Open-air Bathrooms

There's a funny thing in Australia: Houses tend to be built so that bathrooms and toilets* are continually open to the outside air. This is usually accomplished in one of two ways. The old-school method is for windows in these two rooms to consist of louvers which can overlap when 'closed' but which can't really close to seal the room off from the outside. The newer method is for a window to have glass only part-way up, the top of the window being a metal mesh which allows the fresh air in.

Now, this all probably makes sense if one lives in Sydney, where it's quite warm year 'round, or in Brisbane, where it's hot and and stickily humid nearly every day. It somehow seems to make less sense in Canberra, which is perched high in the mountain valleys of the Great Dividing Range, just a short drive from two ski resorts. As a result, when it's -5 outside on a frosty Canberra morning, the temperature inside the bathroom or toilet is often not much more than that.

This was a definite issue for me in our last house since, occupying the master bedroom, I had an ensuite** attached to my room. The door to the ensuite was a flimsy thing that slid on a track outside the doorframe and consequently did little to keep the cold Antarctic air which was blowing through my bathroom window from blowing right into my bedroom. After just a few weeks of this madness, I finally wised up, obtained a sheet of insulating foil, and closed off the open part at the top of my bathroom window.

In our new house, I also occupy the master bedroom, and once again I have an ensuite attached to my room. Unsurprisingly, this bathroom also has metal mesh at the top of the window. However, I may not have to cover it up this time. First, the doors in our new place are fantastic. Not one of them is a flimsy inside door; they are all constructed of solid wood, just like an outside door would be. Second, though the door to my bathroom is again a sliding one, this time it's one of those cool doors that slides into and out from the wall itself, it reaches clear to the floor, and it's protected by something like a valance at the top.

Consequently, though the cold air still gets into my bathroom at night (and it was two degrees outside when I woke up last Tuesday), none of this cold air seems to make it into my room. What's more, I seem to have been in Australia long enough that it now seems normal for a visit to the loo to feel like one's just stepped outside for a breath of fresh air--even on a winter's morning.

*Australian houses tend to segregate bathing facilities from toilet facilities, having two separate rooms for these tasks. This presents its own concerns since toilets rarely have their own wash basins. After using the toilet, one has to exit that room and then locate the bathroom (which is usually next door) for hand washing purposes. Fortunately, our new home is flash enough to have a wash basin in the toilet. It's built into the wall like an old-school drinking fountain and has a cool tap with handles one above the other.

**This is the Australian term (borrowed from French) for a room which contains both bathing and toilet facilities. Usually one only finds these attached to a master bedroom.