There are quite a few rotating
buildings in the world, houses for people who want their
view to follow the sun. Maybe they're built as an
architect's dream house, maybe as an engineering challenge, or sometimes to give the
best angles for solar power. Over the years, I have asked to
film in a few of those houses, but I've always been turned down. They're private homes.
But this one, near San Diego, California,
is now on sale. The real estate agent
got in touch and asked if I wanted
to have a look around. To be clear,
this is not an advert. They're not paying me. But I just wasn't going
to turn this down. Because there are two things
I want to find out. First of all, how on earth
does the plumbing work? And second, if this is
someone's dream house, and it is, then why are they
selling it? - My wife and I decided we're
going to build a house. Just so happened, this lot went
on the market that same day. We happened to see the sign, we bought it. I'm trying to figure out
what to build. I said, you know,
why not a round house? That way, more rooms
will have more view. And my wife said, fine. Then I thought, some rooms still
have to look at the mountain. So I said,
why don't we rotate it? To my surprise,
she said, fine! And I thought, crap, I've got to
figure out how to do that! So I started to figure out
how to actually build something that would rotate, so
every room would have every view. - Yes, of course I asked if I could
flip the switch and control the rotation. - Go up to a thousand. Good. That's it. - It's very strange to push a button
and then have the world start to rotate around you.
- That's right! - That's lovely. - My wife and I started
construction in 2000. It took a good two years
to get to the point where we had a structure. We did hire some people and
had them working here, and I found that they would
go home at four o'clock and I would be here 'til seven
fixing what they had done, because they're used to building square
and this was round. The fella at San Diego County
would go over our plans and he says, "I just
want to tell you, "you're building something that's
way stronger than it needs to be. "No way you can rotate that much
mass and and have it work." So I said, "do you care
if it rotates?" He says, "hell, I don't care
if it rotates". And I said, "well then can we
just agree to disagree "and you let me go ahead
and build the damn thing?" And he said "all right". In doing all the calculations, I came up with needing a
five-horsepower motor, so I put in
a five-horsepower motor. Have you ever driven your car
in fifth gear at 25mph? It goes like that, and that's
how the house was moving. Cut it down to a one-and-a-half
horsepower motor. It goes through a 25:1
reduction transmission, a 71:1 torque hub that drives
the two 16-inch diameter wheels. We can turn the
house in 45 minutes. You can go to bed to the sunset, and wake up to the sunrise
in the same bed. You have guests over, during dinner,
we'll turn the house so that everybody at the dinner table
gets to see the sunset. - In a lot of rotating buildings,
it's only part of the floor that rotates. the things that require plumbing,
like the kitchen and bathroom, don't move at all. But here, the sinks and toilets
and electrical sockets all rotate as part of the house, and all the explanations I can find
seem to hand-wave the details. They just say that there's a
central non-rotating core that handles the pipes. For electricity, there are
off-the-shelf components that can deal with rotation. - There's a thing called a slip ring. Which is a very standard
piece of equipment. Just like a merry-go-round. A merry-go-round goes around
and around and around, and it doesn't have to go backwards. Same thing here.
It happens to be a fancy one, 16 brushes that go around a
copper piece about that big, and they ride on the copper
and that is your connection. - For telephone and internet, there's
also an off-the-shelf component. A mercury slip ring, a sealed connector
with a small pool of mercury, conductive liquid metal,
in the center. Both sides can rotate. They just stay connected to the liquid. But that's not the difficult part. I can understand having one connection
going through the middle, for water or wastewater or gas. They can just sit on a
central pipe and swivel. But how can you have all three
going through the same central hub? The topology doesn't work.
They can't all occupy the exact center. But if they're offset,
then as the house rotates, surely the lengths of the pipes
and cables has to change? Or if there's slack, surely
they'll get twisted. Turns out Al has a very clever
solution to that. - Obviously you don't want to mix the gas, the gray water,
the sewer, the drinking water. So I designed a slip ring
for those services. Big piece of steel,
about that big around. This is fixed. We grooved it, it's about a 3" by 3" groove
all the way around. Top groove is sewer.
The next groove is gray water. The next groove is drinking water.
The bottom groove is gas. And there are holes drilled
through this from the sewer, from the gray water and so forth, They're all separate holes
that come out the bottom. Then there's a piece that
comes down the outside. This piece rotates with the house. You have a sewer line that comes down
and connects to the outer piece, and then you have gray water,
then you have drinking water, then you have gas. There are seals inbetween
each of these grooves. They're all alarmed. There's a seal, a sensor ring,
and a seal. A seal, a sensor ring,
and a seal, so forth for all of them. You would have to have two seals
and two sensors fail before you had any mixture of fluids The seals are good for 75 years, so I don't think we're gonna have a problem! - Yes, I had to commission
some graphics to explain this. It's really clever
and I did not understand it until Al explained it to me. It's like four intersecting funnels. - The total maintenance, once a year,
is to lube the bearings. We have a young man who has
done it several times. It's done in an hour. - Which brings me to the
other big question I had. After designing and constructing
this place, after 20 years of living here, why sell it? = I've had 18 heart procedures. My wife is in perfect health. The odds of me outliving her
are zero. She was born and raised in Coronado. We're moving back to Coronado. Because this is a complex house,
even though I think it's simple! For her to try and teach somebody else
how to run everything and do everything would be difficult
if something happened to me. So we're just kind of jumping ahead. And Coronado's a pretty nice place to go. - Will this place sell quickly? I don't know.
I'm not a real estate agent, but I certainly hope that
there'll be people who want to live somewhere
with this view in a home that's this different.
Smooth move on the realtor's part for inviting him, he can say it's not an ad. But it pretty clearly is in a way! lol
This is Tom's second video shot in San Diego. A month ago he posted a video on UC San Diego's shake table.
$5.3m - https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/4903-Mount-Helix-Dr-La-Mesa-CA-91941/17035571_zpid/?mmlb=g,1
Two of my worlds collided
My Aunt and Uncle are neighbors with them. Nice people
Such a cool house, I've always admired it on the drive up to Mt. Helix and growing up in La Mesa.
Who’s Tom Scott?