Bathroom design help
Not sure if this is the right place to put this thread but here it is. I have been lurking on here for awhile and enjoy reading everybody’s posts about their builds, ect. One thing I have picked up from my studies is that there is a lot of experience, ingenuity, and talent on this forum and I am looking for some ideas from you fine people on here. I am starting on a little project that is kind of off topic for this forum right now but will get tied back in a bit later in the post. So, first off a little background on me. I have a farm in southeast Idaho and am getting things set up to host campers/tenters/ect for the upcoming eclipse in August. My location is almost exactly in the centerline of the eclipse path. The area is a small farming community with wide open spaces and should make a really good place to view from. The local authorities are predicting upwards to 500,000 people to come to southeast Idaho to view the eclipse. Area hotels/motels/campgrounds have all been booked months ago and people are still looking for places to come to watch the eclipse. I have room to park dozens of rv’s and or campers so I decided to go for it. Since this is a small farming community with not many services and nothing open on Sundays, I knew I would have to have bathroom facilities for visitors to use. I checked into porta potties and they are all rented out locally and I would have to go several hundred miles away to get any with the cost being outrageous and no one to service them for me anyway. My next thought was to build my own bathrooms for guests to use then I would have something for my money instead of throwing money away on porta potties. So then I got to thinking what else I would do with the bathrooms and was thinking of a small campground facility that would cater to skoolies since there seems to be some issues with skoolies and campgrounds. I was also thinking of offering space for building skoolies as well since I have the parking space and tons of woodworking, metalworking, and equipment to build things with that would be available.
Ok so with that stuff explained, I am looking for some advice on my bathroom build. I am building a platform on skids so I can get under it and move it with my forklift. Its 5’x10’ deck and will have a divider wall in the middle and will have a flush toilet and 24” vanity on each side with hot and cold running water. I built the floor out of 2x6 pressure treated lumber and also covered the floor with 2x6 planks. I didn’t snug them together very tight so that moisture can pass through but will be rodent proof. The deck is done and I am getting ready to frame up the walls. I don’t want electricity in it right now and was thinking about using some kind of motion activated battery powered led lights that could be kept charged with solar. I am going to use pressure treated 2x4 lumber for the walls and wanted to sheet the outside with plywood and put tin as the exterior finish for easy care and give the interior a few coats of sealer. So a couple of questions that I would like ideas for are, I want some way to let light in during the day and thought of doing the top six inches of wall with clear polycarbonate or putting in one section over each side when I do the roof tin. Would I get too much heat inside from a clear roof panel?
Another issue is ventilation. I was thinking about installing a closeable vent in the bottom of each door and something in the upper wall or roof to let hot air out but I need to be able to close things up pretty tight so when the wind blows it wont blow full of dirt. Anybody have ideas to share with me on these two items?
After the eclipse weekend is over I am going to move the unit to a different location on the farm and hook it more permanently for the skoolie campground build. At that point I might put electricity in it also. My farm is in a pretty centralized location for visiting area points of interest, such as: Craters of the Moon Monument, INL nuclear labs which has EBR-1, the first nuclear reactor to produce electricity, Salmon river/Frank Church River of no Return Wilderness, Yellowstone Park, Grand Teton National Park, to name a few. Also having grown up being a farmer/mechanic/tinkerer and being currently employed by the local school district the last ten years as the bus supervisor and mechanic, I have a pretty good background in school bus stuff. Well that’s the end of my novel, thanks for reading it and I will look forward to hearing any suggestions anyone wants to share!
Mike
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