In alt.home.repair, on Tue, 3 Sep 2019 10:01:24 -0700 (PDT), TimR
wrote:

On Tuesday, September 3, 2019 at 12:02:16 PM UTC-4, wrote:
On 9/3/19 10:05 AM, wrote:
On Tue, 3 Sep 2019 09:40:28 -0400, Ed Pawlowski wrote:

On 9/3/2019 4:38 AM, micky wrote:
My townhouse has a shaft about 3' square from the basement ceiling to
the attic "floor". IIRC part of it is filled with a laundry chute. I
can't remember what else.

What is this shaft called? Do all recent houses of specific
configurations in the USA have them?

How long have houses had these things? Our houses from the 30's and
from the 50's didn't have one, but the 50's house had only a crawlspace,
no basement.

Could be a utility chase. Sounds like it would be good to have if there
was a fire in the basement. It would be able to get flames to the attic
faster to engulf the entire building. Not sure it would meet code today.



My 1990 home had one from the second story bathroom closet
floor with a hinged "door" covering the hole
- down to the basement ceiling beside the laundry room.
We did not find it useful in any way so we had it floored-over
when the bathroom flooring was re-done ; and closed off
when the basement was re-done.
As someone else said - it's a one-way convenience -
so not much benefit.
John T.


That was most likely meant as a laundry chute. We had one in a cookie
cutter tri-level where the bath was over the laundry room.

It had a door in the wall of the bath. Could be a fire code issue but
then so was the stairway ;-)

We had one that was clearly a laundry chute. It also had a doorbell buzzer attached, purpose unknown. Send down the next load? Look out below? I dunno.

Hmmm. I used to live in Brooklyn in what had been a luxury building
when it opened in 1930. Ten-foot ceiligns, hardwood floors everywhere,
parquet floor in the dining room, french doors to the dining room and
living room, from the hall, cedar closet in the hall, 2 BR plus maid's
room, with 2.75 baths**. and a dumbwaiter in every apartment.

There was a doorbell so that the concierge in the basement could ring
when he was sending up a package, and a button so that the tenant could
ring him when sending something down. (Not trash. There was a trash
chute in a small closet in the outer hall for all 5 aparments on the
floor.)

They were gone by the time I got there, but it used to have a doorman,
switchboard operator (who accepted the mail. No mailboxes), elevator
operator (not sure if there were a separate operator for the rear
building that had only 3 apartments per floor, one a studio), and a
concierge in the basement. I think the elevator operator delivered the
mail when no one needed him to run the elevator (which was automatic by
the tiem I got there in 1973.

We still had some of either the original tenants, or at least they moved
in when the building was fancy, and now they were old ladies, in their
80's. They had not paid a security deposit because with people like
that, you didn't need security. Three of them gave me old things when
they finally moved out, one of them was an end-table radio, case
designed by Norman Bel Geddes** (which must be good because they put it
on a sticker). It had broken in 1950 and not been played since then, but
it worked for me the first time I turned it on around 1980, and gave v.
good sound through its 10 or 12-inch speaker. However it never worked
again. I still have it, but I was better at fixing tvs than radios.
All its tubes are good.

****father of Barbara Bel Geddes. Do any of you remember her?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Bel_Geddes The United States Postal
Service issued a postage stamp honoring Bel Geddes as a "Pioneer Of
American Industrial Design".

**Two full baths, one right off the maid's room, with bathtubs so big
that after I disabled the overlow***, I could float with only one square
inch of my butt touching the bottom. The master br had its own
bathroom but with only a shower, not a shower/bath.

***Never had an actual overflow and I removed the tape just before I
moved out.

Or, just possibly it could be dumbwaiter, if the house was nice enough to have had servants.

I lived in a college dorm in the 70s that had a laundry chute, and worked in one ten years later that had a garbage chute.