While many rotating buildings have a periphery that rotates, almost all have a stationary core where electricity, water, sewage, and other connections are fixed to external utilities. But this crazy house, in La Mesa, crazy California, completely rotates, with kitchen, bathrooms, and electricity somehow connected to outside services.
How did they do it? See U.S. Patent 7,032,353 B2, granted on 2006-04-25, “Swivel joint apparatus and method for utility supply to a rotatable building” [PDF].
Abstract
A swivel joint apparatus for supplying utilities to a rotating building rotatable about a central axis has an inner, fixed spindle for securing to a fixed base of the building to extend co-axially with a central axis of rotation of the building, and an outer casing rotatably mounted on the spindle for securing to the rotatable part of the building. The spindle has a series of spaced annular flanges defining a series of annular chambers and at least one ring seal mounted on the peripheral edge of each flange for rotatable sealing engagement with the outer casing so that the casing forms an outer wall of each of the annular chambers. A lower end wall of the spindle has a plurality of ports for connection to fixed utility lines in the base for fluid supply to and from the building, each port connected through the spindle to a respective annular chamber. The outer casing has a series of axially spaced ports for connection to respective utility lines in the rotatable part of the building, the ports including at least one port communicating with each of the annular chambers.
According to the video, it does support both liquid and gas connections, with the following named:
Potable water in
Grey waste water out
Sewage out
Natural gas in
These are separated by seals which are said to have a service life of 75 years. There are two seals between each fluid ring with a sensor between the seals to detect intrusion from adjacent rings, so it is claimed two seal and two sensor failures would be required to permit undetected admixture of fluids. The explanation of this starts around the 5:00 point in the video.
This house , while cool as hell . Fails the KISS standard . The very reason they are moving .
I would run from this maintenance trap . Only people with money enough to solve all problems will be interested .
This house , while cool as hell . Fails the KISS standard . The very reason they are moving .
I would run from this maintenance trap . Only people with money enough to solve all problems will be interested .
Don’t know whose KISS standard it violates, but it is hardly some “nightmare” to keep up. What is the marvel is the applied engineering, but as the man says, now that he’s solved the issues, it only takes some pretty basic maintenance yearly to keep it running.
I would guess you are totally unfamiliar with slipring tech. For working examples, look at the years we’ve run helicopters… They use slipring tech to control the main rotor hub. In many ways it is more complex than this house, since it is required to operate under substantially larger loads and torque. But the man did some really neat engineering making up that hub, and figuring out the correct motor and reduction gearing to use.
