Photo: Shane Young
The late Frances Gabe in 2002 demonstrating how her self-cleaning house worked. You needed an umbrella.
Like the idea of a self-cleaning house? Once you’ve read about the discomfort of living in one, you will have a much more positive attitude about cleaning your house the old-fashioned way.
I got a big kick out of Margalit Fox’s obit at the NY Times for the late Frances Gabe, an inventor who hated housework. Everything in Gabe’s house was waterproof so that an indoor “rain” could wash over it all without damaging furniture. The rain was followed by “wind.”
“Her remarkable abode — a singular amalgam of ‘Walden,’ Rube Goldberg and ‘The Jetsons’ — remained the only one of its kind ever built,” wrote Fox. “The reasons, recent interviews with her associates suggest, include the difficulties of maintaining the patent, the compromises required of the homeowner and, just possibly, Ms. Gabe’s contrary, proudly iconoclastic temperament.
“ ‘She was very difficult to get along with,” [Allyn Brown, Ms. Gabe’s former lawyer and a longtime friend], said, warmly. ‘She had an adversarial relationship with all her neighbors and she didn’t do anything to discourage it.’ …
“The [house], the newspaper The Weekend Australian wrote in 2004, was ‘basically a gigantic dishwasher.’
“In each room, Ms. Gabe, tucked safely under an umbrella, could press a button that activated a sprinkler in the ceiling. The first spray sent a mist of sudsy water over walls and floor. A second spray rinsed everything. Jets of warm air blew it all dry. The full cycle took less than an hour.
“Runoff escaped through drains in Ms. Gabe’s almost imperceptibly sloping floors. It was channeled outside and straight through her doghouse, where the dog was washed in the bargain.”
Suzanne's Mom's Blog 