If you study pictures of public restrooms in ancient Rome, e.g., at the public baths, you will be struck by (1) the lack of privacy – no stalls, only a long stone bench with a row of holes cut in it, the holes opening onto a trough of running water; and (2) the sheer size of the room – a huge vaulted chamber. It occurs to me that a room like that would be well designed to disperse the smells of the sewage, so far as that was possible in those days.
Today we don’t use what amounts to open-air latrines, but we can still produce plenty of bad smells when we move our bowels. Yet most public restrooms seem designed to trap odors! Usually they are small, cramped spaces with low ceilings and no windows opening on the outside of the building. Sometimes there’s a ceiling vent but in my experience it doesn’t help much, ever. The foul odor of the public restroom is legend.
Why is that? I can’t believe modern architects are really stupid, nor that they are in some kind of conspiracy to make us all miserable in minor and subtle ways. Perhaps it’s a matter of expense? But how much more would it really cost, to build restrooms with higher ceilings, exterior windows, etc.?
well, if given a choice at work, would you rather have a bathroom with a window or an office with a window?
Personally, I have not noticed any discrepancy in ceiling hieght between public restrooms and the buildings they are contained within. As far as the Exhaust Fans, there is a building code which dictates the size of the fan given the volume of the space, as well as the minimum amount of flow that fan must provide. My guess is that contractors generally install the smallest possible fan that meets the code and then move on.
Construction jobs are generally won by the lowest bidder, so they try to save costs wherever they can, particularly because once they’re done, they don’t have to live / work in the building.
I’m not an architect but my major was architectural engineering and I took one really, realy boring class on building climate control.
There are building codes that govern the number of air changes a building must have per hour. The number of air changes are generally higher for restrooms.
In the past, such as in ancient Rome, they relied on outdoor ventilation and natural air currents to keep air fresh. Nowadays, we tend to rely on mechanical ventilation, particularly with modern building standards that keep buildings sealed from the outside.
I’ve noticed a problem with a lot of public restrooms is that the ventilation is tied in with the lights so it only runs when the room is occupied and not all air is replaced. Or the fans have broken and getting them repaired is a low priority. Most park restrooms, designed to work without mechanical ventilation, still have the high open ceilings and outdoor vents (of course, they also invariably have huge nests of spider as well)
I have been wondering the same thing. Why can’t we just put a huge vent there and get all that bad air out? I know it’s expensive, but a fancy building (like the one I work in) isn’t all that fancy with a smelly bathroom (like the one at work). Heck, I’d chip in to get some ventilation.