The Potty Plan

Here's the floor plan I created with the tool at Warmly Yours tonight. The idea is that you enter your floor plan, they give you an estimate and you can order your pieces right away. I've already ordered their sample mat and their installation DVD, and I'm convinced, but at this moment their computers are telling me that my warmed area is too small. I'm thinking that means that one mat won't fit over the area without doubling some cable back over itself, which is probably a no-no. The warming cable has its resistance figured pretty precisely, so if you cut it and splice it, you're also changing the resistance if you've changed the length. At best, you're going to make it heat more or less than the thermostat shows, and I don't want that. But there has to be a way, short of having custom mats cut. I hate to say it, but I know at least one of their competitors makes smaller mats . . . but I'm going to send them an email first and see what they suggest. In the meantime, I did this one, too. This didn't solve the floor-heating problem, but it does a couple of nice things for me. First, look at all that walking room! Second, look at the tub--in this plan, I would now use a left-hand tub as I originally planned, since My Bride would not want to kneel between toilet and tub to bathe the Boy-Child III. That relocates the shower supply plumbing to an inside wall (the top and left walls are exterior; the bottom and right walls are interior.) The toilet and sink are far enough over to the south that their plumbing is not in a true exterior wall--there's a roof line running from the floor on the left to about chest height on the right corner, so their plumbing is below that roof line and therefore unlikely to freeze on me.
So why didn't I do this in the first place? Well, in its old spot the toilet was right between two joists and had a simple run for its drain that wouldn't have needed a hole in a joist. In this spot, I will probably have to drill at least one joist, and I don't know if I can put it there without placing the drain right over a joist anyway. It's also a tight spot for the shoulders, although it looks to me like it could work. You have to remember that the tub is low enough not to matter to the shoulders of a person sitting on the toilet; it just needs to leave leg room.

This room will have a forced-air vent so that the central air can reach it, but it's in the ceiling above the tub. If the floor heat works as well as they say, I may end up closing that vent off in the winter to let the other rooms have more air.

(Yes, it's that small. Yes, the tub is non-negotiable. But you'll notice I've got a nice little path built in . . . and the pocket door really helps.)