AIRPLANE CONVERTED to Functional HOME for Protection from ENVIRONMENTAL DISASTERS

Bruce Campbell decided to take an old Boeing 727-200 jetliner and turn it into his home. When he was young he didn't want a mortgage. While he could have purchased a home and had children and a  mortgage like most people do, he was happy enough living in a very humble and very inexpensive mobile home and saved money and invested. His intention was to wait until he could buy a home with cash so that he would never be tied down to the shackles of debt.

Aerospace technology seemed like a wonderful option to him. Airplanes retire at the rate of about three per day, and according to Bruce the majority of these are flown to death camps and generally promptly executed and promptly shredded. The reason? Once the engines are removed, the vessel itself loses all its value. It becomes a liability that needs to be promptly disposed of. In Bruce’s opinion, this is a terrible waste of great engineering, which is why he decided to turn one of these decommissioned planes into his home.

The aircraft did not land on his property, of course. It had to be moved there from a site close to the Hillsboro Airport. Wayne Griffin house movers and Swanson Trucking managed to move the aircraft from the staging site next to the Hillsborough Airport through this path cut into the forest up to this site. 

Bruce opted to make a support structure that utilized the plane’s landing gears as suspension for the living space. The idea is to enable the aircraft to dance freely in an earthquake. For Bruce, this preexisting base in the plane’s suspension is one of it’s greatest strengths. After an earthquake, newscasters never say, "Oh gosh it's such a shame all the aircraft at the airport were badly damaged and there's so many vehicles which are shaken and damaged." That never happens. They ride it out. No damage occurs unless something falls onto them.

Bruce decided to continue using the existing service door that was traditionally used to give the plane water, but he expanded its functionality by adding an electricity connection as well and a telephone connection, although this phone line does seem a bit superfluous to him in a cell phone era. The water he uses is natural spring water that he gets on site. There's one sewer connection for both lavatories onboard, and then there's a large 4-inch round connector. A gray water drain mast just drains out onto the ground. 

Bruce’s air stairs are able to retract and extend but not through the native mechanism at this time. He hoped to be able to restore that mechanism but it was badly damaged by the salvage company, and so the components were removed. He’s been able to reacquire the components in this case via the salvage companies. They were kind enough to replace those after they had a discussion, they just need to be reinstalled.

The shower that Bruce has onboard is admittedly a crude solution. As it is with many big projects, he managed to make something that worked, and once it was functional it became a much lower priority than other projects he has on board, but for now, it works for him. This aircraft is equipped with three lavs. The toilets are only functional in the two aft lavs though, with the forward toilet being unfunctional.

The aft galley is filled with all kinds of industrial or construction related material at the moment. In the course of the front landing gear support structure fabrication he’s trying to keep as much mass aft as he can to keep the plane balanced on it’s foundation. At some point, this space will evolve into either a laundry room or for some other purpose, or maybe a little kitchen. He doesn’t have any filled plans for it yet, but he’s decided to let evolution take its course.

Bruce decided to install a transparent acrylic floor in the plane. While it is way heavier than anything that Boeing would use in a fully functioning aircraft, it provides Bruce and his guest an amazing view of all the intricate components that allowed the plane to function. It was something that he just had. 

Bruce thinks that more people should consider repurposing decommissioned planes. If not as a permanent dwelling, then possibly as emergency shelters in the case of natural disaster. They’re built to withstand immense pressure and be watertight, so in the case of something like a tsunami, they could be the perfect solution for protecting individuals that would otherwise perish in such disasters. For him, the idea seems like a no brainer.

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