inflatable

A brief overview

The concept: (provided by one mister Mark McMurray) was simple enough. A large inflatable room in which movies would be shown via a portable projection unit. In other words a blow up movie theater.

The plans: a large inner skeleton made up of connected air bladder being filled via one large air pump.

Materials: 2,000 square feet of black plastic, two irons, one projection unit, one large work fan one white tarp and other odds and ends.

We chipped in to buy the plastic and drop cloth, mark provided the irons and projector along with the sound system, and I provided the air pump, work fan and laptop. (because Mark crashed his the night before haha) Alina did the lions share of the math, thank God. And we all took turns welding the plastic together using the irons on a piece of aluminum foil over the plastic. (thanks Bill and Kathy for showing us that trick that might have taken some time to figure out) We started it all off by welding the tubes together that would make up the inner skeleton of the structure testing each ones strength as we went. Once completed we, in this case Mark and Juston, glued and ducktaped the tubes together. They found out the the glue was easier to apply and with the tape just as strong as the welds. Next we skinned the structure. This consisted of measuring and cutting sheets of plastic and gluing them onto the inflated skeleton, a lot easier said than done this took all Sunday and most of the night. The whole thing worked great once we patched large holes the structure was ridged and self supporting. That is until we took it outside. Once in the wind, as we feared, the thin plastic was no match for even a slight gusts of wind and would fold to the ground. We figured out the solution to this issue would be could solve to problems. If we were to cut a hole into the side of the building and attach a large powerful fan via a plastic shroud to the structure this would give inner support to the building while circulating air in the otherwise hot and stagnant structure.

The Big Day: windy, cold in the shade and hot in the sun, at least for a large black building. We picked out a spot on the grass where sitting would not be an issue and erected our building. It went up fine and seemed to be working until the wind blew. Even with a combination of supporting air systems the plastic still lacked the structural integrity needed to be free standing in wind. So like good little boy scouts we tied thin, light rope to the four corners and stacked the structure down. Next we staked the building itself down using tent spikes. This gave resistance to the structure during wind and virtually eliminated collapsing.

All in all the ideas used to construct the building and the techniques applied were successful, (this is the part I cared most about) and the crowd had a mixer of responses ranging from mild interest to simple indirection. But no one thought it was stupid or hated it, still most people were put off by the stupid street preaching anti-Christ so what can you say?