The Free Spirit Sphere - inspiration for the relocatable home of the future

The new prototype is named Eryn, and "is about a month away from being ready to hang in the trees" according to Tom. "With almost twice the volume of Eve, everything is bigger and there's now a loft bed above the galley and room enough to sleep four people," says Tom. "She also has three more windows."

One of the issues in the design of the spheres is the balance between window space and insulation. "The spheres are insulated with 50mm fibreglass with a foil covering, and the current amount of window space on the prototype seems about ideal," says Tom.

"When it's freezing outside, as in zero degrees centrigrade, a 750Welectric heater will keep a sphere warm running around two-thirds of the time.

Future improvements planned by Tom for the spheres include a washroom/shower/sauna sphere complete with its own effluent treatment system. "It will produce only clean water and compos," says Tom, who sees such a unit "serving a whole colony of spheres on a remote setting."

One of Tom's goals is to "produce 10 spheres and hang them all in a large area of old growth forest as a spiritual retreat for myself and whoever else is interested."

Pricing and availability Tom expects the first spheres to be ready for sale around mid-year.

"Initially, they will be the fibreglass 3.2 metre version with five windows and I expect to sell an unfinished shell for about US$5000 and the finished fibreglass units for about US$25000," he said.

"A wooden 3.2 metre version will cost about US$100,000 depending on the finishing. The smaller wooden version would be around US$70,000. I can't tell for sure until I get a few made, so the pricing may vary once we get the production process happening. So far I'm casting a lot of door and window hardware in bronze so its very time-consuming but beautiful.

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