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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/
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.
too bad he had to level a hilltop and clear away some forest to build his stupid house.
recycling?
greenwash fail.
THL phish sticks
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.
It depends on when the aircraft was built as to whether it has DU as its weights or not, some 747s do and some do not. The radioactivity picked up from high altitude flying is negligible in terms of future use of the material, its never going to be emitting enough radiation to be an issue.
...I wonder how a house with airplane wings for roofs will fair in a major storm?
"Whooosh..."
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
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.
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!
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.
No, your penis is as phallic a shape as you can get.