How To Live Underwater: A Nevada Family's Bubble Fort

Would you rather live far up in the trees? Or deep underwater?

A Nevada family of scuba divers have built the ultimate childhood getaway: the Needham family's "Bubble Room" is an underwater fort that sits at the bottom of a lake in the Sierras. The room is an air-filled pocket, made with vinyl and anchored down by an octagonal framework of metal pipe.

Hard to imagine? Watch below:

Boing Boing interviews creator Jordan Needham on the building process:

"The ring (octagonal framework) is attached at three spots with stainless steel cable to three giant rocks, and we wrapped the cable around the bottom of the rocks and secured it back to itself with cable clamps. The ring is galvanized steel with 1/4 inch wall thickness. I also coated it inside and out with 'sand' colored Rustoleum.

The ring, itself, is now a semi permanent fixture of the lake and has been down there for about three years now.

To make the rest, we draped a piece of netting over a small dome tent and threaded a piece of climbing webbing through the bottom of it. We then attached loops of parachute cord to the webbing that were long enough to wrap around the ring and hook to a little nub welded every six inches along the top of the ring.

The dome is vinyl from the local fabric store. We switched from plastic because the plastic was kind of 'cloudy"' and the vinyl is optically clear. When The Bubble Room is not in use we take the net and vinyl with us and it is just a metal ring sitting on the lake bed. It takes one person about 15 minutes to attach the net and vinyl and fill it with air..." (Read more).