Inventor of the one and only self-cleaning home, Frances Gabe, has passed away at 101

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Inventor of the one and only self-cleaning home, Frances Gabe, has passed away at 101

By Anastasia Tokmakova

Jul 19, '17 1:55 PM EST

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Ms. Gabe in 1979 with a model of her self-cleaning house. Credit The Los Angeles Times

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. — The New York Times

More than half a century ago, incensed by the housecleaning that was a woman’s chronic lot, Ms. Gabe began to dream of a house that would see to its own hygiene: tenderly washing, rinsing and drying itself at the touch of a button.

Ms. Gabe built the self-cleaning house with her own hands and money, receiving United States patent 4,428,085 in 1984. After more than 10 years of work and decades of planning, the house of about a thousand square feet was completed in the 1980s, at a cost of $15,000.
Floor plan
The house, whose patent consisted of 68 individual inventions, also included a cupboard in which dirty dishes, set on mesh shelves, were washed and dried in situ.

A tightly sealed cabinet was designed to deal with laundry. Soiled clothing was placed inside on hangers, washed and dried there with jets of water and air, and then, still on hangers, pulled neatly by a chain into the clothes closet. Her sink, toilet and bathtub were also self-cleaning.
In order to withstand their washing the floors were coated with multiple layers of marine varnish and furniture was encased in clear acrylic resin. An awning pulled over the bed before the cascade began kept the bedding dry. Upholstery was made from a waterproof fabric of Ms. Gabe’s invention, and pictures were coated in plastic, knickknacks displayed behind glass, books wore waterproof jackets invented by Ms. Gabe, electrical outlets—covered.
Spray nozzles which were installed in the ceilings of each room emitted a fine mist of water and detergent. The residue was then washed away by another spray.

“You can talk all you like about women’s liberation, but houses are still designed so women have to spend half their time on their knees or hanging their head in a hole,” Ms. Gabe told The Baltimore Sun in 1981. “Housework stuck in my craw even when I was a kid.”

For years, Ms. Gabe toured the country with a working scale model of her house — the model alone took her a year to build — lecturing at museums, universities and women’s clubs. In 2002 and 2003, the model was exhibited at the Women’s Museum in Dallas.

Ms. Gabe imagined entire villages awash in self-cleaning houses, along with self-cleaning office buildings and hospitals, however her vision was not to be. In 2002 she lost the patent, soon after the self-cleaning house became prohibitive to maintain.
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