During the day, you don't need your bedroom. At night, you don't need your living room. So, the two-storey bungalow has a floor deck that can move up and down. In the day, the deck is set high, making the downstairs rooms available; at night, it drops smoothly down on jackscrews to within 1.5 metres of the ground floor - high enough not to crush the furniture, but too low to move around - and makes the bedrooms "upstairs" available. All cupboards etc. are fitted into the walls (recessed), similarly pictures etc. fit in recessses in the walls so they don't catch on the floor as it moves up and down. There are not stairs a such, just a sort of low "mounting block" to let the occupants get up onto the "upper" floor when it's in the lower position. This means you can have rooms with nice high ceilings while keeping the overall height of the house down. You get much more "space" inside the house than for a bungalow of the same footprint. For plumbing reasons, the bathroom and the kitchen would be on the ground floor, and fixed.
-- 8th of 7, Jul 16 2002

Moving walls http://www.halfbake...om/idea/Porta-walls
Phoenix's idea [8th of 7, Jul 16 2002, last modified Oct 05 2004]

//you can have rooms with nice high ceilings//
You just can't have high furniture in them.
-- angel, Jul 16 2002


angel: Yes, but most furniture (tables, chairs) only stands about a metre and a half high at most. I agree that putting Granny's priceless Sheraton glass-fronted cabinet in the corner of the living room and then going "upstairs" could leave you with a lot of explaining to do to the loss adjustor.....

This sort of place would be provided with purpose built furniture to fit in with the semi-compressed lifestyle.
-- 8th of 7, Jul 16 2002


Quite happy with my three-level house with 10'9" ceilings.
-- angel, Jul 16 2002


Ah, but with the stak-a-floor option you could have 3 extra floors in your house !!
-- 8th of 7, Jul 16 2002


8th- So, if you're sleeping upstairs, and have to take a piss in the middle of the night, you have to expand the downstairs, take a leak, then lower it back down to go to bed? I like the idea, but I fear a piss-pants situation if I was really drunk at night..
-- Mr Burns, Jul 16 2002


thc, I imagine the upstairs would have a hole in the floor where the bathroom is, with 1.5 m of stairs down from the upstairs floor to the ground floor level right in front of the bathroom door, so you could get to the downstairs bathroom at night without raising the floor.
-- beauxeault, Jul 16 2002


beauxeault: Entirely correct.
-- 8th of 7, Jul 16 2002


Potty situation solved, biscuit issued.
-- Mr Burns, Jul 16 2002


Maybe you should expand the idea: have movable inner walls too, so that which ever room you enter it's really large. They would have to be telescopic to account for the moving ceiling/floor, and much of your furniture would have to be hung on the walls or be wheeled.
-- FarmerJohn, Jul 16 2002


Moving walls have already been halfbaked elsewhere, I will ad the links. I wouldn't want to be accused of plagiarism ....
-- 8th of 7, Jul 16 2002


I can imagine the TV crime drama based on this already - "So, you were the only person who knew your wife was asleep in the bedroom and so you must have operated the control to crush her against the ceiling!".
-- hippo, Jul 16 2002


Front door opens, husband's balls make direct contact with wife's hand which is straining from the pressure - and not that of the cuffs - but of the husbands *former* best friend who jumps off the *upstairs* bed, makes a leap for the *downstairs* window - where his balls are crushed...
-- thumbwax, Jul 23 2002



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