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Compartments
Storsjön wall compartment
Storjsön is made up out of three compartments. The storsjön needs to be fixed at the wall. The wall compartment is placed on the floor on a rubber mat to prevent water from seeping underneath and creating moist.
The wall compartment consists of the following components:
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A frame with a Perspex plate,
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A small board underneath the frame, which supports the weight of the Storsjön. A rubber mat is glued underneath this board to prevent water from seeping underneath and creating moist.
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A larger board on top of the frame
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Two rails fixed on the board underneath and on top of the frame. They both support the middle compartment in horizontal direction.
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Two corner irons to fasten the wall compartment to the wall and thus supporting the Storsjön in horizontal direction. These are fixed at the board on top and underneath the frame with small screws and rubber rings to prevent water from seeping into the screw holes.
At first, the need of these angle profile wasn’t there. However to make the Storsjön widely applicable it was necessary for the Storsjön to be not deep. Making everything as small as possible increased the danger of falling over when bumping into it. That is why the two corner irons became necessary.
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Storsjön middle compartment
Storjsön is made up out of three compartments. The middle compartment is movable. This compartment is fixed to the wall compartment with two rails, each supporting horizontal forces, like a person pushing against the storsjön. It’s supported on the floor with a relatively large wheel underneath the middle compartment.
The middle compartment consists of the following components:
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A frame with a perspex plate
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Three cabinets mounted at the bathroom side of the Storsjön to the frame.
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Two rails fixed on the top and bottom of the frame. They both support the middle compartment in horizontal direction to the wall compartment.
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One rail fixed under the top board of the highest cabinet for supporting the outer compartment in horizontal direction.
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Another rail fixed to the lowest cabinet to support the outer compartment in vertical direction. (the outer compartment has no connection with the floor.)
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A wheel underneath the middle compartment to secure the weight of the middle compartment and the outer compartment. The wheel consist of a wheel itself and a wheelcap. For the wheelcap click the button below. The wheels size is rather large. That’s why it sticks out into the lowest cabinet. The reason of that is quite evident. Bathrooms often have ceramic tiles with grooves. A large wheel diameter will cause the wheel to take those grooves easier.
Storsjön outer compartment
Storjsön is made up out of three compartments. The outer compartment is expandable from out of the middle compartment. The horizontal forces like people pressing against the outer compartment is supported by the top rail and the weight of the outer compartment is supported by the rail below.
The outer compartment consists of the following components:
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A frame with a perspex plate
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Two acrylic soap trays each with two shelves, which the user can choose to vary in height when assembling the Storsjön. Both soap trays contain a handle for pulling to extend the outer and middle compartments for closing the shower area.
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One rail fixed on top the frame to support the compartment in horizontal direction.
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Another rail fixed on the bottom of the frame to support this compartment in vertical direction. (this compartment has no connection with the floor.)
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A handle to extend the Storsjön from the bathroom side. This handle can be used for opening the shower area from the outside if necessary (for example when children are showering). However, the main function of this handle is for extending the outer compartments for exposing the cabinets in the middle compartments. The handle suggests that the closed Storsjön can be used as closet.
Parts
Frame
All three compartments consist of a frame on which most of the parts are assembled. The frame at the wall compartment is a bit larger than the frame of the middle and the frame of the middle is a bit larger than the frame of the outer compartment. This is because those frames have rails on both ends, which should make the compartments fit into each other.
Every frame is build up out of the same elements in the same fashion.
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Two large beams supporting the frame at the sides. Holes are drilled thrue one side of these beams for all the battens to assemble. Firstly, only one beam is assembled to all the battens. After the perspex plate is installed, the last beam is assembled which locks the perspex in place.
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Short top and bottom beams keeping the previous large beams connected to each other. These are assembled with typical IKEA cam lock connections to the large beams. These beams also support the rails in the middle and outer compartment of the Storsjön.
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Small battens, which are connected to the large beams by plastic dowels. The battens are held in place by a screw thrue both ends of eacht batten. In this way, as little as possible holes are required. The perspex plate will prevent the battens from twisting around their dowels. The battens will secure the perspex plate in the middle of the frame. They also have the purpose of serving an esthetical feature by suggesting little square windows which are very IKEA like.
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One large perspex plate covering the total space for all the windows. This plate is placed between small wooden battens. This way there is no need to make grooves in the wood (see Solution to seeping water why that is important)
Cabinets
After a shower, the outer compartment will be wet at the shower side. When pushed in, the shower side will face the bathroom side of the cabinets, resulting in one wet side near the cabinets. All parts on the shower side are placed at a few milimeters from the frame to allow seeping of water laying on the top of the top and middle cabinets to the floor.
Top cabinet
The cabinets are all made the same except for the highest cabinet. In contrast to the two other cabinets, the top cabinet has a top shelf placed on the two side shelves, instead of between the side shelves like the other cabinets have. This to support the rail of the outer compartment.
Bottom cabinet
The bottom cabinet has different side boards to make room for the vertical placed rail, which is connected to the small board at the front of the cabinet.
The cabinets are (almost) all built up in the same faschion with the following components:
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Two side panels, which are connected to the middle frame at the bathroom side with the typical IKEA cam lock connections.The other components are assembled with dowels to these sides, except for the top board of the highest cabinet and the small board of the lowest cabinet. They need to carry the weight of the outer closet via rails. This is why those are assembled via the same cam lock connections, which can handle more force. The sides of the lowest cabinet differ from the others. (see Bottom cabinet above)
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A top panel, which is placed between the sides and assembled with dowels to the sides. The top plane of the highest cabinet differs from the others. (see Top cabinet above)
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A bottom panel, which is also placed between the side panels and assembled with dowels to those sides.
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A small front plane, which secures items from falling out of the closet when the middle compartment is moved. Also, this small front plane prevent items from touching the wet surface from the outer compartment.
Soap trays
The soap trays are made from acrylic. in this way, they will be water resistant and serve the esthetical purpose of suggesting the shower area. This is because transparency connects with water and creates a clean feeling.
Customizable
The soap trays consist of two shelves per tray, which the user can choose to assemble on different heights. Standard, the Storjön has included the two shelves and two bars (for preventing items from falling out the soap trays). The user can choose to leave items out, with a minimum of two items per tray. This is to prevent the soap tray from twisting or bending when the handleattached to the soap tray is being pushed or pulled.
Both soap trays share exact the same components. Those are:
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A side panel closest to the wall, which serves no other feature other than keeping the falling water from the shower away from the dry area. The sides are connected with a special assembling technique explained at point 2 just below.
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A side panel with a large groove in the middle to make space for the handle. The soap trays first need to be assembled before attaching the sides to the frame. The sides are attached to the frame with an imbus screw through the thick beam of the frame as shown in this picture. The screw fits through an axel bearing to not make the screw wire visible and then fixing the Acrylic side by a squared plastic bolt. A rubber ring can be placed in between the frame and the acrylic side to prevent water from seeping in the screw hole. A cover is placed for the esthetics on the bathroom side of the outer frame.
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Two shelves, which are secured on the sides with a pin hole assembly. The shelves will be fixed in place with a small cone as seen in the picture. This is necessary because of the force that comes with pulling the handles. The shelves can vary in height, as can be seen above. The shelves contain grooves and a groove at the back to give a mere soap tray look and to allow water from falling through.
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2 bars which prevent products from falling out. These bars also are fixed to the side with a pin hole connection and a cone at the shelves. The bars are placeable at different heights to meet the needs of every cusomer.
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A Handle to close the Storsjön from inside the shower area.
Handles
The handles are made of stainless steel to look robust. It is also suitable for bathrooms since most handles are made of stainless steel.
All the handles are attached to the outer compartment of the Storsjön. One of the three handles on the bathroom side and the other ones are attached to both soap trays on the shower side of the Storsjön. The first handle is explained above at Storsjön outer compartment point 5.
The other two handles are fixed at one side of the soap tray. The soap tray contains an acrylic side which has an offset with the side of the frame. This means that a little bit of space is available for this handle. This is necessary to create enough room for the Storsjön tocompletely connect the Storsjön to the wall, thus closing off the shower area from the dry area.
Both soap trays contain a side with gaps where the handles should be installed. The handles each consist of two elements:
1. An stainless steel bar with the same diameter as the handle
on the bathroom side.
2. Two small bent stainless steel plates between which the
handle can be clamped.
Rails
All rails are already assembled by IKEA on both boards of the wall compartment, on the top board of the highest cabinet and on a small board of the lowest cabinet. The user must assemble the other sides of the rails to the frames themselves. The rails are coated with a rubber mat on both sides to prevent water from seeping into assembly holes between the rail and the wood and moisting the wood from inside out .
The need of a three parted rail was inevitable, because the compartments need to extend fully. In earlier concepts, a large rail covering the total width of the shower entrance was taken into account. The big disadvantage of always seeing it and large people who could bump their heads into it, made this idea unpractical.
Light in use
The Storsjön is designed for adults and children. The railsystem ensures the opening and closing of the Storsjön from the shower area to beeasy, because the only friction that needs to be overcome when opening the Storsjön is caused by the rails. (and the wheel with a large diameter to prevent getting stuck in grooves).
Solution to seeping water
It is necessary to get as little water into narrows as possible to prevent rotting of the wood.To ensure this all the battens are painted and coated at first, then holes are drilled and grooves are milled. That way the wood is not coated at those places which then obviously can get moisty. These places however are protected by clever contstruction of the closet (for example: holes on the dry side of the closet), or by protective layers, such as rubbers.
Attached to the wall
The Storsjön needs to be attached to the wall to prevent falling over, since the Storsjön is relitavely narrow. Any object as tall and narrow as the Storsjön is, would fall over whenever a fairly big force would be applied. An attachment at the top of the wall would make pushing over the Storsjön a lot harder.