Interesting article in the Herald Tribune today…
WAVRE, Belgium: With energy prices rising, François Massau, a local coal merchant-turned-builder who died impoverished and alone in 2002 at the age of 97, is enjoying a small measure of posthumous fame, though not here in his hometown.
In the 1950s, when few people talked about ecology or conserving energy, Massau built what was among the earliest revolving homes. He built it in 1958 for his sickly wife, a schoolteacher, so that she could enjoy sunshine and warmth (there often isn’t much of either in Belgium) any time of the day or the year.
Today, as energy prices soar and the need to contain carbon emissions becomes pressing, revolving buildings have arguably become fashionable.
http://iht.com/articles/2008/09/01/europe/journal.php
Replies
Very cool.
Closest I ever saw to that in housing was turntable inside a garage so the owner could always drive out of their garage to enter the busy street in front of their house instead of backing out into it.
Yeah, I thought it was a fairly eccentric effort. The garage idea makes me think of the railroad roundhouses I was fascinated with as a kid.I'm still wrapping my head around the plumbing install on a place like this. I guess you could put the bath/kitchen set up in the center so it stayed somewhat fixed in place. Or even have the center (call it the doughnut hole) be absolutely fixed and allow the outer ring to spin.But how do you get a bathroom on an outside wall in this contraption? I haven't seen any universal joints for plumbing :)'Man who say it cannot be done should not interrupt man doing it' ~ Chinese proverb
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"Yeah, I thought it was a fairly eccentric effort."You mean it wobbles on its axis? :)"But how do you get a bathroom on an outside wall in this contraption? I haven't seen any universal joints for plumbing"If the house rotates less than 360°, say 180° to follow the sun, then PEX water lines from the center and flexible sections where waste pipes join the underground lines in the center might work. It would take an understanding inspector to sign off on it though.BruceT
Edited 9/3/2008 6:07 pm by brucet9
That was a BAD joke. LOLFor some reason I got the impression that it rotated 360 deg. If it's only 180, that would seem a bit more feasible. But what kind of flexible DWV pipe exists? Pex, sure. Maybe there are sizes big enough to handle the effluent?Electric would be kind of fun. Got to thinking that if you made it as though it were a pair of grindstones stacked on top of each other, with a continuous contact point embedded in there, you could handle the power without much trouble.'Man who say it cannot be done should not interrupt man doing it' ~ Chinese proverb
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wasn't there a revolving house on the back cover of FHB?
Hmm, don't know. A quick search on the FHB page didn't turn up anything useful for 'revolving house', or even just 'revolving'.Anybody else remember this?'Man who say it cannot be done should not interrupt man doing it' ~ Chinese proverb
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"Electric would be kind of fun."3rd rail? :)Think of the poor soul who has to go into the crawl space to fix that broken flexible waste line that some idiot (oops, that was me) suggested. :)I wonder if they used some sort of swivel joint like petroleum terminals use on their loading racks?
BruceT
I ate in a restaurant in downtown Chicago that rotated around, obviously for different reasons, but that house and the idea behind it is even better!
Doug
I saw about the same article in the New York Times
I think there is a revolving home here in the Portage Lakes area( I think I biked past it last summer.
stephen