Basic House design centered around the kitchen. Not yet built. Still in the brainstorming and how I'm going to get around the building inspector stage.
I have ideas for my sink area that also involves several sinks and permacultural food prep ideas.
A counter for food prep, and for the juicer, is right beside the first sink in the line up. Here there are various item specific tools and scrapers for cleaning eggs, veggies, plates, or pots. A steel bowl here takes egg shells over to a larger one that is by the
wood stove area where they are dried, later to be crushed and added to potting soil, or for slug protection in the garden. A
bucket under the sink takes coffee grounds, to be brought to the garden for slug control. In this initial prep counter counter is a hole (with a replaceable cover), where juicer/food prep scraps go in directly to a worm bin, which slides out from under the counter like a drawer, when needed to deal with. All dirt from cleaning veggies, food waste left on plates/bowls,pots... whatever, is scraped by spatula into the hole for the worms to deal with.
The first sink is for pre-rinsing dishes, not necessarily soaking. Soaking is only needed for rare items, which can also be done here. Most only need rinsing. The next sink is only for hot soapy water, which gains a lot of efficiency since most of the food is off the plates via spatula or rinsing done elsewhere, and so less hot water changes are needed and less soap is needed. After the soapy hot wash sink is a rinse sink. I do not like a sink full of rinse water, myself, and found through experiment that I use the same or less water rinsing dishes in a draining sink, on a single dish or a few dish cycle, then I do by filling a sink. My thinking is that if for some reason a person is less than perfect cleaning something, the rinse water in a sink full of water becomes tainted by that imperfection, and thus potentially taints the rest of what is rinsed in it whereas if you never have that water in the sink, the only dish that potentially is tainted is the one that was not perfectly cleaned. A forth sink is a possibility here, and in that case hot water with a few drops of grapefruit seed extract would naturally disinfect any residual problems. Dishes are simply dipped in this sink and then placed in racks to air dry. I'm thinking that this step is not necessary unless doing special food prep in a more commercial way, like for canning for market sale. This forth sink could have a cover when not in use, so that the area can be used for dish drying racks.
The whole system, including all the waste water from the sinks is dumped into a charcoal pit to take care of any smells, that is also adjacently growing herbs and flowers in front of the sink area, similar to the swamp monster in the living room that is in the original Earthship design. Up here in the Canadian Rockies more than 1/2 of the year the water can be easily diverted to something similar outside, but here the grey water system is best indoors during the winter. Here, the winter is dry, and
wood heat is drying the air all the time, so I doubt that the extra moisture from the plants will be a bad thing. In the summer the system can also be switched occasionally to the inside bin to make sure it gets adequate water and a
boost of nutrients.
A rocket stove mass heater, a
cob bread oven, and an old style wood burning cook top are part of the system, heating the room while cooking/baking. The mass bench will go through a mass wall and be a couch in the living room space beyond.
A walk in pantry for dry goods and canning off the kitchen goes further through double insulated sealed doors to reveal walk in earth bermed
root cellers of varying dryness for specific crops. The root cellars are accessed as well by a different double door system from the outside where a truck, cart or wheelbarrow can be brought right up to the door for easy unloading or loading to market. Having them indoors is so much more convenient then having to go outside, through snow, to access the cellar.
A solarium to the East through a sliding glass door off the kitchen gives a place to have more plants growing and a place to have a meal or read a book that is in full daylight. I was thinking of a desert type garden in here, with lots of aloe vera that require minimum water and will take excess water vapor from the air. The solarium acts like a trombe wall and has as it's north wall a stone wall with several windows open to the living room beyond.
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I plan to be around and agile enough to use that folding chair when I am 89 ... but might not stay agile if I did ... so these things are important!!
). That rack for the dishes, where they can dry and stay until you need them again, that's my favourite. I once had a small one, but it did not fit it in the kitchen after we moved. Someone said here: dishes you do not use often will get dusty / dirty. No problem: I do not want to have things I do not often use. 'Make it do or do without' is part of a saying I like.
