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Boeing 747 Recycled Into a Private Residence
Ponca City writes "Nicholas Jackson writes in the Atlantic about a woman who requested only curvilinear/feminine shapes for her new home and has purchased an entire Boeing 747-200. They transported it by helicopter to her 55-acre property in the remote hills of Malibu and after deconstructing it, had all 4,500,000 pieces put back together to form a main house and six ancillary structures including a meditation pavilion, an animal barn, and an art studio building. 'The scale of a 747 aircraft is enormous — over 230 feet long, 195 feet wide and 63 feet tall with over 17,000 cubic feet of cargo area alone and represents a tremendous amount of material for a very economical price of less than $50,000,' writes Architect David Hertz. 'In researching airplane wings and superimposing different airplane wing types on the site to scale, the wing of a 747, at over 2,500 sq. ft., became an ideal configuration to maximize the views and provide a self supporting roof with minimal additional structural support needed.' Called the 'Wing House,' as a structure and engineering achievement, the aircraft encloses an enormous amount of space using the least amount of materials in a very resourceful and efficient manner, and the recycling of the 4.5 million parts of this 'big aluminum can' is seen as an extreme example of sustainable reuse and appropriation. Interestingly enough, the architects had to register the roof of the house with the FAA so pilots flying overhead would not mistake it as a downed aircraft."
One with enough computers to stand up to /.
Do not meddle in the affairs of sysadmins, for they are subtle, and quick to anger.
more like it. Register it at ICANN?
A guy here in Oregon had the same idea, but without the architectural finesse: http://www.airplanehome.com/
Aren't they basically being given away for scrap now? Maybe someplace
Alternately, can you get a good price on a B52 in mothball?
g=
I'm assuming that the architect will consult with the appropriate engineers before building the structure, but still I wonder how a house with airplane wings for roofs will fair in a major storm?
You think your life is a train-wreck? Well, my house is a plane crash!
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
That's pretty awesome, actually.
I'm stunned you can buy an entire decommissioned 747 for $50K -- that's a lot of material.
My favorite thing from the second link is:
Now that would make for some strange calls to flight control ... uhh ... tower. ;-)
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
too bad he had to level a hilltop and clear away some forest to build his stupid house.
recycling?
greenwash fail.
THL phish sticks
Boeing 747 as a youth hostel
http://www.usatoday.com/travel/flights/2008-12-29-747-jumbo-hostel_N.htm
High flying?
Isn't a 747 about as falic a shape as you can get?
If oil continues an upward trend, and we don't find a suitable substitute, air travel will become far more expensive in the future. The air line industries are already having difficulty, so maybe they will subsidize by selling some aircraft off for recycling.
Instead of just one house though, they could probably use the materials to do a lot more. I don't know what. Is there rare earth elements in them? Maybe that part alone will become worth more than the plane if China has its way.
Sure, they bought the plane for $40k (according to the video), but then they are paying $2 million to build the house. That is slightly more than what most people consider "reasonable" for the cost of a house.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Did nobody mention to her that planes are very radioactive partly because they spend so much time in the thinner atmosphere and partly because there is depleted uranium (which is more likely to cause heavy metal poisoning) used as weights within them? Sounds like a lovely material to build a house out of. Maybe she should paint the outside with lead based paint, water the garden with agent orange and then install asbestos for installation? Jokes aside - fools with their money. This fool sounds like she has a ton to waste and deserves what she gets.
From the article it looks like they are just using the wings.
In researching airplane wings and superimposing different airplane wing types on the site to scale, the wing of a 747, at over 2,500 sq. ft., became an ideal configuration to maximize the views and provide a self supporting roof.
Let me guess -- it creates a lifelike visual stage with mellow yet crisp organic textures and deep black interscene silences. The muscular yet deft support structure enhances the vista responses of the viewer, allowing full appreciation for the rich yet subtle display of thermal inversion in the valley below.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
I realize the "wing house" is not really just an intact airplane but as others have posted, folks apparently have been known to use them intact as well. Since these need to get up to a rather high altitude, I assume they're fairly well insulated already. I do wonder, though, how much insulation would be left and if it's truly suitable as a home (aside form the oddball nature of it) without major remodeling aside from putting up walls for rooms.
I also wonder if the $50,000 included transportation costs. Sheesh, for that matter, will all the new young urbanites end up essentially living in the modern equivalent of expensive trailer parks?
You know the thing about UDP jokes? I don't care if you get it or not.
I call shenanigans... Where did they put the fuel tanks, the Engines, and you cant use the wiring for the house, it's not even the same type of wiring. Also all those uncomfortable seats. The house is going to have incredibly ugly furniture.
From the photos it looks like they only used a few parts of the aircraft. and the home could have been built without any airplane being flown to the worksite.....
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Interesting mobile home though
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awhaCJlfO0w
They started talking about "first-class". I am not familiar with this at all. When I go to the airport, after I get strip searched the security guards usually duct tape me to my baggage and check me in steerage-class. I'm happy if I arrive at my destination.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
A lot of people have built homes from disused airplanes. Nothing new there.
This is "much ado about nothing" from a rich woman interested in some self-serving publicity about how wonderful she is.
A "meditation pavilion"? Really? She recycles a couple wings, which are rather easily to recycle anyway by melting them down, but then throw away most of the airplane instead of using the fuselage as a home. Then, as others have mentioned, she cuts the top off a mountain for her feminine palace-thing.
And the "use all parts of the Buffalo" quote is more self-serving crap. First of all, it's a Bison, not a Buffalo. Second, they only "used all parts" because they were bloody hard to obtain. You try killing a giant, angry bull with a rock and a stick and see how hard it is.
When times were good, and they had lots of bison, they just cut off the best parts and left the rest to rot--this can be documented from the multiple "buffalo jump" sites where they chased Bison off cliffs. You take all the parts from a couple because you need them, but when it gets down to the end, you just cut off the humps and tongues. The "perfectly ecological Native American" is a myth invented by Europeans. The Native Americans are the same as humans all over the globe. What a shock.
Have any of you ever seen a 747?
-b
No offense, but I've stopped responding to AC's.
On move-in day, each item is a carry-on and subject to a baggage fee of $50. You can't have an airplane without junk fees!
Or, who really needs an excuse to use the inflatable ramp to get out of a plane?
If there was ever a perfect place to advertise life insurance, this is it.
don't know when I'll ever pack again
When I was a boy, we lived in the landing gear of a crashed Spitfire! . . .
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
I'd call everybody who takes the four and a half million pieces of the 747 apart to convert it into something, say... a house, a maniac. This would include deriveting all aluminium sheets from the wings etc and riveting them back together... For the sake of what ???
"The 747 represented the single largest industrial achievement in modern history and its abandonment in the deserts make a statement about the obsolescence and ephemeral nature of our technology and our society."
"Captain, our hyperbole filters are at 127% capacity and rising! I'm diverting power from weapons and life support to create an inverse tachyon pulse using the main deflector dish to try and compensate!"
I'm a hardcore plane guy. (Boeing products in particular) But at the end of the day....it's just a hunk of well shaped aluminum. 30 years of flying leads to metal fatigue. Time marches on. Besides, we've put men on the moon, split the atom, tamed the Yangtzhe and Colorado rivers, created artificial organs, and made it possible for mankind to set our DVR's from our cell phones (making it possible to never miss another episode of Dancing with the Stars or Jersey Shore). There are many industrial achievements that stand above the 747.
There are some people that if they don't know, you can't tell 'em.
We all get an old submarine, paint it yellow and move into that??
Death comes to those who wait.
This was on HGTV two years ago...they have recently been running recycled clips of it on other shows.
Nothing to see here but us trolls...move along...
This is just to show that money neither buys class nor precludes one from committing stupid, senseless (and this tough economy, insensitive) acts of excessive tackiness and expensive attention whoring.
Made for interesting local news around here.
...probably emits more radiation than the airframe has ever accumulated during its years of flying.
Know anybody who has granite rocks in their landscaping, or granite countertops in their kitchen or bathrooms? Take a handheld geiger counter the next time you visit them and entertain them with the small amounts of radiation emitted by their granite :-)
... she can fire up Otto.
__ Someday, but not this morning, I'll finally learn to use the preview button.
Actually, it may be more efficient to replace the existing house with a more energy efficient house.
Link goes to one of my all time favorite Ted videos, because I often find myself asking the same questions as Catherine Mohr; except, where I guess, she has quantitative answers!
Spoon not. Fork, or fork not. There is no spoon.
The biggest drawback I can see to having a home built out of aircraft aluminum is the corrosion issue. Contrary to what many people think aluminum does corrode. It is not as active a metal as steel, but it DOES corrode.
If you take aluminum and fasten it to other structures with dissimilar metals you are liable to have a major corrosion problem on your hands. I'm thinking Malibu would have a more electrolytic atmosphere (being near the ocean) and so the problem would be compounded. Perhaps some sort of anodic protection could be put in place during construction.
Anyway, I'm just wondering if anyone is thinking about the potential corrosion problem.
Proverbs 21:19
The 747 is a symbol of American industrial and technological innovation and might. Taking one apart and turning it into an eco-home is really just a symbol destroying American industry to save the environment.
Why not? There are thousands of houseboats. Also long and narrow. Albeit, I can't think of a better house thermal insulation than the one made for minus 40-60 C. ! :-DDD
Economical. Right.
The airframe might have cost $50k but what about everything else? How much did everything necessary to make this building livable (insulation, wiring, sheetrock, flooring, lighting, plumbing, etc) cost? I'm guessing even the foundation was built separately with the plane serving as little more than a skin. I was expecting to see a plane, or at least part of it, sitting on this property. Oh yeah, then there's making the skin weatherproof given that all those panels were cut up and taken apart. And I haven't even mentioned the massive expense of hiring architects and engineers to work on so unique a project. And clearly they had experts involved to help address any potential rules regarding home construction.
If they didn't balk at paying $8000 an hour to pay for a helicopter I doubt money was an issue here.
The house is very cool and I like how they repurposed materials. But I find it an insult when they try to suggest that somehow this enterprise was done on the cheap. This seems to be a common trait with the green movement when it comes to recycling objects for a different function. They try to impress everyone by how inexpensive or easy it supposedly is to do what they're describing when that's the furthest thing from the truth. If it were so easy everyone would be doing it. This isn't like cutting a milk jug in half and using it for a flower pot.
Where does one pick up a surplus 747 for $50,000? I have some shopping to do.
I'm guessing they didn't use the engines, that saves a few parts.
But if they preserved the cockpit, woot! Not likely, the instruments were probably worth more than the fuselage. But a working radar disk would be fun, just to point it at visitors. Actuators also are worth more in reuse/salvage than to just be left on parts. Imagine the fun of hydraulic leaks when you tweak the flaps for ventilation...
I wish I could afford to do this. Wicked fun...!
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
17000 cubic feet. How many elephants is that?
The imperial system. Not very popular outside of Myanmar and the USA.
0x or or snor perron?!
Aircraft aren't designed to be parked for years without pressure washing, inspections, corrosion repair, and repaint. Park 'em near salt water and things get much worse.
There is good reason the AMARC "Boneyard" is at Davis-Monthan.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Not far from where I live someone is living in a 727:
Google map: http://ur1.ca/21vv0
Just keep swimming.
The engine's compressor is used and pumped into the cabin to replace escaping air.
So, no it's not airtight. Minus 10 geek points for not watching the Mythbusters episode where they had to seal the heck out of the cabin to run their explosive decompression test.
The first private golf club in Bulgaria near Ihtiman on the main Europe Turkey highway has the main cafe building made out of bits from a decomissioned Tu-154. It has been there for 20 odd years now. Parts from the tail are used for signs on the highway. The fuselage and the wings are incorporated in the building. I can think of at least two more cafes and restaurants made out of decomissioned Il-18s and there is a hotel in Germany made out of one as well.
You can get an airframe which is past its max hours on the cheap fairly easily. Transportation is a bit of a hassle, but it generally costs less than building a dwelling of the same size. So if you have a big enough chunk of land and get this past the planners (especially in countries like UK) that is doable.
There is an easier, cheaper and better option though which is also easier to get past the planners. With the rail transport going to sitting places only there is a suprlus of Pulmans and their East German equivalents (used in ex-Soviet Block). These are way easier to adapt and convert into a supercool house.
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
Is she going to have a robot in front that says:
"Welcome to Megaton, friendliest town a-round!"?
That was the turning point of my life--I went from negative zero to positive zero.
Gee. I was going to buy a little single engine Cessna, but I guess I can spring for a 747 since you can pick one up for only $50,000.
In a band? Use WheresTheGig for free.
So, just like twitter?
" ... requested only curvilinear/feminine shapes for her new home ... "
But was quite happy to live in a large phallic shaped jumbo!
America, Home of the Brave.
This guy pretty much showed how useless our recycling is, especially when he bought a plane for 1/3 the price of a house, and has so much materials left over, that he can build other units, like a pool storage facility, and etc...
Smart, smart , smart!
1. Most planes are not pressurized. Large commercial planes have to be due to where they operate.
2. The pressure usually comes from turbine bleed (you have bleeds from may different stages on the turbine for many different uses. like pressurizing the plane or starting other turbines). Not louvers pushing air into a plane.
3. You control the back bleed to control cabin pressure. The command for fully closing the back bleed is "freeze the puppies Scotty.", this is because the way the warm air gets from the cabin to the cargo hold where your pets are riding, is through the back bleed. You close this bleed when the cabin is not maintaining pressure... or you saw several yap dogs loaded into cargo.
The doors are sealed by the plane pressurizing ("They" I presume being the crew, do no real sealing other than closing the door). So if you see someone try to open the door in mid flight just point at them and laugh while pelting them with your empty drink containers, as there is no way they can pull the door in enough to open it outwards. You have to pull those doors in first.
If you are really serious and want to have a shelter quick, start thinking and tinkering with containers.
Cheap and easy to transport. Almost rust free, easy to glue and stack together.
Search for "ISBU container homes" or "shipping containers".
Yeah, that's definitively on my radar, just a little harder to sell the SO on that, whereas an airliner (and now I'm thinking boats, too) is a more aesthetic choice.
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!