Who says you can't fly your house?
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Richard
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Ack...city life
There is a woman in Santa Barbara County who is trying to convince County Planning that a 747 fuselage would make a great home. Interestingly, one issue is can it withstand the winds common to that hill top property.
She already has the fuselage and her architect has figured out a way to transport it and place it.
She already has the fuselage and her architect has figured out a way to transport it and place it.
Pi1otguy
Pattern Altitude
We know it can take over +3 G's, but can it stand up to earthquakes?
Richard
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Ack...city life
So Costanza, you wanted to be an architect? (Seinfeld reference)
Mount it on springs on a foundation mounted on piers driven into bedrock. Or whatever it takes.
The first straw bale residence in CA was actually built in NV. The SLO County (CA) Bldg & Planning Dept couldn't get up to speed so they disapproved the plan based on unfamiliarity with alternative materials and methods. That was 10 yrs ago. Now straw bales pop up like weeds. The point is the govt was, uh, being a limiting governer.
It can be done. M'gosh, if a 747 could actually fly then it surely can be a home.
Mount it on springs on a foundation mounted on piers driven into bedrock. Or whatever it takes.
The first straw bale residence in CA was actually built in NV. The SLO County (CA) Bldg & Planning Dept couldn't get up to speed so they disapproved the plan based on unfamiliarity with alternative materials and methods. That was 10 yrs ago. Now straw bales pop up like weeds. The point is the govt was, uh, being a limiting governer.
It can be done. M'gosh, if a 747 could actually fly then it surely can be a home.
rottydaddy
En-Route
Pretty cool... I've seen the Max Power thing before; that's a great idea (the plane is mounted on a pedestal and allowed to weathervane- or you can lock it-or steer it like a crane turret!!
Not sure how you get power and water thru the attachment, though... one thing they don't mention on their site. The power thing is simple enough to do, but water would be tricky. Might have to stop it periodically and fill onboard water tanks. Not for everybody, but I'd like it.
I used to live on a boat; kinda the same in terms of the unorthodox interior spaces,swinging with the wind, and dealing with water tanks, etc... the little bit of hassle is worth it. I'd love to do that with an old Boeing 377... what a great house that would make!
http://www.maxpoweraero.com/ACHomes.htm
Not sure how you get power and water thru the attachment, though... one thing they don't mention on their site. The power thing is simple enough to do, but water would be tricky. Might have to stop it periodically and fill onboard water tanks. Not for everybody, but I'd like it.
I used to live on a boat; kinda the same in terms of the unorthodox interior spaces,swinging with the wind, and dealing with water tanks, etc... the little bit of hassle is worth it. I'd love to do that with an old Boeing 377... what a great house that would make!
http://www.maxpoweraero.com/ACHomes.htm
kevin47881
Final Approach
There's a song writer just west of my home drome who lives in what appears to be a DC-8 The plane sits just off the river and he has built the structure around the fuselage. I'll try to remember to take a picture next time I'm up flying around.
When I take a new person flying with me that is one of the required fly overs!
Edit: The plane referenced above is "Red Lane acquired what remained of the airliner, and moved it to Ashland City, Tenn., where it was converted into a home. Reportedly, he has lived in it for over 20 years and still lives in it today." Taken from the Airport Journals link.
When I take a new person flying with me that is one of the required fly overs!
Edit: The plane referenced above is "Red Lane acquired what remained of the airliner, and moved it to Ashland City, Tenn., where it was converted into a home. Reportedly, he has lived in it for over 20 years and still lives in it today." Taken from the Airport Journals link.
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K
KennyFlys
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Then, why is it you were showing me chicks around Vanderbilt rather than going flying and showing me this airplane house?
I'd think it would take quite a lot to heat a fuselage for comfortable living considering how thin it is. Or, is there more to that structure I don't know about?
Chairboy
Pre-takeoff checklist
Can you log the time?
AdamZ
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Adam Zucker
Wow can you imagine flying over one of those in your Archer or somthing, First inclination might be to broad cast plane down on 121.5
K
KennyFlys
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It would seem a good idea to make that a published visual reference point on sectionals for that very reason.
kevin47881
Final Approach
Then, why is it you were showing me chicks around Vanderbilt rather than going flying and showing me this airplane house?
I'd think it would take quite a lot to heat a fuselage for comfortable living considering how thin it is. Or, is there more to that structure I don't know about?
The picture shown on the site must be quite old as there is now a structure built around and underneath the craft.
I'll work on getting a recent pix asap.
Richard
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Ack...city life
I would think the fact there is a paved driveway leading to it and a SUV parked in front would be a give away.
Richard
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Ack...city life
Copied from a POA post from Nov 2005.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Woman building high-end home out of old 747
Alex Frangos
Wall Street Journal
Nov. 7, 2005 05:45 PM
[FONT=arial,helvetica,sans-serif]VENTURA COUNTY, Calif. - Francie Rehwald wanted her mountainside house to be environmentally friendly and to be "feminine," to have curves. "I'm a gal," says the 60-year-old retiree.
Her architect had an idea: Buy a junked 747 and cut it apart. Turn the wings into a roof, the nose into a meditation temple. Use the remaining scrap to build six more buildings, including a barn for rare animals. He made a sketch.
"When I showed it to her in the office, she just started screaming," recalls the architect, David Hertz of Santa Monica. Rehwald, whose passions include yoga, organic gardening, meditation, folk art and the Cuban cocktails called mojitos, loved the adventurousness of the design, the feminine shapes and especially the environmental aspect.
"It's 100 percent post-consumer waste," she says. "Isn't that the coolest?"
Unusual homes are nothing new along the coast of Southern California, long a magnet for eccentrics and free spirits. The "cyclotron house" in Malibu is shaped like an atom smasher. The "eyeball house" in Woodland Hills is a wooden silo with four giant glass eyes affixed to it. The "Chemosphere" looks like a flying saucer perched on a toothpick at the edge of a cliff in the Hollywood Hills.
Rehwald, whose family founded the first Mercedes-Benz dealership in southern California, is intent on adding to the genre. She has reserved a junked jet to purchase, charmed local planning officials and spent $200,000 on consultants.
"I am as much a part of this world as a bird, the frog in the creek," says Rehwald, who used to work at the family dealership, of her environmental motives. She wears a white sailor's hat perched atop her tossled blond hair, and her gold and silver bracelets jangle as she speaks. "This is my antidote to the malling of America."
Hertz has designed homes for such boldface Hollywood names as Julia Louis-Dreyfus of Seinfeld fame. He says his aeronautical inspiration struck after a long flight from Los Angeles to Scotland. The 747, he says, "though designed in the 1960s, is still an absolutely beautiful contemporary object. It was derived from pure function."
Hertz isn't the first architect to find inspiration in aeronautics, and people have turned grounded airplanes - small ones at least - into makeshift homes before. But Hertz may well be the first to propose building a high-end home with pieces of a 747.
First, Mr. Hertz had to find a plane. New 747s start at more than $200 million. He called Mark Thompson of Aviation Warehouse, who runs an airplane junkyard in the California desert that resembles the futuristic wasteland of "Mad Max." Thompson told him that $70,000 to $100,000 would buy Ms. Rehwald a decommissioned Boeing 747-200 that still carries the faded logo of defunct Tower Air. Half the value was in the ailerons, the moveable parts of the wing. Mr. Hertz figured he could use them to control the awning on the patio by Ms. Rehwald's swimming pool.
Thompson met with county engineering officials to persuade them that the jet parts could withstand the strong winds that sometimes buffet Rehwald's property. "It's difficult to get a city engineer who is used to working with 2-by-4s and plaster to realize that an airplane that flies 500 miles per hour can stand up to 40-mph winds."
Nancy Francis, supervisor of the residential permits section at the Ventura County Planning Division, says she's excited such an unusual dwelling is going up in her jurisdiction. "Everyone in the department wants to go on the site visit when it's done," she says.
A winding one-lane road leads to the sunny hillside in the Santa Monica Mountains where Rehwald intends to create her architectural oddity. The 55-acre plot with views of the Pacific, now covered in aloe, agave cactus and white oleander flowers, is one hour north of L.A. It once housed dozens of buildings erected by Hollywood designer Tony Duquette, who built with found objects and industrial garbage such as old tires and radiators. A fire in 1993 destroyed most of his strange handiwork. Ms. Rehwald bought the land last year.
Mr. Hertz and his assistants have been spending time in the desert with the derelict jet, measuring it with long pieces of string and contemplating its shapes. Eventually, he and Mr. Thompson will cut it into pieces and truck it to a valley near his client's property. He figures it will take a helicopter 10 hours - at $8,000 an hour - to ferry the metal chunks up the hillside.
There he intends to assemble a compound of buildings connected by narrow dirt paths. The jet's wings will rest on thick concrete walls, forming the roof of a multilevel main house. The nose will point to the sky, becoming a meditation chamber, with the cockpit window a skylight. The first-class cabin will be an art studio. The signature bulge on the top of the 747 will become a loft. A barn will house rare domestic animals such as the poitou donkey. A yoga studio, guest house and caretaker's cottage will round out the compound.
"We are trying to use every piece of this aircraft, much like an Indian would use a buffalo," says Mr. Hertz.
He says the eight buildings will be scattered across the terraced hillside as if it were a "crash site." As it happens, the site lies under a jet flight path into Los Angeles International Airport. That concerns the Federal Aviation Administration, which has asked Hertz to paint special numbers on the wing pieces to alert pilots that Ms. Rehwald's retreat is not a crashed jumbo jet.
In deference to neighbors such as Dick Clark and the former spouses of Bob Dylan and Olivia Newton-John, the structures will keep a low profile, blending into the land, says Hertz. He intends to "bioblast" the metal with walnut shells to remove the Tower Air paint and dull the sheen.
Rehwald says she has given Mr. Hertz a $1.5 million budget. She promptly adds: "I'll be real fortunate if it's less than $2 million."
He has already spent money on an archeologist to look for Chumash Indian artifacts and a biologist to tell her how best to manage the coyotes, mountain lions and rattlesnakes that traverse her land. She hopes to start construction within nine months, and to move in by 2007. Until then, when Ms. Rehwald visits the site, she stays in a Winnebago trailer borrowed from a friend.[/FONT]
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Woman building high-end home out of old 747
Alex Frangos
Wall Street Journal
Nov. 7, 2005 05:45 PM
[FONT=arial,helvetica,sans-serif]VENTURA COUNTY, Calif. - Francie Rehwald wanted her mountainside house to be environmentally friendly and to be "feminine," to have curves. "I'm a gal," says the 60-year-old retiree.
Her architect had an idea: Buy a junked 747 and cut it apart. Turn the wings into a roof, the nose into a meditation temple. Use the remaining scrap to build six more buildings, including a barn for rare animals. He made a sketch.
"When I showed it to her in the office, she just started screaming," recalls the architect, David Hertz of Santa Monica. Rehwald, whose passions include yoga, organic gardening, meditation, folk art and the Cuban cocktails called mojitos, loved the adventurousness of the design, the feminine shapes and especially the environmental aspect.
"It's 100 percent post-consumer waste," she says. "Isn't that the coolest?"
Unusual homes are nothing new along the coast of Southern California, long a magnet for eccentrics and free spirits. The "cyclotron house" in Malibu is shaped like an atom smasher. The "eyeball house" in Woodland Hills is a wooden silo with four giant glass eyes affixed to it. The "Chemosphere" looks like a flying saucer perched on a toothpick at the edge of a cliff in the Hollywood Hills.
Rehwald, whose family founded the first Mercedes-Benz dealership in southern California, is intent on adding to the genre. She has reserved a junked jet to purchase, charmed local planning officials and spent $200,000 on consultants.
"I am as much a part of this world as a bird, the frog in the creek," says Rehwald, who used to work at the family dealership, of her environmental motives. She wears a white sailor's hat perched atop her tossled blond hair, and her gold and silver bracelets jangle as she speaks. "This is my antidote to the malling of America."
Hertz has designed homes for such boldface Hollywood names as Julia Louis-Dreyfus of Seinfeld fame. He says his aeronautical inspiration struck after a long flight from Los Angeles to Scotland. The 747, he says, "though designed in the 1960s, is still an absolutely beautiful contemporary object. It was derived from pure function."
Hertz isn't the first architect to find inspiration in aeronautics, and people have turned grounded airplanes - small ones at least - into makeshift homes before. But Hertz may well be the first to propose building a high-end home with pieces of a 747.
First, Mr. Hertz had to find a plane. New 747s start at more than $200 million. He called Mark Thompson of Aviation Warehouse, who runs an airplane junkyard in the California desert that resembles the futuristic wasteland of "Mad Max." Thompson told him that $70,000 to $100,000 would buy Ms. Rehwald a decommissioned Boeing 747-200 that still carries the faded logo of defunct Tower Air. Half the value was in the ailerons, the moveable parts of the wing. Mr. Hertz figured he could use them to control the awning on the patio by Ms. Rehwald's swimming pool.
Thompson met with county engineering officials to persuade them that the jet parts could withstand the strong winds that sometimes buffet Rehwald's property. "It's difficult to get a city engineer who is used to working with 2-by-4s and plaster to realize that an airplane that flies 500 miles per hour can stand up to 40-mph winds."
Nancy Francis, supervisor of the residential permits section at the Ventura County Planning Division, says she's excited such an unusual dwelling is going up in her jurisdiction. "Everyone in the department wants to go on the site visit when it's done," she says.
A winding one-lane road leads to the sunny hillside in the Santa Monica Mountains where Rehwald intends to create her architectural oddity. The 55-acre plot with views of the Pacific, now covered in aloe, agave cactus and white oleander flowers, is one hour north of L.A. It once housed dozens of buildings erected by Hollywood designer Tony Duquette, who built with found objects and industrial garbage such as old tires and radiators. A fire in 1993 destroyed most of his strange handiwork. Ms. Rehwald bought the land last year.
Mr. Hertz and his assistants have been spending time in the desert with the derelict jet, measuring it with long pieces of string and contemplating its shapes. Eventually, he and Mr. Thompson will cut it into pieces and truck it to a valley near his client's property. He figures it will take a helicopter 10 hours - at $8,000 an hour - to ferry the metal chunks up the hillside.
There he intends to assemble a compound of buildings connected by narrow dirt paths. The jet's wings will rest on thick concrete walls, forming the roof of a multilevel main house. The nose will point to the sky, becoming a meditation chamber, with the cockpit window a skylight. The first-class cabin will be an art studio. The signature bulge on the top of the 747 will become a loft. A barn will house rare domestic animals such as the poitou donkey. A yoga studio, guest house and caretaker's cottage will round out the compound.
"We are trying to use every piece of this aircraft, much like an Indian would use a buffalo," says Mr. Hertz.
He says the eight buildings will be scattered across the terraced hillside as if it were a "crash site." As it happens, the site lies under a jet flight path into Los Angeles International Airport. That concerns the Federal Aviation Administration, which has asked Hertz to paint special numbers on the wing pieces to alert pilots that Ms. Rehwald's retreat is not a crashed jumbo jet.
In deference to neighbors such as Dick Clark and the former spouses of Bob Dylan and Olivia Newton-John, the structures will keep a low profile, blending into the land, says Hertz. He intends to "bioblast" the metal with walnut shells to remove the Tower Air paint and dull the sheen.
Rehwald says she has given Mr. Hertz a $1.5 million budget. She promptly adds: "I'll be real fortunate if it's less than $2 million."
He has already spent money on an archeologist to look for Chumash Indian artifacts and a biologist to tell her how best to manage the coyotes, mountain lions and rattlesnakes that traverse her land. She hopes to start construction within nine months, and to move in by 2007. Until then, when Ms. Rehwald visits the site, she stays in a Winnebago trailer borrowed from a friend.[/FONT]
ausrere
Pattern Altitude
I'd like to see a current pic of this house. Does anyone know if she ever completed it? You'd think if she started construction in 2005 it'd be finished by now. I did a google search and found this article with drawings of it, and this photo of the plane being cut up in preparation to be moved to her land, but no pictures or stories on a completed home.
Do their winds exceed the 747's top speed ~ 600 mph?
How is she transporting the 747? Mobile home?
