It would have been much cooler if you'd included a picture of the stack of masonite inverted so we could see the actual topology. Otherwise, pretty awesome.
An excellent point. I finished the masonite cutting around midnight on Sunday, the garage where I did the cutting was too dark for a good picture, and I wanted to see if it was going to work.
It looks like the platform rests on the edges of the masonite. I wonder if it will leave depressions in the hardwood floors underneath? Assuming they don't own the place, their security deposit may help pay for the proper fix.
For better or for worse, we do own the place. I've thought that I might add a single flat sheet of masonite under the contours as protection, but that would involve another trip to the store and pulling the whole thing apart again, so maybe not.
Very clever approach. But my big concern is that the floor is not level to begin with. If it's because the wood flooring was laid poorly, then fine. However, if it's because the floor structure itself is bowing down due to the weight, then I would be very concerned. Hope it's just a cosmetic deficiency and not structural defect.
From what I can tell (I'm the owner of the house), the first 6 feet of the floor were built slanted. A friend of mine with some contracting expertise has suggested that the room was likely a porch that was later closed in; such a slant would be typical for an exterior floor to shed rain. The flooring also changes slightly in how it's nailed down around the 6 foot mark, suggesting that the underlayment might change there too.
This reminds me of the tale about the US spending millions of dollars to build a pen that would work in zero gravity. After it was made, it was noted the Russians simply used pencils!
The parallel here is to get a chair without wheels. I find all these calculations interesting as a geek but in terms of the efficiency of the task, "fail" :)
I am familiar with this "chair without wheels" technology you mention. The slope is steep enough that the tilt is still annoying, but a chair with legs of unequal length might have solved that.
The efficiency was, however, very close to 100%. You're just measuring the wrong thing.
