[Warning: Toilet Play]
I hope this is not “too much information.” If so, tough.
Back in the 90s I had a number of experiences with MDMA, LSD, and ‘shrooms. Not a lot of experiences, but it was interesting. One of the things I noticed in those times is that I become extremely attuned to lighting when I’m tripping. And, oddly, that attunement remained even after I came back down – it didn’t bother me at all, in fact I think it really made my photography much better, and my appreciation of great light remains a source of pleasure.
About 5 years ago, I tried some “smart” lightbulbs that could change color. They turned out to be “dumb” because each bulb used an IP address on my shitty Verizon home router, which only supports 5 addresses. I know I could fix that, but I was so maddened by the stupid that I un-deployed the lights and replaced them with a cheap Chinese-made brand that uses a dedicated wireless controller that works for about 30 feet; I have all the lights on the upper floor of the house controlled by controllers that are velcro’d to walls here and there. In the evenings, the lights are usually low, dark red. I can see fine and it’s very relaxing for reasons I have not figured out.
Then, last year, I started working out the relationship between my occasional gout attacks and the amount of water I was pushing through my kidneys. It appears that pushing a lot of water helps protect me from that, which is great but it means getting up several times each night, to unload the salt-laden water. So, I hit upon the idea of putting a photocell with a PIR switch and some LED strip lights under the bed. Now, when I swing my legs out of the bed, a dark red light automatically comes on for a minute. It makes the somnolent pee-runs much nicer, since I am less likely to slam into some of the clutter-piles that move willy-nilly around my floors in the night. The first time I tangled my feet in a sleeping bathrobe and nearly tripped face-first into the cast iron radiator, I had to do something.
The other day I decided to mod my toilet. That meant putting an outlet-box near it, which is not normal for construction. I had to do some drilling and sawing and patching wires into an existing outlet, but I got it done:
I admit, I am tempted to put a small mist-maker in the circuit, too, and maybe a small speaker that will mutter “Zuuul” when the lights come on. I don’t have guests often, but we don’t want people running out into the Pennsylvania wilds in the dark. I’m quite satisfied with this outcome.
Yes, I did think about using a diamond hole-saw to put the LEDs through the ceramic instead of just up the back. But, I convinced myself that there is such a thing as “too far.” I’ve replaced toilets and it’s a lot of work I’d rather avoid.
I’m in the process of ripping out and renovating one of our bathrooms. The house turned 50 last year, and while it was a very modern house for the time, the bathroom has never been updated. The toilet, tub, sink, and all the tiles are butter-yellow. This isn’t a particularly bad color, but after 50 years of use it is showing it’s age.
The demo work is slow, but that’s okay. I’m giving myself until the end of the year to complete the job (I’m not expecting company). The original installation is wire/cement board, then tiled to the ceiling with plaster on any non-tiled surface. It also included a power room before the bathroom, which is being ripped out to allow the bathroom a little more space.
But to get back to the OP, I have been considering putting muqarnas on the ceiling. Hey, why not? I’ve been toying with how to make muqarnas, and I think I’m leaning toward cast resin. That would be relatively easy to cast, it gives me several options for attachment methods, and if I decide to remodel again in 20 years or so I won’t be dealing with firmly attached plaster.
It would also, possibly, allow me to put LED lighting to illuminate the bathroom through the muqarnas. That would look cool. Or extremely tacky. I don’t think there is any middle ground.
All that being said, some of my best(?) design ideas run aground against the rocks of practicality and timely completion.
That was a “powder room” before the bathroom not a “power room”. A “power room” could be dangerous.
As someone with quite strong views on the superiority of British wiring standards, this gives me the absolute heebie-jeebies. We don’t much like spurs, and we really don’t like putting sockets in bathrooms (at least, not unless you’ve got a really big bathroom – they need to be at least 3m away from any shower, bath, or basin).
I bet you don’t have any supplementary equipotential bonding in there either…
Makes my ordinary nightlight seem sad and pathetic. Do you have to do some sort of sacrifice or ritual before approaching?
I’m just fascinated that dark red is soothing to you. I have 8-foot LED strips in a few places that stay on all the time, and the one in the bedroom closet has to be set to the blue-green end of the spectrum or I get tense just seeing the glow at the end of the hallway. I enjoyed setting it to red during the day, but as soon as sunset hit I began getting nervous.
I do enjoy having a night light that’s bright enough to find & do whatever I may need. The Boyfriend is annoyed that blue closet light makes it hard to tell which shirt he’s got hold of.
It looks like a scene from John Doe’s apartment in “Se7en”.
Will you be taking substances that make you fluoresce mid-micturition?
They do recommend red heat lights for raising chicks of particularly aggressive breeds, because they will peck each other to death sometimes under a yellow or white light. Maybe you just need to be soothed out of pecking a chick to death.
I have this cool little night light that was meant for the treads of stairs (so it’s not all that bright if you only have one of them). They run by batteries which are supposed to last about a year. They turn themselves on when it’s dark enough. And yes, I use them for raising chicks. The light attracts the chicks to the part of the brooder where it’s warm. Since they are not aggressive I don’t need to worry about them pecking each other to death, plus the light level is so low I could probably raise aggressive chicks in there. But! These also work in bathrooms. Go ahead and guess how I know. And, I have never once pecked a chick to death.
I’ve done the same kind of lighting, except with battery powered motion sensors and amber LEDs
https://www.mrbeams.com/mr-beams-amber-stand-anywhere-light-mb750a
== no blue light is the key. Red is a little harder to bring to focus on the retina, I understand.
Oh, and for those who don’t want 110v boxes in line with their pee, look for “toilet light” at your friendly cheap-from-China mail order supplier.
https://www.aliexpress.com/wholesale?catId=0&initiative_id=SB_20210224131247&SearchText=toilet+light
These are mostly very cheap crap, but work fine and usually last eight months to a year before they become landfill, and can be adjusted to red or red-orange.
Sometimesdisassembling them and fixing the cold solder joints will extend their lifetime.
flex
You should put in a behind-the-mirror heater in the bathroom.
flex@#1:
But to get back to the OP, I have been considering putting muqarnas on the ceiling. Hey, why not? I’ve been toying with how to make muqarnas, and I think I’m leaning toward cast resin. That would be relatively easy to cast, it gives me several options for attachment methods, and if I decide to remodel again in 20 years or so I won’t be dealing with firmly attached plaster.
How about CNC-cut wood? Cast resin (especially if you put chains of fairy lights in it) would be cool, though. Resin’s heavy, and it gets really expensive in a hurry. Tradeoffs, tradeoffs!
Nest smoke/CO detectors have a proximity nightlight feature that I find incredibly useful.
Almost all Japanese toilets have covered (sealed?) 100V wall outlets near the cistern to provide power to one of the wonders of the modern world: the Japanese toilet seat.
Oh, and for those who don’t want 110v boxes in line with their pee
Anyone who pees on that part of the wall is going to have to hope the current kills them before I do.
Sunday Afternoon@#11:
provide power to one of the wonders of the modern world: the Japanese toilet seat.
OMG I have a spare outlet. I could pretty easily hook one up.
Numenaster, whose eyes are up here@#5:
I’m just fascinated that dark red is soothing to you. I have 8-foot LED strips in a few places that stay on all the time, and the one in the bedroom closet has to be set to the blue-green end of the spectrum or I get tense just seeing the glow at the end of the hallway. I enjoyed setting it to red during the day, but as soon as sunset hit I began getting nervous.
That’s super interesting. I don’t like the blue-greens at all.
Dunc @ #3: We don’t much like spurs
That’s a consequence of that uniquely British institution, the Ring Final Circuit. Nowhere else in the world will you find undersized conductors wired in a loop in the hope that the current will go both ways. It mostly does, but no other type of circuit (in a residential building) can have a disconnection fault that leaves you with an apparently working circuit, but where the breaker is now oversized by a factor of almost two for the wire left in the circuit. But it does save a little copper.
Everyone else uses radial circuits for everything, so spurs are perfectly fine.
Other than the ring circuit, the Wiring Regulations are indeed excellent, and have been for a number of decades.
@Dunc and coinescu:
As a former owner of a 1966 Land Rover, I assume that when you’re saying nice things about British electrical standards, you are excluding Lucas?
That’s a nice start. But from the photo I see a clawfoot tub, which is crying out for some under-tub lighting. And why not the sink as well – over or under?
Wot? Any monochrome lighting should be equally fine for focus. A wider spectrum might bring up issues with chromatic aberration.
I thought the deal with red light was the response curve of cryptochrome, which is involved in the body’s diurnal cycle. CRY2 Is Associated with Depression
Also, I think this would go great with muqarnas
Wholesale Diamond Golden Toilet, 1 Piece
Although perhaps it looks more Egyptian, not Islamic.
Also, concerning outlets near water – you need a place to plug in hair trimmers, blow dryers and other bathroom accessories. Got to have a GFCI of course.
Also, concerning outlets near water – you need a place to plug in hair trimmers, blow dryers and other bathroom accessories. Got to have a GFCI of course.
It’s GFCI in my house, and it’s right next to the sink. Again, if someone is peeing that high up the wall, we’ll have a discussion.
I just tried a search for transparent toilets, but they don’t seem to be a thing. All I saw was various models of toilet seat lids with money or shells embedded in clear resin. This somehow popped up:
Carbonite toilet seat lid
Another possibility: It is possible to guide light through a stream of water, and I have seen demos at technology museums. Here is a video:
Fiber optic cables: How they work
How can you see something like that and not think: laser bidet.
Yeah, that’s required by the (USA) National Electric Code.
In fact, when I rewired our bathroom, the inspector required me to use a GFI breaker on the circuit, rather than the usual Home Depot GFCI receptacle. After all, what happens if water (or worse) gets into the receptacle?
@16: We’re taking domestic, not automotive. I don’t know the first damn thing there.
Whereas most countries wiring regs seem to be based on the assumption that people can generally be trusted not to do anything too silly, and if they do anything really stupid that’s their problem, the British standards are based on the idea that people are, at best, dangerous idiots, and at worst actively malicious, and that their problems are liable to become other people’s problems in short order (remember, we have very dense urban environments, and once lost most of a capital city because someone was a bit careless). The intent behind most of our standards is that the installation should remain fairly safe even in the event of damage (up to and including the ceiling coming down because your upstairs neighbour’s pipes burst, or the building being partially demolished in a gas explosion), deliberate misuse, or some future cack-handed modification by one of the aforementioned dangerous idiots.
The only bathroom accessories you’re allowed to plug in here plug into a shaver socket with an isolating transformer. You use the hair dryer in another room. It helps that our bathrooms are mostly tiny by American standards, so you generally don’t want to be hanging out in there anyway.
We also require RCD (what you’d call GFCI) protection on all circuits, but we try to act like we don’t believe they work.
Sure, which cause me to consider why I use electric appliances in the bathroom. Partly, it’s the sink, and partly the mirror.
The appliances I personally use are hair trimmers and a water flosser (Waterpik). For the trimmers, it’s mostly because of the mirror, but not all. It’s also the ease of cleanup. I put down newspaper over the sink to catch the trimmings. When I’m done I fold up the paper, clean off the sink cabinet, then sweep the floor. Most bathrooms have hard floor surfaces. The other rooms I would use have carpeting, so even if I hung another mirror, the cleanup advantage remains.
For the Waterpik, there really is no sensible alternative. It needs to be done over the sink.
The Waterpik and the no-sockets-in-the-bathroom conflict badly, I agree. I’ve tried it in the shaver socket and it trips the over-temperature protection built into the isolation transformer after about twenty seconds. My hair trimmer plugs into the shaver socket.
Marcus: it seems there’s an invariant somewhere. Can’t have good domestic and automotive electrical standards at the same time.
Reginald Selkirk @18 is right to point out a GFCI is appropriate. Breaker or outlet, cheaper and/or easier to install are considerations, is fine. The GFI receptacle is usually cheaper but, unless you ran two cables, only the breaker will protect more of the circuit.
Bonus: a receptacle that close to the toilet is going to make installing a heated toilet seat easy. The best ones have a button pressure switch so you don’t waste electricity but still come up to heat in under a minute. It is delightfully decadent to get up on a frosty morning and sit on a toilet seat preheated to toast perfection. There are also bidets that preheat the water. Sitting on a heated seat to take your leave and finish with a paperless warm water cleaning would be delightful.
Of course you could go whole-hog and purchase a Japanese toilet with all the bells and whistles. I used to trade posts with a man claiming his Tata toilet played Aaron Copland’s: Fanfare for the Common Man every time he took a dump. A little over the top perhaps but who am I to object if it makes him happy.
In rough times self-care is important.
The Japanese toilet I used (in Japan!) over 20 years ago had a remote control. I think that’s a little over the top. When you use that built-in bidet attachment, I know exactly where you’re going to be sitting.
Reginald Selkirk@#27:
The Japanese toilet I used (in Japan!) over 20 years ago had a remote control. I think that’s a little over the top. When you use that built-in bidet attachment, I know exactly where you’re going to be sitting.
Why not bluetooth with a web interface, so some hacker in NSA TAO can squirt your butt-squirter whenever they want to?
That’s the throne of Saitan, to be sure…
flex
Ours was the same when we bought it. The upstairs bathroom was black/light rose coloured, with black tiles running up half the wall. The downstairs toilet must have been never, as it was typical 80s brown with trees decoration, I guess it was renovated when the original owners died.
What was more interesting was the plumbing, as the hot water pipe was only the width of my pinkie finger. They must have turned on the water on Saturday to take a bath on Sunday. Needless to say, we had everything renovated when we bought it. I guess in 50 years people will be abhorred by our choices as well. We also have 6 power outlets next to the sinks and we thought that would be enough, but since every member of the family has their own electrical toothbrush, they are mostly occupied already.
OMG. I have red lights all over the place and I find red very soothing. I’m not fond of cool colors in general; I like things hot, baby! You and I love the same color scheme: black and red. My place is black and red with some occasional white.
cjheery@#30:
My place is black and red with some occasional white.
Basically, my house!
What I love is when I see the people on instagram who have painted the entire exterior of their house black. It’s so tempting except I hate to paint and nobody ever sees my house anyway.