Here are some photos:

http://www.digitaljayhawk.org/Projec...es/porches.jpg

http://www.life.arizona.edu/residencehousing/maricopa/

Bed assignments
 

Are you assigned a specific bed? If you get sick, does your rommate sleep in your cold air bed while you sleep in her room bed?

What keeps someone from coming in the open windows?

Silver

Thanks DGMarie!

That is so interesting...I must say I'm a wee bit jealous of the idea!

There are a couple pictures of a sleeping porch here. (scroll down) Here's another one from a fraternity site.

As for why no one comes in, at IU the cold dorms were on the top floors of the houses (usually the 3rd floor or so), and they are humongous houses. It would be hard to get up there!

:)
 

Now that I've read all of the posts, these cold air rooms sound a lot like military barracks. Very cost/space efficient! And a nice way for everyone to get comfy around each other.

preciousjeni

Re: Bed assignments
 

We were assigned specific beds. As for the roomie thing, well, it didn't work that way in the house. Your roomie had the same sleeping arrangement as you did. Either you had beds in your room or you didn't. However, if you slept in the cold dorm but were really sick you could sleep on the couch in your room.

Our cold dorm was the top floor of the house. LOL, if anyone scaled up the building and tried to open the window our alarm system would go off. It would be funny to see though!

Hope this answers your questions. :)

in the summer, is this room air conditioned? Being on top of the house with that many people must have been really hot!

Wow... this idea is so foreign to me! It definately seems cozy and nice though. :)

Nope, no AC in the cold dorm. Sometimes it would get stuffy, but a good number of us had those little clip on fans on top of having rotating fans. With the number of fans it would actually be cooler upstairs than downstairs! In our house only our formal rooms have AC. I would sometimes go up to my bed to study during the day. :)

Wow, I think it would be great. Seems like that would cut out so many problems with one roommate needing to sleep, and the other wanting to watch TV or do homework!
I could definitely deal with the cold, too -- I sleep with my window open now, even when it's 20-something outside, and last year in the dorm I kept my window open all year long because it was so dang hot in there!

when i was a student our house had two sleeping porches-to describe them to others, i would say they look like the barracks on the gomer pyle show. we chose our own bed which was ours for the year. we used our owns sheets , pillow and comforter. it was lights out and quiet 24/7 on the porches and people were quiet in the hallways outside the porches. our house has been remodeled and expended and now beds are in the rooms and sleeping porches are no more. the porches weren't really porches, just large rooms with bunkbeds and central heating and air.

as far as colds and illness go, i don't remember a higher incidence of germ swapping.

i don't know where the term, cold air porches originated from, but here in florida a long time ago before air conditioning was invented, people used to have sleeping porches which were large, high ceilinged porches with screens used in the hot months.often ceiling fans were used to help create a breeze, as the whole household slept in beds on the porch.lisa

At Penn State, most of the fraternities had them, and they called them "rack rooms" rather than "sleeping porches". Sororities were in the dorms, so no rack rooms for us.