Friday, December 24, 2010

Cell Tower House

A coworker of mine has a very interesting idea: A house built upon a series of cellular towers. He's experienced with such technology, and knows it comes in various grades, and the strongest grades come with the ability to carry hundreds of tons up hundreds of feet. Perch a small house on four of them. This house is accessible by winch-elevator, which all cell phone towers have because the equipment can weigh over 150 pounds, and no human being is willing to carry that much up what amount to a ladder, by hand.
Slightly over one hundred feet in the air seems like a manifestly insane place to build a house, but there are a lot of good reasons for building it there. For one, it tends to have a good strong wind. Open the windows of this house in the summer, and a cool breeze banishes the excess heat. In the winter, keep it sealed up tight and the sun will pleasantly warm the complex.
For another, security. Cover the support legs in solar panels, and climbing the legs is now impossible. Only the winch elevator can get you in and out, and that you can key so that it only works in your presence (perhaps you have to enter a password to unlock it, or perhaps you need a physical key.) Burgle a house 100 feet in the air? Pffft. Burglers would move on to easier to enter structures. It's also safe in inclement weather: build it strong enough to endure a hurricane, and it's literally the best place in town in case of flooding.
Quality enginering is the key. It needs to start with an excellent base, one well-fit to stand strong and immobile in the local earth. It needs to be built of reasonably high tension materials that won't break when hit with 100MPH winds. It needs to be able to lift 400kg. (Let's say up to 200kg of people, about 3 or 4, and 200kg of cargo, like groceries, furniture, etc.)
For best results, it would also have batteries and pumps, so it could be relatively self sufficient.

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