h a l f b a k e r yIt's as much a hovercraft as a pancake is a waffle.
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Most "mobile" or "manufactured" homes don't do much moving once parked on a lot. Well, why do they have to sit horizontally on a lot?
If size is not a huge issue for the rooms in the home, then your standard 12-foot-wide, 8-foot-high, 60-foot long home becomes 8-foot-wide, 12-foot-long, and 60-foot-high:
seven storeys, one room on each level (and seven rooms is plenty for this type of home).
Some sort of minimal elevator will probably be a requirement. I think a kind of chain-ladder would work. That is, consider a rope ladder, and replace the ropes with chain. Put sprockets on the upper and lower floors, and run the chain-ladder in a continuous loop. Have it stick out from the walls in a way that lets you access both the "UP" and the "DOWN' directions of the moving chain. A simple on/off switch on every floor will let you activate it before you hold on (carrying whatever), and let you deactivate it when you reach your destination. In a power failure situation you can still use it like an ordinary ladder.
The size of the lot shrinks significantly. Next, if the windows are mounted on two neighboring sides of this home, then 4 of these homes can be positioned immediately-adjacent/attached to each other (each at one corner of the 4 adjacent lots), for added overall strength, and even some sharing of heating/cooling costs (the sides between homes don't need quite as much insulation as the other two sides).
Stackable Modular Trailer Homes
Stackable_2c_20Modular_20trailer_20homes
[ldischler, Aug 01 2006]
Fire Escape Flag Poles
Fire_20Escape_20Flag_20Poles
As mentioned in an annotation. [Vernon, Aug 02 2006]
[link]
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//If size is not a huge issue for the rooms in the home// then I have a shoebox under my sofa which I can rent to you at a very reasonably exorbitant rent. |
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[vernon], after living in a travel trailer
for a good part of a year, there is no
way you'd be able to get me into a
vertical version. |
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the current designs rock to a startling
degree in even moderate winds, and set
up and take down for these things
would be a real pain. you'd have to
make sure that everything is in a place
where it won't fall out when rotated,
and you'd be unable to really enter the
thing when it was horizontal. you'd be
showing off the bottom of the trailer.
when it's upright, everyone can see the
road grime. |
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this method would also take at least the
same amount of trailer park space
because you don't want to rely on your
neighbors moving in order to put this
thing back down. there's an increase in
complexity, to the point where most
people who use mobile homes will have
problems, and there's more that can go
wrong with the whole mechanism. |
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"Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair, biatch" |
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If one is concerned about maximizing space utilization, why not have stackable mobile homes? |
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One advantage of this design is that you could expand the horizontal "height" to twelve feet also. That way when you tip it up you would have 12 x 12 foot rooms, which are rather roomy. You could use the bottom floor for a garage and still have six big rooms. |
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Stacking homes seems more practical than planning on up-ending them. Staircases waste about 30 square feet per floor; in a home made up of 12x12 rooms, almost a quarter of the space would be occupied by stairs. |
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Well, isn't this really just a *tower* which has been around for centuries? |
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It's not really mobile because,
//Most "mobile" or "manufactured" homes don't do much moving once parked on a lot.// |
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All you need is a blanket... |
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[tcarson], part of the reason for having 4 of these linked together is to offer greater resistance to wind pressure. I suppose guy wires could be added, too. |
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[supercat], structurally, the trailers in a stack have to be stronger, than if built to be horizontally mobile and vertically stationary. More expensive. Also, regarding stairs, that's why I specified a ladder-type of elevator. Very space-efficient, that. |
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[Galbinus Caeli], yes, I thought of that, but I'm not sure that 12 feet high (when horizontal) is workable. Remember that's the height before the wheels are taken into account. Might be tough to go under overpasses, when being transported on the road. 9 or 10 feet high might work, though. |
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phlish: There's no way a moving ladder-style "elevator" is going to meet code as a sole means of ascent/descent in a residential structure. Even spiral staircases are generally not permissible as such (though they can be used as secondary staircases). |
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If there weren't any "proper" staircases, a freight lift would be absolutely essential since otherwise carrying furniture and such would be impossible. |
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Vernon: For trailers to be stacked, the walls which are designed to support a vertical load would have to support a stronger one but all load directions would be "normal". The shear loads once the buildings were stacked would exceed those of a single-story structure, but would still probably not exceed those produced by transport (which the buildings would have to be built to survive anyway). |
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Constructing the building so it could be up-ended would require much greater fortification. In a two-high 12' wide home, each lineal foot of wall would have to support 12 square feet of ceiling, 6 square feet of floor, and 6 square feet of roof. In a 7-story 12'x12' structure like you propose, each lineal foot of wall would have to support 42 square feet of ceiling, 36 square feet of floor, and 6 square feet of roof. In addition, at least two of the walls would have to be constructed to withstand rather extreme sheer loads as the building was lifted into place. |
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Also, I would expect a 12' high object could be transported on a trailer if the bed of the trailer were sunk below the height of the wheels. Max allowable height is 13'6", and I don't think there should be a problem having the trailer floor be 16" above the ground (figuring 6" thickness and 10" ground clearance). |
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[supercat], I don't think trailer-walls are desgined to hold the loads you are talking about. The FRAME holds the loads; the walls are just panels attached to the frame. So a "square tower" needs 4 main beams, and various struts between the beams, some of which are trusses for interior floors. |
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I admit I forgot about getting furniture to the upper levels. I suppose build-it-from-kit furniture would fit, though, even if a chain-ladder system was used. Or the furniture could be installed at the factory, securely attached to the tipped-over floors during construction, before the exterior walls were added. And for a secondary fire-escape system, I've already posted an Idea along that line (see link). |
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Thanks for the information about transport-height limits, though. (But you are exacerbating the "Wide Load" problem....) |
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Does anyone else picture a few thousand vertical trailers being tipped and destroyed because of a wind that tips over one? New post coming on...Trailer Park Dominoes! |
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