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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."
A guy here in Oregon had the same idea, but without the architectural finesse: http://www.airplanehome.com/
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.
Actually, thats not a bad Idea. When it comes down to it a plane is a structurally sound sealed can of high-grade aluminum, a common and ideal material for heat sinks and dispersal. All youd have to do is gut any insulation inside and sink it in a nice cold lake, which any deep enough can be.
Common Sense isn't as Common as people think...
too bad he had to level a hilltop and clear away some forest to build his stupid house.
recycling?
greenwash fail.
THL phish sticks
Isn't a 747 about as falic a shape as you can get?
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.
I think the guy should have authorization to talk to tower just like any other.
Tower, AC156D, going to read, over.
Tower, AC156D, taking a piss, over.
Tower, AC156D, tower using microwave, over.
Tower, joining the Mile High club, at 12ft, over.
Do not meddle in the affairs of sysadmins, for they are subtle, and quick to anger.
If you sunk it in a lake, it would rapidly fill up with water - aircraft are *not* air tight...
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
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awhaCJlfO0w
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.
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!
I think the guy should have authorization to talk to tower just like any other.
Except that it is owned by a woman.
... a woman who requested only curvilinear/feminine shapes for her new home and has purchased an entire Boeing 747-200 ...
No sig for you. YOU GET NO SIG!
Because she wanted *feminine* shapes, and without the wings a 747 looks anything but ;-)
People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
Your comment reminds me of Futurama; when the Planet Express is being dragged under the ocean, Proferror Farnsworth is asked how many atmospheres of pressure the ship can take, and he says that because it's a spaceship, it was designed to withstand, "between zero and one".
Don't take it personally, but I'm not going to read your pithy response to my post.
Most planes employ a self-adjusting louvre system that continuously pushes in the right amount of air to keep cabin pressure at the right level. When the amount of air coming in equals the amount of air flowing out (and there most certainly is air flowing out), cabin pressure is equalized.
They do seal the doors, for passenger comfort. Yet, the plane is definitely not 100% airtight. Or watertight for that matter.
Probably because, in the usual course of flying a 747, the engines are running which have big dealybobs called 'compressors' which pump air to the cabin. A pressurized aircraft would be 'weather resistant' rather than waterproof. Note that the Airbus 320 that splashed into the Hudson river a couple of years ago floated (for a couple of hours) because it has a "ditch switch" that closes a number of valves and openings on the plane that makes it more water resistant.
You probably could seal a fuselage enough to make it reasonably watertight at low pressures, but you don't see too many 747 submarines (this side of movies that is).
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Sorry to respond to myself but I just had to add some things.
-no, they sure as hell did not disassemble all 4,500,000 pieces. Most of that number is fasteners (rivets) which are destroyed by being removed (and need to be replaced).
-here are a few things that aren't part of a "sustainable" house: many pounds of lead, cadmium all over the place, hydraulic fluid, fuel cells with fuel residue, halon fire suppression system, primer loaded with chromates, toxic insulation, plastic and fabric treated with flame retardants, etc.
-trucked cross-country
What this amounts to is a pile of used scrap aluminum generously sprinkled with hazardous waste. 8 years in aviation maintenance has been enough for me to lose any childhood fantasies about living in airplanes.
It just bugs me that they're using words like green and sustainable around an airplane. Might as well build a house out of pre-RoHS electronics.
-b
No offense, but I've stopped responding to AC's.
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!
If aircraft were airtight, then they would retain sea level atmospheric pressure regardless of their altitude. They do not - as someone else notes, they have compressors running off the engines to pressurize the cabin.
and laugh at all the money and time I saved
Pay careful attention to the bit about $8,000 / hr for transportation to get it to the building site before you get excited about the money you'll save.
They didn't get to push the ditching switch in the hudson river incident, which is why it sank so quickly.
Airbus Industrie documentation specifies that an A320-family aircraft landed intact on the water (which is highly improbable, but...) with the ditching mode activated should float for at least three days.
That is an ideal case, of course.
Aircraft are not air-tight. Compressed air is constantly pumped into the cabin, and a series of poppet valves allow the correct amount of air to escape to maintain a safe pressure level - this amount varies depending on altitude and how air-tight the rest of the fuselage is. The doors are sealed to minimize the amount of compressed air that needs to be pumped into the cabin, and for sound and temperature insulation.
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.
The pressure cabin (which is a long way from being the whole hull) is (mostly) air tight, but don't forget that it is PRESSURIZED by the environmental control system, which is typically driven by engine bleed air.
A static, unpowered hull isn't airtight nor pressurized.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Ah, but planes can transport themselves! And, if you land just right, they're self-disassembling.
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