[Discuss] Open Source Ecological Housing

Wed Jun 29 21:32:04 UTC 2016

That really is amazing! Living in the ocean is a long time dream, but I
guess I'll have to make do with Missouri's lakes :) Do you know if
permits/build codes are similar for house boats?

On Wed, Jun 29, 2016 at 4:22 PM, Andrew Quitmeyer <andy at comingle.io> wrote:

> Not to derail too much on floating buildings, but also this project is
> AMAZING: http://www.svseeker.com/wp/?v=7516fd43adaa
>
> Doug Jackson is building a huge 75 foot steel boat for living on and
> letting scientists do research on, and he documents the whole thing (and he
> builds it in Tulsa!)
>
>
> __
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Andrew Quitmeyer - PhD
> Founder / Designer / Documentarian
> www.comingle.io
>
> On Wed, Jun 29, 2016 at 4:43 PM, Catarina Mota <catarina at openmaterials.org
> > wrote:
>
>>
>>> Sure, and I don't pretend to be all that good at marketing copy, I've
>>> just been studying it lately because I realized I wasn't any good at all. I
>>> think I am pretty good at recognizing when a builder is having a hard time
>>> switching to marketing because I have a lot of subjective experience with
>>> that.
>>>
>>
>> I agree with what you said. My instinct was also to put the buildings and
>> campaign scope (what it's funding) at the top, but kickstarter told us to
>> move it down... Anyway, I'm just a nerd and don't know the first thing
>> about marketing :D
>>
>>
>>> That get-in-then-build-out approach is something I'm extremely
>>> interested in. It's counter intuitive to most people. Typically, the
>>> options are to buy what everyone else is buying or do it totally on your
>>> own. If you pick the former, then you need to get financing, and banks only
>>> finance large mortgages. If you do it yourself, you're probably limited to
>>> a microhouse. I think there's a strong case to be made for the intermediate
>>> approach where, because of modular and open source standards, you can spend
>>> what would have been your down payment building a small house, and then
>>> spend what would have been your yearly mortgage payments expanding it. Or
>>> not. That isn't an option with traditional building techniques and
>>> communities, but it very well might be with the new stuff. You could tie it
>>> in to current events. There's probably something in the pitch that
>>> millenials and retirees need a house that's as cheap as a car.
>>>
>>
>> Yes, that is it exactly! This project was born out of our need for a
>> "get-in-then-build-out" house - which no one else seemed to be able to
>> provide. So, we were just "scratching our own itch" (as Raymond puts it)
>> and then realized this make make sense for others as well.
>>
>>
>>>
>>> I wonder if you can deconstruct modular houses with the same transaction
>>> costs as constructing them. How much can you recover? Do you get the
>>> original components back if you start pulling out nails and screws?
>>>
>>
>> We're always changing things around here and did quite a bit of
>> deconstruction. The take from that is that you can use pretty much all the
>> lumber - even entire modules, without taking them apart - and about 75% of
>> the fasteners. But taking things apart and then putting them back together
>> is a lot of work. And you can't salvage the foundation, or the compressed
>> earth block walls, or any buried pipes (well, you could, but it would suck
>> to dig them up). So it's doable - if you need to - but not something I'd
>> like to do every year :)
>>
>>
>>>
>>>
>>>>
>>>> A couple interesting links about this:
>>>>
>>>> http://www.businessinsider.com/housing-supply-crisis-is-looming-2016-3
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> https://www.ted.com/talks/alejandro_aravena_my_architectural_philosophy_bring_the_community_into_the_process?language=en
>>>>
>>>> On Wed, Jun 29, 2016 at 2:51 PM, Emilio Velis <contacto at emiliovelis.com
>>>> > wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> So I have this project I'm interested in making happen here in El
>>>>> Salvador and am getting a lot of people involved to fund it and make it
>>>>> happen. Very much worth it.
>>>>>
>>>>> I'll stay on the loop and keep you posted soon! Thanks for sharing!
>>>>>
>>>>> On 29 June 2016 at 13:42, Matt Maier <blueback09 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> Here are thoughts as they occur to me:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I feel like you should lead with this stuff.
>>>>>> http://openbuildinginstitute.org/buildings/
>>>>>> It's easy to get excited about the technical details you had to get
>>>>>> working to make the project functional, but customers aren't going to care
>>>>>> until they want to live there. So tell them stories about how nice it is to
>>>>>> live there.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I'm interested in the infrastructure necessary to get a serious open
>>>>>> source hardware project working, but not many other people are. There are a
>>>>>> lot more people interested in cheap, efficient microhouses, and a whole lot
>>>>>> more people interested in green tech, and even more interested in small
>>>>>> living spaces.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Don't use a screenshot of the kickstarter video with "play" on it as
>>>>>> a link to kickstarter. If it looks like a button to start a video it should
>>>>>> start an embedded video.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> To be honest, I'm not entirely sure what the kickstarter campaign is
>>>>>> funding. You already build the house, and you don't seem to be trying to
>>>>>> build a bunch more houses, like for a community in Africa or something. I
>>>>>> feel like maybe "you're funding a source of all the knowledge and skills
>>>>>> you need to design and build a house yourself" is the primary value
>>>>>> proposition, but it's kind of buried. Oh, okay, there it is. The list of
>>>>>> what the campaign is funding is a quick set of bullet points at the end of
>>>>>> the video. It's also buried in the about/roadmap and contribute/support us
>>>>>> on kickstarter sections of the website. I'm pretty sure I saw it somewhere
>>>>>> on the kickstarter page too. It seems like it should be a lot easier to
>>>>>> find out exactly what is being funded.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Do you think the open source documentation will be detailed enough
>>>>>> for someone to build everything without paying to learn how? The
>>>>>> implication from the description is that people are expected to offset the
>>>>>> cost of the build by charging people for the knowledge they acquire during
>>>>>> the build. I'd be interested in following how general contractors and
>>>>>> builders incorporate this as an option in their business.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Also, in general, it feels like you could summarize and cut the text
>>>>>> down by at least 50%. The diagrams take up a lot of space but don't
>>>>>> necessarily illuminate much. The "we offer/you can" diagram takes a couple
>>>>>> minutes to understand (the fonts aren't helping).
>>>>>>
>>>>>> The video's already shot, but as I parse out what's being funded it
>>>>>> struck me that you might not want to characterize your location as "in the
>>>>>> middle of nowhere" when a big part of the plan is to build a facility
>>>>>> people are supposed to travel to and use. Maybe something like "the perfect
>>>>>> place to live efficiently" or "the opposite of NYC" would be better
>>>>>> marketing. Along similar lines, it seems unnecessarily misleading to
>>>>>> compare the cost of your microhouse to an average $360K house. It took
>>>>>> about 30 seconds of googling to find that the costs you're estimating are
>>>>>> right in line with microhouses
>>>>>> https://padtinyhouses.com/how-much-does-a-tiny-house-cost/ and I
>>>>>> doubt you're poaching anyone who was planning to build a brand new 2000
>>>>>> square foot McMansion to switch to building a microhouse. Even if you do
>>>>>> get some of them, they'll compare yours to other microhouses. Oh man, and
>>>>>> you buried something towards the end to the effect that you're crowdfunding
>>>>>> part of the costs and bootstrapping the rest; that should be near the top!
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On Wed, Jun 29, 2016 at 8:53 PM, Catarina Mota <
>>>>>> catarinamfmota at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Dear fellow open sourcerers,
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> We just launched a new project that has been many years in the
>>>>>>> making. It's called the Open Building Institute and it's an open source
>>>>>>> initiative to make affordable eco-housing accessible to everyone.
>>>>>>> The project is based on collaborative rapid-builds, a modular system, and
>>>>>>> open source machines.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Check it out: http://openbuildinginstitute.org
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Any feedback and collaborations will be greatly appreciated.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Cheers,
>>>>>>> Catarina
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>>> discuss mailing list
>>>>>>> discuss at lists.oshwa.org
>>>>>>> http://lists.oshwa.org/listinfo/discuss
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>> discuss mailing list
>>>>>> discuss at lists.oshwa.org
>>>>>> http://lists.oshwa.org/listinfo/discuss
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> discuss mailing list
>>>>> discuss at lists.oshwa.org
>>>>> http://lists.oshwa.org/listinfo/discuss
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> discuss mailing list
>>>> discuss at lists.oshwa.org
>>>> http://lists.oshwa.org/listinfo/discuss
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> discuss mailing list
>>> discuss at lists.oshwa.org
>>> http://lists.oshwa.org/listinfo/discuss
>>>
>>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> discuss mailing list
>> discuss at lists.oshwa.org
>> http://lists.oshwa.org/listinfo/discuss
>>
>>
>
> _______________________________________________
> discuss mailing list
> discuss at lists.oshwa.org
> http://lists.oshwa.org/listinfo/discuss
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.oshwa.org/pipermail/discuss/attachments/20160629/2e9dffe3/attachment-0001.html>