A blow-up sphere is giving new meaning to living in a bubble.
The CasaBubble is an inflatable plastic sphere with a wood floor that lets you sleep under the stars, but with the comforts of being indoors. It’s essentially an upscale tent that’s either partly or entirely transparent, so you can commune with nature without annoyances like rain, mosquitoes and pollen.
The CasaBubble works a little like those blow-up decorations that pop up in front yards during holiday seasons. A fan keeps the bubble inflated while also maintaining a flow of fresh air and preventing moisture buildup. An airlock vestibule lets occupants come and go without deflating the bubble.
The bubble takes about 50 minutes to set up, including 20 minutes’ inflation time, said Frederic Richard, the furniture maker who teamed up with fellow French designer Pierre-Stephane Dumas to develop the concept and take it to market.
The idea is to put you close to nature in a comfortable way. But it’s so much more, Richard said.
“When people see the pictures, they like the bubble. … But when they are in it, they are crazy about it,” he said.
Bubble rooms range from about 11 feet to 26 feet in diameter, but the larger sizes are intended mostly for events. The most common size for individuals’ use is 13 feet, Richard said.
The CasaBubbles also come in several configurations, ranging from the CristalBubble, a simple transparent globe, to the Grand Lodge, a series of spherical rooms.
Opaque bubbles can be used for private areas such as dressing rooms and bathrooms, and you can even get a bubble that unzips from its base so you can bring in a hot tub or large piece of furniture that won’t fit through the airlock door.
It’s also possible to join bubbles together to create your own arrangement.
Deflated, an 11-foot bubble weighs 33 pounds and fits inside a bag that’s roughly 40 to 45 inches long and 15 to 20 inches in diameter - small enough to fit into a car’s trunk or back seat and store in a garage, Richard said. The 13-foot bubble weighs 110 pounds, but the bag isn’t much bigger, he said. The separate blower weighs 33 to40 pounds.
Often people use them as outdoor bedrooms or guest quarters, Richard said, but they have also been used as TV rooms, playrooms and offices. Some bed and breakfasts are adding them as a way of drawing lodgers who want to spend the night surrounded by nature, and the bubbles can be rented for purposes such as business meetings, VIP lounges and weddings.
Richard thinks the bubbles’ compact, portable nature and simple setup also give them potential as temporary housing for people left homeless by disasters.
The bubbles are durable enough for long-term use, he said. And with individual bubbles priced from $7,000 to $12,000 for the 11- and 13-foot sizes, Richard said it’s possible to create a living space fairly inexpensively, with minimal environmental impact.
The basic bubble is made of a PVC that resists fire and ultraviolet rays. Although the fan helps warm air escape, the company recommends setting up the bubble in a shady spot to keep it from heating inside like a greenhouse, Richard said. It also sells canopies designed to shield the bubble if shade isn’t available.
Bubbles are also available for use in very hot and cold areas, Richard said. One is made of thermoplastic polyurethane, which can withstand low temperatures. The other is made of Sunblock, a PVC-coated fabric that deflects sunlight to keep the inside temperature comfortable in hot climates.
The company that makes the bubbles also sells electrical systems using solar cells or batteries, as well as a fuel cell system that it says can run the fan for three months on only 2 ½ gallons of methanol.
Want to stay in your bubble for longer than a few hours? You can equip it with a dry toilet, an outdoor sink and a shower that uses a portable heater to warm water from a garden hose, Richard said.
More information on Casa-Bubbles is at casabubble.com.
HomeStyle, Pages 40 on 04/05/2014