Half a croissant, on a plate, with a sign in front of it saying '50c'
h a l f b a k e r y
Veni, vedi, fish velocipede

idea: add, search, annotate, link, view, overview, recent, by name, random

meta: news, help, about, links, report a problem

account: browse anonymously, or get an account and write.

user:
pass:
register,


                         

Three-four-five caravan

Place a bed diagonally in a caravan to minimise its size
  (+1, -2)
(+1, -2)
  [vote for,
against]

The reason this is a caravan or trailer is that it would be movable. This is more about minimising the size of a dwelling.

The furniture in this living room is deliberately not parallel to the walls as it makes it seem more spacious and provides storage space for our clutter. On the other hand, the contents of every shed and caravan i've seen is rectilinearly arranged. This is sensible in a way, because it maximises use of the room, but it also means that tall people have less space if they lie down in them, for example. They could, however, be smaller.

Imagine a caravan or mobile home whose diagonal is two metres long. Considering this as the hypotenuse of a three-four-five triangle means this need only have an interior sixteen by twelve decimetres. If this is realised as a padded floor which can be used as a mattress, the minimum floor space required for this home could be less than two square metres.

However, this is still not the minimum possible size of dwelling for someone two metres in height, because the mattress could stretch between opposite vertices. This reduces the size of the interior to something like eight and a half decimetres height and width and thirteen in length. I admit to being confused about this though - it sounds wrong.

Clearly it would not be practical to sleep in a bed sloping from top to bottom. Therefore, the dwelling could be stored flat on the ground but jacked up at night for sleeping purposes so that the bed would be in a horizontal position stretching across the interior, allowing it to be parked or otherwise stored in a smaller external space. Also, the mattress itself, along with many other of the facilities, such as those for washing and cooking, could fold away into the walls, ceiling and floor to save room.

This room is about three hundred and sixty centimetres horizontally in each direction and two hundred and seventy centimetres high, which is enough for about two dozen such capsules to be stored. By contrast, only nine ordinary rectilinear capsules two by one by one metres could be stored in the same space.

It also occurs to me rather vaguely that this diagonal method of storage could be applied to other items within the room, so that as the appropriate facility is used, the capsule is tilted at a different angle.

Should it be necessary to tilt the capsule/caravan/shed/whatever for use, a hole can be dug out of the soil, chiselled out of the rock or the vertex can be immersed in water, dug into the sand or propped up between branches, buried in silt, whatever.

nineteenthly, Mar 28 2013

Please log in.
If you're not logged in, you can see what this page looks like, but you will not be able to add anything.
Short name, e.g., Bob's Coffee
Destination URL. E.g., https://www.coffee.com/
Description (displayed with the short name and URL.)






       Sounds like sleeping in the V-berth of a sailboat.
csea, Mar 28 2013
  

       Been there, done that. Good times on the water.
normzone, Mar 29 2013
  

       I've just realised i haven't accounted for head space. I also want there to be a triangular telly, or rather display, in the opposite corner. Toblerhome kinda thing, you know?
nineteenthly, Mar 29 2013
  

       Living on a small yacht also provides the rotation around all axes up to 90 degrees, though not usually on demand.
pocmloc, Mar 29 2013
  

       //I've just realised i haven't accounted for head space   

       Procrustes had a solution to that.
not_morrison_rm, Mar 29 2013
  

       True, maybe this was his bakeage.
nineteenthly, Mar 29 2013
  

       // eight and a half decimetres height and width and thirteen in length. I admit to being confused about this though - it sounds wrong. //   

       It is. If the floor is 0.85m x 1.3m, then the diagonal on the floor is 1.55 m. To fit a 2m person the structure would need to be at least 1.26m high (assuming a very pointy head and feet to fit into the corners). Maybe you meant 13x13x8 not 13x8x8 decimeters.
scad mientist, Mar 29 2013
  

       The solution, as with so many things caravan- related, is to bore a small hole through the outer skin, the insulation, and the inner lining of the caravan. Flammable liquid can then be poured in, solving the problem definitively.
MaxwellBuchanan, Mar 29 2013
  

       As noted in my Trapezoidal Bed post, the head doesn't need as much splaying region as the legs. However the legs are pivoted at the hips. Long story short, having a pointy head and foot (the bed not the occupant) should work fine.   

       If you're going to tilt the caravan anyway, you might as well simply nail the bed (of whatever shape) to the ceiling. This has the added advantage of being immediately able to find (or be found by) anything that you've put down somewhere but can't quite remember where.   

       At which point I have to ask if you're absolutely wedded to "rectilinear" and "caravan". A sphere with everything fastened to the inner surface would make an interesting house, situated on a property featuring shallow trenches dug to match the traffic pattern arcs inside the sphere... or plunked on top of a bebearinged base, snowglobe style.
FlyingToaster, Mar 29 2013
  

       Hmm, just something like wide, short tubes, with removable wheels, caravan park has matching radius concrete plinths, with a water pump.   

       Remove wheels, place the Tube-O-Karavan into the plinth. Everything is attached to the inner sides of the tube and to get somewhere else in the caravan just walk in that direction and the tube will turn. Do not ask me how the toilet, or bacon frying in the pan will be dealt with.
not_morrison_rm, Mar 30 2013
  

       The thing i'm wedded to is, well, [grayure], but metaphorically speaking it's the dodecahedron but that has flaws, as explored incessantly on various deleted ideas of mine on here. Concerning spheres, they would be relatively well insulated by their shape but wouldn't tesselate well unless they were of various sizes. It would maybe be practical to pack bits away as a kind of froth around the main sphere.
nineteenthly, Mar 30 2013
  

       You could do the transparent inner sphere as living area, an outer sphere as a hard outer covering, the two separated by transparent smaller storage spheres to provide the rollerbearing-ness.   

       A kind of air-lock double door in the inner sphere allows access to the storage spheres, one at a time, so the interior doesn't get flooded with them.   

       Would keep children out of trouble on holiday as they try to navigate to the storage sphere with chocolate in it.
not_morrison_rm, Apr 01 2013
  


 

back: main index

business  computer  culture  fashion  food  halfbakery  home  other  product  public  science  sport  vehicle