people. I simply doesn't matter, we have such small houses (in cities) that you'd have the same size house with zero children or with up to 3 children. The number of bathrooms won't change unless you add one yourself, but there are not so many spare rooms... (Bit different if one floor is walled off completely to be a separate apartment, but I guess we can ignore these). (My parents' house was right in the middle here. One proper bathroom with toilet+shower, one additional small one with just a bathtub, a very small one with just a toilet next to the entrance. And the 2nd floor was supposed to be a separate apartment, thus another smallish one with toilet+shower).
But probably still 1-2 less than American houses...
> home that listed for $49.9 million. It featured eight bedrooms—and 20 bathrooms. By any rational assessment, this is a ludicrous use of money, space, and plumbing.
Assuming eight of those bathrooms are essentially unavailable to guests (because they are accessible only through the associated bedroom), and that a resident wants to throw a raucous party for Dunbar's number of people, the other 12 seem... adequate, I guess. Maybe. :)
That quote is hilarious in its own right.
Apparently spending $50 mil on a house is A-ok!
But God forbid you actually get some bathrooms for that money!
Perhaps all bedrooms have two bathrooms? Such that they and they could go at the same time?
This leaves four more generally accessible bathrooms. Seems adequate, I guess. Maybe.
Maybe I just missed it amid all the overly florid prose, but I didn't see any actual numbers in there. The closest I noticed was this:
> “We went from two people per bathroom to one person per bathroom in the last 50 years,” says Jeff Tucker, an economist at Zillow. “That’s amazing, because postwar America was already rich and booming, and we just, you know, kept building more bathrooms.”
In the last 50 years the average age of the mother at the birth of her first child has risen from the 22-24 range (sources differ) to 27-30 now. Young homeowners taking longer to have children would lower the average number of persons per bathroom.
If you want actual numbers, follow the link the article gives in this sentence:
> Across the country, bathrooms are multiplying—including in apartments and condos—even as American families and households are getting smaller
The link is on "apartments and condos" so you might expect that it is only about apartments and condos, but it actually goes to the "Characteristics of New Housing" page at census.gov [1], which contains a whole bunch of XSL downloads containing data over time on various characteristics of new housings, both single-family houses and multifamily units.
Eyeballing the "Bathrooms", "Bedrooms", and "Bathrooms by Bedrooms" downloads, it looks to me like much of the growth in number of bathrooms comes from growth in the number of bedrooms. Perhaps the question should be why is the number of bedrooms going up?
[1] https://www.census.gov/construction/chars/
I don't know, but I don't think that having a single bathroom (I mean including both toilet and sink and shower or bath) is "typically" american.
I struggle (and I am 50+) to remember any house in Italy with a "full" bathroom but separate toilet room (and BTW at least one bathroom in the house has now a bidet).
Very poor houses (old and not renovated) had often once "minimal" toilets, with the WC but always with - even if minimal - washbasin.
Later some bathrooms (still mostly including a bidet) had not a shower like we are used to now, with a plate and glass/plastic cabin, but rather in the middle of the room with the bathroom tiles converging to a drain.
While Europe may be more judicious with their allocation of bathrooms, in Canada – Vancouver, at least – they’ve proliferated in newer homes. A lot of newer 3 bedroom condos on the market cram 3 bathrooms into ~1100 square feet – often with one bathroom including a separate shower and bath.
While this drives up the quantity of bathrooms on the real estate listing, the tight quarters mean that the other rooms are even smaller, while each bathroom lacks enough cupboard or shelf space for anything more than a couple towels and a spare roll of toilet paper. It’s an odd tradeoff.
Same in Toronto. Saw many 1+den with 2 bathrooms. A way to sell the den as a second bedroom and you end up with 2 shitty small bathroom with no storage. Not a fan of this layout.
For those who have been to South Korea, you may have noticed not all stores have a bathroom. Many retail stores and restaurants are units of a larger multi story building that often has a shared public bathroom.
You lose the convenience of having a bathroom attached directly to the store itself, but gain the convenience of many more public bathrooms that don’t require a purchase.
I think most malls all over the world have something like this. I think the plumbing effort to give each store its own fresh- and waste water plumbing would create extra cost and source of problems.
Fascinating! I always wondered where the convention of putting toilets in the same room as the shower came from.
The fact that it allows them to put the pipes needed for all those items in the same place probably also helps. In a lot of places near me, the kitchen sink shares a wall with the bathroom because it's cheaper to do the plumbing that way. If the bathroom and kitchen were on opposite sides of the place, that means more work plumbing wise.
Plus, walls take up a lot of space. If we put the toilet in a different room, that would mean losing more space to walls (and configuration options). In my bathroom, the sink is in the front followed by the toilet followed by the shower. Walls (and the clearance that the doors would need) would mandate using a lot more space. Plus, you'd need more space for each bit not to feel claustrophobic. You don't feel like you're in a tiny box at the sink in my bathroom because it's open to the toilet and shower. If each section was only 3ft wide, it would feel really claustrophobic.
Is that a bad thing?
Because they are too squeamish to ask for a toilet !