User:Vincecate/BallHouse

Idea

Idea is to use a ball shape with HangingBallast to stabilize it. There would be four or more ropes going to a single ballast well below the ball. With a 30 foot diameter ball you could have two good floors and extra storage space. Should be enough for a family. This is probably about the lowest cost structure with enough space that is still safe on the open ocean.

This is very much like User:Vincecate/GeodesicVessel but with no stability from the shape of the structure. This really needs a hanging ballast.

Internal

The geodesic shape should mean you don't need as much, or maybe any, internal bracing. This can open up the inside space and make it cheaper to build.

Materials

If we could make a form for concrete or plastic this could be really cheap. In Anguilla they make forms for poring cisterns where the two sides of the form are connected together by pieces of metal which stay in the concrete. There is a way these are released from the form so the form can be taken off. I think a similar thing could be done to make a 30 foot ball mold work. If so this could be crazy cheap.

Steel or aluminum plates could be done with triangles making a geodesic shape.

Expendable porch

There would be a small concrete entry building on top. Around this could be a wood porch that people would not stay on during a storm. In Anguilla people build simple wood restaurants right on the edge of the beach and just quickly rebuild them if they are destroyed in a hurricane. The wood could also support solar panels. These would be taken inside before a storm. Would use User:Vincecate/Migration to minimize the chance of storms.

Other

Should be very strong, very stable, very safe, and not very costly for the amount of living space.

Could use small strong glass to make portals to let some light in and let people see out some.

The heavy things like batteries should be at the very bottom of the inside space (say below a flat internal floor).

Requirements Analysis

• Safety
  • As long as the hanging ballast stays on it should stay upright

• Comfort
  • Should have a gentle motion on normal days but significant response to large waves.

• Cost
  • Hard to imagine anything cheaper than this that has this much space and is safe in the open ocean.

• Pretty
  • Sometimes functional things start to look nice after awhile. And not every one can afford pretty houses.

• Modular
  • Can make individual family sized units. Could have cable under a line of these so they floated together if you connected a sea anchor at one end and a large kite at the other. Each module could connect to the big cable at its hanging ballast.

• Cargo
  • Since it floats up and down with waves like a boat, should be reasonable to dock a boat next to it.

• Free Floating
  • Yes, could anchor also.

• Scalable
  • Is small enough for one family. The shape could scale to much larger sizes. Geodesic domes scale well.

• Standards

• Mobile
  • Will move through the water easier than most seastead designs but not as easy as a ship.

• Draft
  • Very shallow draft for a seastead if the hanging ballast is winched up. If the waves were small as you approached a harbor it should be safe to winch up the hanging ballast. Could lower the ballast onto the bottom in the harbor. If the ballast could be split into 4 or more pieces it could be stable like a tension leg structure when parked in shallow water.

Experiments

Used a 36 cm (14.2 inch) diameter buoy with 20 lbs of steel weights. At 1:25 scale this is about a 30 foot sphere. These videos should have been slowed down by a factor of 5 but is really slowed down by a factor of 4.

The first video is with about 4 feet of rope in waves that are a few inches (6 inches simulates 12.5 feet) <youtube v="u6U8tc7wp2s" />

The video below is with the 20 lbs of weight tied close below the ball, in big waves. The biggest waves could be simulating 50 foot waves, which is bigger than I expect to ever see if we use migration.

<youtube v="8Ad1lzixLfg" />

The video below is with about 25 feet of rope between the ball and the 20 lbs, in the same big waves as the above video.

<youtube v="HqZY7LYdLHk" />

Full Scale Ball House in Plastic

I think it would be reasonable to make a 30 foot ball out of HDPE plastic. If this has "carbon black" in it the sun won't hurt it. I am thinking that if the plastic was 1 inch thick it would be plenty strong enough. A ball is a strong shape as the sides sort of have arch type support in both directions. Think of how strong an egg is when you try to squeeze it in your hand.

The density of HDPE plastic is just under that of water. I think this plastic is about $1/lb. So a 30 foot ball that was 1 inch thick might weigh about 15,000 lbs and cost about $15,000. This would be a very low cost seastead.

You could have an inner and outer mold connected by bolts to hold the right spacing between the molds. After pouring you take out the bolts and the molds come apart in sections. Then you plug the holes in the ball with HDPE plugs (fusion weld these in).

Another possibility is related to how they wind on the plastic for large corrugated plastic pipe. We could go around and around making a ball instead of a pipe. Maybe we put on a two inch wide strip of plastic each time we go around. Might take a machine most of a day to make a ball but this is not bad.

My favorite way is to have a big ball rotomold out of aluminum. This aluminum ball would be mounted on some wheels so it could be rolled in different directions. Imagine a truck upside down with the ball on the 4 wheels. If the truck turns left and right the ball will be rolled in different directions (don't think I would really use a truck, probably 3 or 4 wheels with 1 or 2 that can turn and electric motor on one or more). If we heat up the mold, put in the HDPE pellets, and roll the mold while it cools down we can have a big plastic ball when it is done. This "rotomolding" is how most kayaks are made. Then the mold would have to come apart in sections so we could get the plastic ball out.

Looking to see how large a plastic ball I can find I see a 90 inch ball.