WARNING: METAL CONTENT

Awesome home! I would love to help build something like that.

I wonder what the price difference would be between designing and building it from scratch vs. the cost of the center bearing and support structure of one of the big rotating cranes running on rails around the shipyard.

Those cranes are rated at 120,000 lbs according to the sign posted on them. I doubt my current 1100 sq.ft. house weighs 60 tons.

Disassembly and precise reassembly would cost. One would have to run a cost analysis to see which was better. Crane time to just unload and set it would be a couple of grand, depending on the weight. The video states the weight of the house and components, but I don't recall it. All that special piping and wiring in the center that rotates could become spendy, but it looks like the guy is particular about things and had a lot of money, cause it's all first cabin. One could probably save some dough with lesser components.

Steve

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O

Rough estimate for stick framed house is 10-15 pounds per square foot for each floor level and the roof. 1100^2 rambler would be 2*15*1100 or

33,000 pounds. So less that half that of a fully loaded 18 wheeler going 75 mph down the freeway.

I watched the movie again. Stated specs:

- 50 ton house (100,000 pounds)

- 32 support wheels rated 5 tons each (150 ton rated capacity total)

- 2x 500 watt (2/3rd hp) drive motors

- 360 degrees in 30 minutes

- 720 degrees max rotation, they limit it to 360 degrees in practice

Comments:

- the center pivot bearing sure looked like the main swivel bearing from a moderate sized excavator

- limiting the rotation angle means they can have all utilities done with flexible lines supported in a tall central utility chase. Power wire is no big deal, ditto for phone, data, water. Sewer line tends to be shorter but still doable. Not so sure I'm happy with flexing the gas line!

- Weight number seems about right: those look like 14" or 16" steel beams with 6" or 8" steel purloins

- I'd estimate one of the exposed house sides at 20' So an octagon would be 1200 square feet. That looks about right.

- Each of the 8 radial beams would be about 30' long, perhaps 14x68 so

8 tons for those, another 5 tons for the circumferential beams under the rim of the house plus another few tons of steel for the purloins. Sounds like 20 tons of steel in the house deck, another 5 tons for the fixed support structure.

- Must have some nasty foot>> >>>

It's good. However - saw maybe even better on "Eurotrash" a few years ago.

This bloke (in Belgium?) had bought a plot of land and converted the base of a large excavator into the "foundation" of a 2-storey house. So not only did it rotate but it could also relocate around the plot as fancy took.

An earnest engineer or technical worker, apparently his wife had left him, his current lady friend who was very happy worked as a stripper or something like that and he explained that when he was building it sometimes even he suffered doubts as to his own sanity (how many of us have been visited by that sentiment... (maybe it's proof you are living your life right if that has happened to you?))

Rich S