How Many Balloons Does it Take to Fly Your House?

Wednesday, 21 November 2012 | by Pat's Picks

So yesterday, we featured a story on Pat’s Picks about a man named Jonathan Trappe, who used 215 helium balloons to lift a 3,727-pound house in New Mexico this weekend, and go for a two-hour flight. Inspired by the movie “Up,” Trappe’s trip did some inspiring of its own. 

The folks at Movoto Real Estate contacted us after reading about Trappe’s feat to say they had created a calculator so that anyone can enter their home size and see how many balloons it would take to send their house into the sky. Very cool. You can also see how many balloons it would take to make some famous buildings take flight. The White House? 2,976,470,588 balloons. The Playboy Mansion? 500,799,999 balloons.

You can check out the balloon-house calculator here. Scroll down for VIDEO of Trappe’s journey.