[HN Gopher] WikiHouse - Open source, modular, wood based, zero c...
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WikiHouse - Open source, modular, wood based, zero carbon housing
Author : xor99
Score : 435 points
Date : 2022-09-07 09:50 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.wikihouse.cc)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.wikihouse.cc)
| greenie_beans wrote:
| how is this zero carbon? logging is very carbon intensive. and,
| i'm not an expert, but from what i've read as a layperson,
| doesn't removing trees cause a loss of the carbon that's stored
| in the soil?
| cookieswumchorr wrote:
| the wood will usually be replanted, if they do it properly. But
| the basement it stands on- it still cement.
| X6S1x6Okd1st wrote:
| Is it? The first study I found showed some extra carbon
| storage, but the 95 CI includes 0
|
| https://www.researchgate.net/publication/339956316_The_lifec...
| greenie_beans wrote:
| that's interesting, i'll take a deeper look later. if only i
| had bookmarked all the studies i've come across. i have an
| interest in woodland so i've been curious to learn about this
| and my (layperson) takeway is that logging adds a lot of
| carbon to the atmosphere. also, the soil stores a lot of
| carbon, and when you log trees, you degrade the soil and
| cause loss of stored carbon. (but i'm far from a scientist,
| just waiting for somebody who knows what they're talking
| about to chime in.)
| X6S1x6Okd1st wrote:
| Looking further it seems like there's a lot of logging
| practices that are worse than performing no action
| (assuming that the biomass provided doesn't offset
| something else, e.g. prevents coal from being burnt)
| Ndymium wrote:
| Isn't the majority of carbon in a tree coming from the air, not
| soil? I could imagine it removes nutrients though.
| dang wrote:
| Related:
|
| _Facit Homes, Wikihouse, and the Plywood Frame_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27666320 - June 2021 (33
| comments)
|
| _WikiHouse - Open source buildings and interiors for self-build_
| - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13856917 - March 2017 (53
| comments)
|
| _The WikiHouse chassis system [pdf]_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13029982 - Nov 2016 (1
| comment)
|
| _WikiHouse 's DIY kits are the open-source way to build a house_
| - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5768030 - May 2013 (3
| comments)
| jbu wrote:
| One of these went up near me. Pretty cool.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfTkW87vmUQ
| oblio wrote:
| I don't see any toilets, kitchen, electrical stuff in that
| time-lapse. It looks more like a shed than a house :-)
| skylanh wrote:
| The resources I could find that reference this indicate that
| they needed 30k PS to finish the interior--the same page
| indicates they were fund-raising 190k PS, and the charity that
| operates on about ~214k PS a year.
|
| Do you have any inductions on the cost of this building?
| goatcode wrote:
| You forgot "ridiculously expensive." I got excited by this
| project several years ago, but like most of its sort: it's
| completely inaccessible for what it is.
| troymc wrote:
| It's open source; I wonder if competition and innovation will
| bring the cost down over time.
|
| One obvious way to do that is to build one, or a few, giant
| centralized plants that pump out a zillion of these each year,
| i.e. economies of scale. Like Honda Civic cars or Lego blocks
| (which also are machined with tight tolerances).
|
| Yes, I know that the founders _want_ these to be manufactured
| in a decentralized way, all over the world, but that 's not how
| economies of scale work. Systems that _can_ be run
| decentralized (e.g. email, Bitcoin mining) often end up
| becoming centralized anyway.
| peatmoss wrote:
| Framing out a house with construction lumber is "open source"
| too. Vastly simpler and cheaper than lock-together blocks
| made out of relatively complex materials like sheet goods. In
| a pinch, you can fell trees and process them with hand tools
| using methods refined over many, many generations.
|
| In other words, stick construction has been public domain for
| so long that it would be impossible to even acknowledge its
| creator and significant contributors.
| debacle wrote:
| Stick based construction is already incredibly time, resource,
| and labor efficient.
|
| SIPs are neat (https://www.sips.org/what-are-sips), but even they
| are an added cost.
|
| Dirt-based construction is an intriguing idea, but generally you
| are trading materials cost (which is already relatively low) for
| quite a bit of labor cost.
|
| A system that cheaply allows for enduring dirt-based construction
| would be an interesting advancement, but I'm not sure how
| universal that system would be.
| mellavora wrote:
| > cheaply allows for enduring dirt-based construction would be
| an interesting advancement,
|
| you wouldn't mean clay brick, would you? I see some of the
| advantages, but want to be pendantic about calling a 10K old
| technology an 'advancement'
| debacle wrote:
| Unfired clay brick production is incredibly labor intensive,
| and generally you'll want to produce those bricks on-site
| because they don't transport well.
| upsidesinclude wrote:
| This is basically available, but no one offers the service.
|
| https://www.opensourceecology.org/
|
| There is just too much labor involved for the material savings
| unless you are in the third world.
|
| Bagged earth construction is similarly cost effective given a
| cheap labor force.
| debacle wrote:
| Bagged earth construction is great, however you are adding a
| TON of labor. So much so that in a developed country you
| might as well just use brick construction because it will be
| cheaper.
|
| In addition, in my area I would have to have my dirt amended
| because we have very sandy soil, but I don't know by how much
| because a few feet down that sandy soil turns to clay.
|
| They have some mobile dirt brick factory machines, but those
| seem to be home-built prototypes for the most part.
| jkestner wrote:
| This is a neat project from a design/engineering viewpoint, but
| it seems it's addressing the 'problem' of "houses look hard to
| make; how can it look like something I can do?" Same reason I'm
| skeptical of 3D printed houses.
|
| We had looked into SIPs for our relatively fancy house, but
| budget won out. There are lots of neat building solutions that
| cost too much. If you think labor costs are high, wait til you
| try to find someone who will learn a new system.
|
| Construction cost is not the reason that housing supply is
| tight--but engineers don't have as much fun fighting for better
| zoning policy.
| int0x2e wrote:
| If I was designing this, I would only have a small set of "SKUs"
| with minimal customization, and then go all out on economies of
| scale.
|
| If 10% of houses switched to a single "system" with a small set
| of SKUs, such that everything is optmized for manufacturing,
| shipping and assembly - you could reduce the cost of construction
| significantly. This is basically an extension of the IKEA model
| for the house itself instead of just the furniture.
| phantomathkg wrote:
| Genuine question, other than the cover hero image title, where
| does it explain how come this is zero carbon?
| maxehmookau wrote:
| So we used WikiHouse construction to build a community centre in
| our local park. You can see a timelapse here:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfTkW87vmUQ
|
| Took 4 people 6 days to build it. Slotted together like lego, it
| was quite something to watch.
| corwinstephen wrote:
| The physical world is headed in the same direction as the
| internet. In 20 years, the built environment is going to be
| entirely comprised of identical materials and trademarked by a
| tiny handful of monopoly companies.
| shafyy wrote:
| The use of "Carbon negative" really grinds my gears. Carbon
| negative would mean that by building this house, you actually
| remove carbon from the atmosphere. No, you don't remove CO2 from
| the atmosphere by buliding this house.
|
| Yes, trees remove carbon, but now you've just cut them down and
| released a bunch of carbon in that process (plus all the CO2 you
| emit, you know, building the actual house).
|
| Edit: Ok, looking more through their website I came across this:
| https://www.wikihouse.cc/product They say that the upfront carbon
| cost of building a WikiHouse is - 17T CO2, compared to a normal
| house of + 30T CO2. This is so fucking misleading, I've just lost
| all respect for the makers of this. I think it's a great project,
| but once you start bullshitting like this, you can get the hell
| out.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| "carbon negative" isn't BS: since the CO2 already sequestered
| in the wood remains there (mostly), while the trees cut down
| for that wood are replanted eventually capturing more CO2, thus
| ultimately removing more CO2 from the atmosphere than was
| released through the sourcing of the wood. Now considering
| everything involved in the building process, the house as a
| whole is probably not "carbon negative" -- and perhaps that's
| your objection -- but when it comes to the primary material
| (wood vs concrete/steel) it _can be_ carbon negative.
| shafyy wrote:
| There are few wrong assumptions with your statement:
|
| 1) The wood the house is built with will not be there
| forever, some day the house will be torn down and the wood
| burned or rotten
|
| 2) Cutting down trees and planting new ones is not a good way
| of carbon sequestration. Otherwise, why not cut down all
| trees and just plant new ones? Bam, carbon negative, climate
| problem solved.
|
| People need to understand that trees should not be seen as a
| renewable resource in the context of climate change. Not for
| building, not for burning as fuel.
| [deleted]
| marcus_holmes wrote:
| The carbon sequestered by the trees is now in the building
| materials. The space the trees were in will now have more trees
| grown in them.
|
| The carbon from the trees is now not in the atmosphere, it's in
| the wood components, and won't be in the atmosphere until the
| wood components reach end of life and are
| burned/rotted/whatever.
|
| So yes, carbon has been removed from the atmosphere. I don't
| understand the objection.
| falcolas wrote:
| By "sequestering" the carbon in building materials, we're
| merely kicking the can down the road by 20-30 years. At which
| point the house is torn down and goes off to the dump to rot
| away as normal.
|
| And we're already doing this for centuries - using wood for
| making buildings - so we're merely continuing the status quo,
| not magically putting more carbon away suddenly.
| tejohnso wrote:
| > The carbon sequestered by the trees is now in the building
| materials.
|
| If X amount of carbon was in the trees, X amount of carbon is
| now in the building materials (at best). There's no further
| removal of carbon from the atmosphere by this alone. And all
| of the future carbon the trees would have sequestered is now
| not going to be sequestered by those trees. So more likely
| carbon positive than negative.
|
| > The space the trees were in will now have more trees grown
| in them.
|
| That's an assumption. And even if it were true, those trees
| would take years to begin to sequester the same amount of
| carbon that the previously existing trees did. And even then,
| it's not obvious that those new trees would sequester more
| carbon than the previous trees would have had they been
| allowed to continue growing.
|
| Plus if you're going to say that building with blocks is
| carbon negative, you're going to have to talk about how those
| trees get turned into blocks, and how the overall process
| including that, is somehow carbon negative.
| quixoticelixer- wrote:
| > That's an assumption. And even if it were true, those
| trees would take years to begin to sequester the same
| amount of carbon that the previously existing trees did.
| And even then, it's not obvious that those new trees would
| sequester more carbon than the previous trees would have
| had they been allowed to continue growing.
|
| It's a very safe assumption
| nordsieck wrote:
| > And even if it were true, those trees would take years to
| begin to sequester the same amount of carbon that the
| previously existing trees did.
|
| It sounds like you might be making a stock vs flow error
| here. Or I could be misunderstanding you.
|
| > And even then, it's not obvious that those new trees
| would sequester more carbon than the previous trees would
| have had they been allowed to continue growing.
|
| 1. Trees slow as they grow (after a certain point).
|
| 2. Commercial tree farms exist to grow trees. If they
| weren't growing trees for consumption, something else would
| be done with that land.
| shafyy wrote:
| > _Commercial tree farms exist to grow trees. If they
| weren 't growing trees for consumption, something else
| would be done with that land_
|
| Yes, for example let the natural vegetation take over,
| increase biodiversity, and sequester more carbon thanks
| to the increased biodiversity and better soil than
| fucking tree farms.
| quixoticelixer- wrote:
| - Plantations aren't worse for the soil than native
| vegetation most of the time. Sometimes they can be better
| for it.
|
| - A lot of the time plantations are planted on less
| productive farmland. - Not all plantations will naturally
| regenerate quickly back to native vegetation.
|
| - Those trees were planted for a reason and a lot of
| plantations are planted on degraded farmland or
| scrubland.
| c22 wrote:
| My understanding is that older trees have accelerated
| carbon uptake (because of more surface area to do
| photosynthesis), but younger trees can be grown more
| closely together, increasing the total efficiency. It
| does seem be to unclear which approach is ultimately "
| _better_ ".
| musingsole wrote:
| > The carbon sequestered by the trees is now in the building
| materials
|
| You're ignoring material waste. This process doesn't consume
| 100% of the tree; only a portion of the tree's carbon is
| sequestered into the building. The rest is rotting.
|
| > The space the trees were in will now have more trees grown
| in them.
|
| Trees are renewable, but it's not quite "copy&paste".
| Further, the harvesting of the trees was certain to be carbon
| intensive.
|
| So, on the whole, you can trust this process IS NOT CARBON
| NEGATIVE.
|
| What it may be is LESS CARBON INTENSIVE than a traditional
| process. They are VERY FAR from crossing the neutral line and
| yet are trying to claim carbon negative? That's pretty brash.
|
| Does the objection make more sense now?
| WastingMyTime89 wrote:
| Despite the all caps, your objections still don't make that
| much sense.
|
| > You're ignoring material waste. This process doesn't
| consume 100% of the tree; only a portion of the tree's
| carbon is sequestered into the building. The rest is
| rotting.
|
| It's ply. Apart from the root system, it's quite close to
| 100% indeed.
|
| > Trees are renewable, but it's not quite "copy&paste".
| Further, the harvesting of the trees was certain to be
| carbon intensive.
|
| Tree harvesting is pretty much fine. Transport is what
| pollutes the most here. The new growing trees are carbon
| sinks. It's not a question of renewability. It's just that
| you used to have CO2 in the air and now it's a house.
| Processing will mostly use electricity so it depends of how
| your local electricity is produced of course.
|
| > They are VERY FAR from crossing the neutral line
|
| They are probably not very far. It's not an heavily
| mechanised project. Assembly is mostly done by hand.
| Considering the amount they sequester, being neutral is not
| that far fetched.
| musingsole wrote:
| > It's just that you used to have CO2 in the air and now
| it's a house.
|
| I disagree on your accounting (largely because the house
| is torn down one day and further a CNC throws wood dust
| everywhere and this project requires one front and
| center), but none of that matters. Carbon negative is a
| strong claim that requires strong evidence. Of which,
| none has been offered.
| shafyy wrote:
| Well put. If they just would say "less carbon intensive
| than using concrete or bricks", I would buy it. But carbon
| negative is just a straight up lie.
| woeh wrote:
| While I very much doubt if the entire process is going to
| be carbon negative, "straight up lie" is very strongly
| worded. In essence, by building wooden structures you can
| store CO2 in urban environments that are currently
| dominated by concrete. To be sure, to be carbon negative
| the whole process needs proper thought; the trees for the
| wood of course needs to be replanted and the energy used
| in milling, construction and transportation need to be
| sourced durable, I get that.
|
| But I mean, if we want anything to be carbon negative we
| need to capture carbon from the atmosphere and put it
| _somewhere_ ; e.g. reclaiming land for forests or putting
| carbon back into the ground where we got it from, but
| putting carbon in constructions as part of the solution,
| why not? For dealing with climate change, the important
| part is getting it out of the atmosphere.
| shafyy wrote:
| The problem is that people believe this type of
| greenwashing (as can be seen by other comments on this
| thread). Building a house is never going to be carbon
| negative. Carbon neutral at best, but even that is going
| to be almost impossible to achieve.
| s8s8discourse wrote:
| > "The rest is rotting"
|
| Is it, though? Because operations I've been to use every
| last available ounce of the tree. Trunk and limbs are sawn,
| small limbs, branches, bark, and offcuts are ground for
| biomass heating. Yes, it's burnt, but releasing no more
| carbon than it captured in its lifecycle and to provide a
| tangible end result that would otherwise be achieved with
| fossil fuels.
|
| Root stumps rot, yes, but providing a breeding ground for
| insects and hence birds and small mammals and hence
| predators. They also fix soil beneficial bacteria and
| fungi, and having spent all their energy breaking up the
| soil and then breaking down they prepare the best soil bed
| for the new tree to take its place and sequester more
| carbon.
|
| It's not the perfect process, by any means, but wood as a
| building material is infinitely more sustainable than
| concrete, gypsum and stone.
| musingsole wrote:
| > It's not the perfect process, by any means, but wood as
| a building material is infinitely more sustainable than
| concrete, gypsum and stone.
|
| Cool, show me the part where any of that means this
| company has a right to claim carbon negative?
|
| Onus isn't on me here.
| kitd wrote:
| _They say that the upfront carbon cost of building a WikiHouse
| is - 17T CO2, compared to a normal house of + 30T CO2. This is
| so fucking misleading, I 've just lost all respect for the
| makers of this._
|
| I'm not sure what "upfront" means here, but it makes sense if
| talking about overall net CO2 usage. The amount of CO2 in the
| atmosphere after building would be 17T less than before the
| tree started growing. Ie the tree absorbs 17T more during its
| growth than is emitted during harvesting, transport and
| construction. Whereas an equivalent brick building puts 30T
| more into the atmosphere than the (unharvested) tree absorbs.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| I wouldn't outright call it bullshit, but the cost and effort
| involved make it only a marginal improvement over traditional
| buildings. Plus it doesn't scale as good as the US based 2x4
| wood system, which can be mass-produced / prefabricated much
| easier.
| rcMgD2BwE72F wrote:
| >I wouldn't outright call it bullshit
|
| But it is.
| matthewmacleod wrote:
| You've just asserted that this is bullshit without explaining
| why. Could you explain why you feel this is misleading?
| forgetfreeman wrote:
| I am also deeply skeptical of the net-negative claim, mostly
| because of the outsized role plywood appears to play in the
| building productions demonstrated. There are several energy-
| intensive steps required to manufacture plywood that are not
| present with standard lumber production. Additionally,
| transport overhead is higher due to the comparative rarity of
| the specialized mills used to create plywood. Unfortunately I
| haven't been able to find any kind of real numbers comparing
| the carbon footprint of lumber vs plywood to demonstrate
| exactly how much more carbon it takes to manufacture plywood
| vs lumber.
| falcolas wrote:
| FWIW, plywood (OSB, chip board, etc) are already heavily
| used in house building. Floors, roofs, sheathing, etc.
| jeltz wrote:
| I am also skeptical but I would not call the claim
| bullshit. Building from wood could in theory be carbon
| negative. Unclear though if this process is.
|
| Another thing worth considering is that building small
| houses uses a lot of land, land which might have had
| forests. That needs to be considered too.
| shafyy wrote:
| I've explained why pretty clearly. Trees are not a renewable
| resource in the context of climate change. They take dozens
| of years to grow, they are part of an biodiverse ecosystem,
| and just cutting down forests has a much bigger effect on the
| ecosystem and its carbon sequestration capacity than the tree
| alone. And don't get me started with tree farms.
|
| This carbon negative claim taken to the extreme would mean,
| that we should just cut down all trees and plant new ones. I
| think you can see why this is ridiculous?
| kgran wrote:
| Says zero-carbon, proceeds to show single-family detached homes
| in a suburban setting, mostly accessible by car only.
|
| P.S. The concrete foundations look far from zero-carbon.
| [deleted]
| MontyCarloHall wrote:
| Put solar panels on the roof and an electric car in the
| driveway.
|
| The main strike against suburban lifestyles today is that
| they're energy intensive and thus carbon-heavy. There is
| nothing wrong with a energy intensive suburban life if that
| energy is carbon neutral.
|
| (And yes, as other posters point out, there are some additional
| environmental externalities associated with suburban versus
| urban lifestyles. It's not clear to me how severe these
| externalities are, and thus whether they are worth the tradeoff
| of increased quality of life for the many people who love
| living in the suburbs. As an extreme example, living a pre-
| industrial lifestyle would be much more environmentally
| friendly, but it isn't remotely worth the quality of life
| tradeoff.)
| tremon wrote:
| The main strike against suburban lifestyles is that the
| maintenance cost per square meter (water, sewage, electrics,
| roads, communications) is much higher than the area generates
| in taxes.
| MontyCarloHall wrote:
| That's a separate issue from suburbs' environmental impact.
| I'm all for raising property taxes in suburbs to make their
| residents pay their fair share for infrastructure.
| starkd wrote:
| A lot of people don't like to live in cities.
| nemo44x wrote:
| You have to remember a lot of people on this site are
| young people without families that prioritize social
| lives. They haven't related yet that people with kids and
| careers, etc. are simply not interested in what cities
| have to offer and that the quality of life in a city is
| terrible if you have a family compared to what you can
| get outside of a city in a nice town. Unless you're
| really rich and can get a huge apartment or condo and can
| afford to pay for parking or have a driver, etc.
|
| Just look at NYC to find the typical pattern: Young
| person lives with multiple people in an area like the
| Lower East Side or Williamsburg (yay social life!), then
| begins to settle down in a place like Park Slope (just
| married!) and has a kid (dedicated to urban living) and
| then another kid comes along and/or the reality of urban
| living (the schools are awful, it's cramped and
| expensive, the city offers you nearly nothing since you
| don't go out like you used to) and the brownstone is sold
| for a tidy profit and they're off to the NYC suburbs to
| get more space and a better quality of life to raise a
| family in. The city is a short commute away still.
| criddell wrote:
| I've heard that before and believe it to be true, but then
| it makes me wonder why cities are often so eager to annex
| suburban developments? If a suburb isn't paying it's fair
| share, why don't cities raise taxes or un-annex them? (is
| there a word for un-annex?)
| adrianN wrote:
| https://www.strongtowns.org/the-growth-ponzi-scheme/
| Cities need to grow new developments to pay for the
| existing developments.
| criddell wrote:
| Presumably when the infrastructure needs to be replaced
| local governments will finance with bonds (which I think
| makes a lot of sense). If the bonds are paid for by
| suburban taxes, do you think the suburbs will get to be
| as expensive as the city or maybe even more expensive?
|
| The Strong Towns ideology is attractive (especially for
| northern US cities), but I think if self driving cars
| come into existence, the ideas might not get very far in
| most places. Self driving cars are going to encourage
| sprawl like no other force ever has. I know I'd move
| further out if I had a self-driving car.
| [deleted]
| adrianN wrote:
| Suburbia also encroaches on wildlife habitat, reduces ground
| water replenishment, requires expensive infrastructure, and
| is material (not just energy) intensive.
| kgran wrote:
| Electric cars are as zero-carbon as the cost-equivalent space
| of a freshly paved asphalt concrete highway or parking space.
| If not more than that due to the more special materials
| required to make them.
|
| Also note that, due to much heavier weight of electric cars,
| asphalt concrete surfaces will be damaged a lot faster. The
| relationship between vehicle weight and its damage to the
| road surface is exponential, not linear.
| oblio wrote:
| You still need to drive places, which is the least efficient
| method of mass transportation. An entire infrastructure needs
| to be built and maintained for cars, which is super wasteful
| and in almost every country is pushing everyone into debt
| that is just punted into the future.
|
| Sure, convenient for individuals but absolutely not
| sustainable for society, nor the planet. Even with electric
| cars and green energy.
|
| The insane cost of cars:
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ztHZj6QNlkM
|
| The hard truth is that if we don't want to abandon our
| comfortable modern lifestyles, 80-90% of us will have to live
| in dense cities and use mass transportation 95% of the time.
| mrcartmeneses wrote:
| Which is great. Living in cities in Europe is fantastic.
| Even the towns are great in some countries with great rail
| and tram connections
| nemo44x wrote:
| Who wants to use a train/tram to haul kids and their
| things around? Do you really think it's possible to haul
| an infant, a toddler, and a 4 year-old around and all
| their things using a train that will only get you so
| close and now you have to walk another 4 blocks? Who
| wants to do that?
|
| A home with space and a nice sized yard and an automobile
| to travel around in is great. It's nice to have a local
| train too to get into the adjacent metropolis, etc.
| starkd wrote:
| He just proposed a housing solution. Now you are
| complaining because he hasn't produced a transportation
| solution as well?
| oblio wrote:
| Those are tied.
|
| It's impossible to service low density housing
| efficiently.
| goodpoint wrote:
| That's not the point. Proposing a housing solution that
| encourage unsustainable transportation is not
| sustainable.
| nlittlepoole wrote:
| I agree with you but I think one thing that might help
| people fear this change less is reiterating that the
| density necessary isn't Manhattan or Downtown Chicago.
| There are a lot of ways to make an efficient urban area
| without being a massive megalopolis. Neighborhoods like
| Park Slope in Brooklyn or Sunset in SF are good examples.
| Multifamily housing doesn't have to mean high rises.
|
| People also don't have to live in what we think of as
| cities at all. Rural living is fine if people live closer
| together in those areas. Such that they live in walkable
| towns that don't require driving and can be easily
| connected to other towns and cities via a bus or train.
| Europe is much better at this but you see vestiges in New
| England. It's just nobody should really be living beyond
| walking or biking distance of core services (transport,
| shopping, etc). The benefit for those who love nature is
| more untampered natural beauty in the surrounding areas. If
| anyone has ever been to a place like Banff it's lovely when
| fine right.
| oblio wrote:
| Someone posted here that the maximum density with this
| type of housing is 3 stories, 75 dwellings per hectare,
| so about 7500 dwellings per square kilometer. At 3
| stories, that has to be at least 6 people per dwelling,
| so about 45k people per square kilometer. Let's cut that
| to 5k people per square kilometer to account for
| infrastructure, shops, schools, etc, it still seems
| reasonable.
|
| We don't even need more than that on average, we don't
| need Hong Kongs everywhere. "Brownstones" will do :-)
| mrcartmeneses wrote:
| Other than the air pollution from your tyres, the pollution
| and murder from getting the materials for your car batteries
| and the taxes that poorer residents in the inner cities have
| to pay to subsidise the high cost of services and low tax
| intake from the suburbs
| leecarraher wrote:
| my guess is they will buy carbon offsets to cover manufacturing
| energy and transportation costs, a system which has its own
| shortcomings and critiques.
| ElijahLynn wrote:
| MMM, I might just have to build a home office away from the house
| with WikiHouse! I've been dreaming of something like this!
| skylanh wrote:
| I see.
|
| Another wood-house project created by civil engineering or
| building material science graduates (Leeds Beckett
| University)--similar to the last one.
|
| Build costs similar to brick (ouch!), requires a specific CNC
| operator to build panels (supply chain ouch!), and creates an
| integrated house (ouch! to any renovations using conventional
| materials; ouch! to system longevity).
|
| I hate these as they're basically the results of a couple of
| graduate students operating under a innovation grant.
|
| The practical results of this are that someone is going to find a
| local CNC operator (within 320km based on the study), find out
| the costs of buying 300 sheets of quality 7-layer plywood and
| running a custom project with the CNC operator, find a local
| engineer willing to sign off on the project (for insurance,
| mortgage, and to maintain the 10 year defect free period), and
| then have to find a local labour contractor willing to use their
| building materials as the structure.
|
| After all that legwork, they're going to go with a traditional
| building contractor.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| SamBam wrote:
| > requires a specific CNC operator to build panels (supply
| chain ouch!)
|
| Unsure what this means. The CNC files are open source, and
| there are millions of CNC machines in the world. What specific
| CNC operator?
|
| In general, I'd say your comments are valid for a random
| homeowner that decides they want to try this out. If you think
| in terms of a contractor who wanted to start specializing in
| this in their region, it seems quite doable. They could have
| their own engineer that has seen many of these, and a stable
| source of plywood/OSB and access to a CNC shop.
| emilfihlman wrote:
| They mean that it requires a cnc operator, and that it's not
| usually required in building houses, which is a pretty huge
| added cost.
| kitd wrote:
| From which you can subtract the cost of the
| brick/cement/block manufacturer.
| throwaway4aday wrote:
| Wouldn't that be equivalent to the plywood manufacturer?
| This still adds an additional processing step where you
| take a mass produced construction material and make a
| specialized product out of it which you then use to build
| the house instead of just going straight from material to
| construction.
| forgetfreeman wrote:
| I think it may be worth pointing out that this system as
| demonstrated exacerbates the two largest problems contractors
| face: materials costs and sourcing labor.
|
| The specialized manufacturing requirements for modules makes
| sourcing materials from traditional suppliers functionally
| impossible, adds additional (highly specialized)
| manufacturing overhead, and drives up the cost of materials.
|
| The wildly non-standard construction methods mean
| subcontractors will have to train on using the system, and
| projects will start from a functional zero-prior-experience
| knowledge base, which invites a diversity of headaches and
| potential safety issues.
|
| On an unrelated note, insurers are likely to be deeply
| skeptical of unproven construction methods in general, and
| plywood-heavy construction methods in particular given their
| propensity to fail catastrophically from even relatively
| minor moisture-related insults. Insurance premiums are likely
| to reflect that.
| monkeydust wrote:
| So this happened. I looked at wikihouse many years ago for a
| project.
|
| I really liked the idea and team but (at least at the time) it
| was still very new.
|
| Too much risk to take on for individual homeowner and it was
| cheaper for me to get a local contractor who had experience in
| developing what I was after.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| I agree.
|
| Folks love to knock on traditional "stick built" buildings. I
| don't get it. I live in a frame house built in 1927. It's not
| going anywhere so long as the owners are stewards of the
| property.
|
| Watching similar houses get built, it's a fairly efficient
| process. I don't think the costs of homes are really driven by
| framing.
|
| Super conservative code requirements like electric socket
| requirements (my kitchen remodel required the addition of *5
| dedicated circuits with arc fault breakers in most cases), fire
| sprinklers, etc and others drive costs.
|
| A frame house with a thoughtful architecture that incorporates
| passive heating/cooling, etc will cost less, be easier to bike
| and require less fiddling.
| Thlom wrote:
| The plot next to us is being built now, and when they finally
| started erecting the house it took a couple of weeks. They
| spent months with excavators and explosives first. That's
| what you get for building on porous rock I guess.
| ShredKazoo wrote:
| On the other hand, if you're a CNC operator and you already
| have spare capacity, this could allow you to cheaply branch
| into home construction by hiring a few more employees...
| throwaway4aday wrote:
| I think this is overly complicating the process. If you want an
| open source DIY method of building a home, just learn basic
| framing and construction. It's not hard, lots of people have
| built their own homes, you just need some common sense and a
| willingness to learn.
|
| If you want to go all in on modular, wood based, zero carbon
| housing then learn how to build a timber frame house. If you
| really want zero carbon you can use only hand tools and harvest
| your own trees.
|
| Wikihouse seems more for people who want to buy something off the
| shelf, pretty much a kit house. That's not a bad thing since it
| takes a lot of effort to build something as big as a house and
| lots of people don't want to do that. But I don't think this
| should be sold as a solution for DIYers since the existing
| methods already satisfy the listed requirements.
| wizofaus wrote:
| > If you really want zero carbon you can use only hand tools
| and harvest your own trees.
|
| Why on earth can't power tools run off renewables? And even
| hand tools/nails/ bolts etc. have embedded CO2 emissions.
| throwaway4aday wrote:
| They can but can you guarantee it? Hand tools have a much
| smaller footprint compared to the mix of metals and plastic
| that go into power tools. You can buy 100 year old hand tools
| that work just as well as new ones too so they've got the
| whole recycle thing going for them.
| calvinmorrison wrote:
| If you want to see a cool DIY property - the guy behind
| woodgears.ca lived on the property while his dad built a
| retreat/summer camp.
|
| https://woodgears.ca/cottage/index.html
| mavhc wrote:
| The existing methods of building houses are terrible though.
| It's stupidly expensive to edit a house, they're designed and
| built as if it's still 1800.
|
| Why does adding a socket into a wall cost more than $50? Should
| be able to just open the wall panel, plug in an extra cable,
| close panel, done.
| sigstoat wrote:
| > Why does adding a socket into a wall cost more than $50?
| Should be able to just open the wall panel, plug in an extra
| cable, close panel, done.
|
| what are you envisioning? using cheap consumer power cables
| inside of walls, and paying extra to have unused sockets
| hidden away inside of walls for years/decades, just so that
| it's fast to add an outlet?
|
| we use screw terminals inside of the wall because they're
| cheaper and more reliable than the socketed connections. and
| we use heavy gauge cable with thick jackets for safety.
| throwaway4aday wrote:
| It still would in this system, the website states that you
| still need to add "plaster panels" or drywall if you're in
| the US which means everything will be taped, mudded and
| painted.
|
| If you want easily accessible utilities then there are ways
| to build to code where all of that is visible and accessible,
| it just won't be pretty. Aesthetics or utility, pick one.
| benj111 wrote:
| Because people want nice plastered, painted and wallpapered
| walls?
|
| Adding a socket is the easy bit. It's the putting everything
| back to how it was that's hard.
|
| If you want plain panelled walls you could install that now.
| And have your $50 socket. Most people probably don't like
| that tradeoff.
| kderbyma wrote:
| well if they had more easily removable wall panels you
| could still decorate and access the inner wall
| hpkuarg wrote:
| Seems strange that we'd optimize for making modifications
| easier, when such modifications are much fewer and
| farther between than the everyday living that fills the
| time between, during which people value a solid wall with
| no gaps or seams.
|
| Of course, not everyone values the same things to the
| same degree, and a homeowner could cut a 4x8 piece of
| drywall into smaller pieces and have more easily
| removable panels like you're imagining.
| andirk wrote:
| We see the divergence from aesthetics in wood shops, auto
| shops, and other building shops. Moveable panels, exposed
| circuitry/plumbing/gas lines. A home typically hides its
| utility parts behind solid objects (i.e. a wall) that need
| invasive cutting to reach. Even still, an electrician adds an
| outlet in the exact process you mention, but it's a little
| messier and costs $150.
| albrewer wrote:
| I used to work as a framer during the summer when I was going
| to college.
|
| What you're glossing over here is that about 10-15% of the
| timber you buy to frame a site-built house is wasted (ad-hoc
| cuts, bracing, jigs, etc.) and thrown into a dumpster.
|
| If a house is pre-planned, you can use a machine that cuts each
| board to length, and join the ends of each board using basic
| joinery processes that aren't practical when building a site-
| built home. You can pre-fabricate things like trusses and wall
| segments so you (or your workers) aren't driving 100k fasteners
| to fabricate something a robot could build in 1/10th the time.
| sigstoat wrote:
| > If a house is pre-planned, you can use a machine that cuts
| each board to length, and join the ends of each board using
| basic joinery processes that aren't practical when building a
| site-built home. You can pre-fabricate things like trusses
| and wall segments
|
| aren't prefab trusses readily available these days? i feel
| like i've seen plenty of trailers hauling stacks of 10 timber
| trusses down the road.
|
| we've also got prefab homes (not mobile/trailer/whatever
| homes), with modules assembled in factories and brought
| together at the site. unfortunately they seem to carry class
| connotations here in the US.
| kristov wrote:
| A mate of mine used to work in a place that manufactured
| segments of regular wood framed houses. They had painted
| outlines on the floor, so they could cut and assemble 2x4
| frames at great speed. I think you would need to make a
| truly massive number of these before a robot would be more
| cost effective. I also think that 2x4 construction would
| create less waste than parts CNC cut from ply sheet.
| monknomo wrote:
| yeah, prefrab trusses, prefab sip panels, modular houses,
| trailers and prefab houses divided up into rooms that can
| be trailered and joined onsite all exist
| bombcar wrote:
| They exist and they can be designed to take advantage of
| things like making sure each room is designed to use full
| board lengths, no cuts (8 foot stud walls, for example).
| throwaway4aday wrote:
| I'm not sure recouping some of that wastage is worth the
| switch. You wouldn't eliminate all waste since there will
| always be some on site modification. I'd like to see the
| comparison in time spent assembling all of these individual
| segments vs framing a wall with an air gun. The segments look
| a lot more fiddly to me compared to laying out pieces on the
| deck and banging them together with a gun and then just
| standing the wall up. From their guide on the site:
|
| > A typical WALL block weighs around 40-60kg and can
| generally be carried by two people.
|
| They're a little light on detail about how these wall
| segments join and seal to each other so that could be a bunch
| more work. All this is considering you'd be able to get pre-
| manufactured blocks from somewhere, if you had to CNC and
| assemble them yourself then the labor is off the chart.
| kashkhan wrote:
| For envelope (floor, walls roof) key metric is $ per sq ft. Its
| possible to do <$10 per sq ft in most of USA. So for a 100 sq
| ft room it works out to 6 sq ft envelope per sq ft of floor so
| $60 per sq ft of floor area.
|
| for a 500 sq ft studio that works out to $30k.
| simmanian wrote:
| any resource you'd recommend for learning framing and
| construction?
| hpkuarg wrote:
| Larry Haun's book The Very Efficient Carpenter. Comes with
| companion videos that you can find on YouTube, as well.
| throwaway4aday wrote:
| There's tons of material out there, you can buy a book from
| Amazon[0] or watch a bunch of YouTube tutorials[1]. It's best
| to learn by doing though so you could always volunteer[2] or
| take a local course.
|
| [0] https://www.amazon.com/s?k=house+framing&crid=ZT0KPA5JG1E
| Y&s... [1]
| https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=house+framing
| [2] https://www.habitat.org/volunteer/near-you
| throw0101c wrote:
| There are also lots of folks: building their own places
| (search "homesteading"), commercial builders
| documenting/advertising their build process (Perkins
| Builder Brothers is decent), and pointing out small details
| that are easy to miss (Matt Risinger, who has a building
| science lean to things).
| haroldp wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mn4L_aJ1rV4&list=PLRZePj70B4.
| ..
| aaronax wrote:
| https://www.shelterinstitute.com/ (timber framing especially)
| is one that I am aware of from a few sources over time--
| perhaps most notably from YouTube channel Pure Living For
| Life, who failed to finish building their house.
| CobrastanJorji wrote:
| I mostly agree with you, but I like the idea of being able to
| give reasonably smart but unskilled people a bunch of these
| boxes and an Ikea-style "how to assemble this house" and
| telling them to get to work. Seems like it'd scale very well
| for situations where you have a bunch of volunteers and need to
| build several houses but maybe don't have many experienced
| builders around.
| ArtemZ wrote:
| I moved to U.S from a country where there are barely any
| construction regulations and brought log cabin construction
| skills with me. They are useless though because no municipality
| would allow me to do it myself without a contractor and a log
| house won't pass any modern construction codes.
| jaegerpicker wrote:
| I'm not sure where you are located but in Northern New
| England this is very untrue. Maine, New Hampsire, and Vermont
| all have a LARGE number of diy log cabins built. I've stayed
| in several and I'm in the early planning of building a house
| (not log cabin, it's a long house with builtin green
| house/barn sections similar to the long house on the Apple TV
| show home). There are many places in the US that allow you to
| DIY your own home, though the majority are very rural which
| is a MASSIVE benefit IMO.
| t-3 wrote:
| Many areas will have relaxed codes for cabins that are only
| used part-time. The hard thing is that all this stuff is
| state-by-state and locality-by-locality, so you have to dig
| to find lax areas. Louisiana is particularly open for
| residential construction IIRC.
| kderbyma wrote:
| land of the free.....:/
| andirk wrote:
| Free is subjective, and since there are variations of the
| regulations by municipality, you can choose from the
| spectrum of lax laws + dangerous to strict laws + safe.
| Your preferred location, however, may not align with your
| preferred regulations. Or you can do like we do here in
| Berkeley and build whatever you want because your neighbors
| also have illegal additions so they're not gonna squeal.
| ClassicOrgin wrote:
| Very true. Where I live you need a building permit and an
| certified engineer to sign off plans for something as basic
| as a pergola.
| tengbretson wrote:
| This looks neat, but having to submit a structural engineer's
| inspection report before they sell you the materials is absurd.
| cdot2 wrote:
| That seems specific to how mortgages work in the UK
| huetius wrote:
| The responses here are critical --- some useful, some not so
| useful.
|
| I'm happy to see this project and would like to see more like it,
| even if this is not quite ready for show time. The possibility of
| using advances in technology and open source methods to allow
| people to make more stuff for themselves and their communities in
| a way that is efficient and feasible is exciting to me.
| [deleted]
| dagw wrote:
| I guess the real question is does this actually solve a real
| problem people are having? An acquaintance of mine recently
| built a house, and constructing the outer 'shell' was by far
| the quickest and easiest part of the whole process.
| falcolas wrote:
| > does this actually solve a real problem people are having?
|
| And does it solve it at a price point that makes it practical
| in comparison to other high efficiency house building
| technologies?
| huetius wrote:
| Depends what you mean by "this." This exact project is, I
| think, not ready for prime time, as I said in my post. If by
| "this" you mean "ways to make more of our own stuff on a
| smaller scale," I am currently in my fourth month of waiting
| for a proprietary part for my tractor, when if I had an
| economical and legal way to either machine the part myself,
| or have it machined by a competent neighbor, then I wouldn't
| have this problem. In a time when we are experiencing the
| consequences of over-specialized, over-connected, over-
| optimized supply chains, I think that a more fractal, scale-
| invariant, redundant approach to production has real value.
|
| (It also, in general, makes humans feel good to make and then
| use something).
| forgetfreeman wrote:
| Are construction methods the bottleneck though? Habitat For
| Humanity is an excellent example of communities building things
| for themselves and others. What problem do you see systems like
| this solving?
| cuttysnark wrote:
| > Are construction methods the bottleneck though?
|
| Perhaps when compared to this CAD/CNC approach. In the
| traditional stick-built house you need wood and other
| materials, tools of all sorts, and specialized workers who
| know the steps in order. If some critical material hasn't
| been delivered yet, workers have to pivot to a different task
| or simply stop working.
|
| With this other method, 100% of the material is cut/delivered
| to the site, and the workers need only to follow the
| instructions. Their tools are fewer, too--hammers, nails,
| hand-crank lift.
|
| In the future, anyone who likes putting together IKEA
| furniture may consider an exciting new career in home
| construction. I say that half in jest, half in hope.
| forgetfreeman wrote:
| I see how the material presented on the website could lead
| someone who is unfamiliar with construction to the
| impression that this system simplifies the process but that
| is not the case in any meaningful way.
|
| Framing, cladding, and insulating a structure, which is all
| that is represented here, are the simplest, least tool-
| intensive tasks involved. Additionally this style of
| construction can seamlessly cope when a foundation is
| poured a couple inches out of dimension or a few degrees
| off square. By comparison I shudder to think what flavor of
| chaos would kick off on a DIY Ikea house project when the
| assembly team has to cope with similar issues with only
| pre-fab components to draw from.
|
| Standard building methods expect all of the material for
| each phase of construction to be trucked in in one bundle,
| identical to a pre-fabbed system, but with the added
| benefit that if any material is found to be sub-standard,
| or if there are errors with the delivery materials to make
| up the difference can be trivially sourced from any lumber
| yard or big box home improvement store.
|
| Long story short, framing a house isn't particularly
| complicated. Folks that are intimidated by the process
| don't have enough experience in the industry to know first-
| hand that there isn't a single task involved that isn't
| routinely completed by individuals who have little prior
| experience, are high out of their mind, or both.
| design-of-homes wrote:
| My first impressions are favourable. There are contraints though,
| as the design guide acknowledges:
|
| > WikiHouse is intended for buildings of up to 3 storeys. This
| covers 95% of all buildings, and allows gentle density
| neighbourhoods of up to around 75 dwellings per hectare.
|
| > The main constraint on height is not gravity, but wind. In high
| winds, lightweight structures are more prone to slight lateral
| flexing, which is not allowed within most building codes. Further
| structural research and testing is ongoing.
| actually_a_dog wrote:
| I'm kinda curious about this. Under the International Building
| Code, you can build wood frame buildings up to 6 storeys tall
| [0]. Granted, this is not actually wood _frame_ construction,
| but I don 't see why a building built this way would be any
| less structurally sound than a traditionally built wood frame
| building.
|
| ---
|
| [0]: https://seagatemasstimber.com/how-tall-are-tall-wood-
| buildin...
| criddell wrote:
| Maybe it has to do with lack of bracing? When my home was
| being built I noticed lots of metal straps going between
| studs in an X-formation. I wonder if that was to make lots of
| triangles to add rigidity?
| redtexture wrote:
| Yes.
|
| This can also be provided by sheet materials like plywood,
| securely attached, providing diagonal structure preventing
| racking of the frame.
|
| In older houses, sheathed with one inch by eight or ten or
| twelve inch boards, diagonal wood bracing was cut into the
| two by four inch wall studs for diagonal bracing and
| structure.
| quixoticelixer- wrote:
| You can built wood frame buildings much taller. And wood
| framing is stiffer especially if you are using mass timber.
| fareesh wrote:
| How do these hold up in stormy weather?
| nemo44x wrote:
| It's funny you mention it because in the part regarding
| foundations they mention that the foundation for these homes
| not only has to help keep the home up but also stop it from
| flying away.
| throwaway787544 wrote:
| Frame is just a small part of the cost and complexity of building
| a house. Considering you still need the CNC, and expensive
| materials, and a contractor, this doesn't seem like a win.
|
| On the contrary, I'd rather see more open designs for modern
| post-frame homes. They're lighter, cheaper, simpler, faster, and
| provide some design benefits. The only real downside is zoning
| needs to catch up.
| theptip wrote:
| This is cool. The model of distributed local fabrication is one
| that I think we'll see more of in future as automation becomes
| more capable and cheaper.
|
| This seems to fix one of the big problems with pre-fab houses,
| that they are expensive to ship long distances, and therefore
| can't benefit from economy-of-scale centralized manufacturing.
| parkersweb wrote:
| Does anyone know of a similar project for garden offices?
| [deleted]
| turtlebits wrote:
| Tuff sheds (no affiliation) are inexpensive. My 12'x16' cost
| ~$6k a few years ago. Hire a contractor to finish the interior.
| fasteddie31003 wrote:
| Just buy some 2x4's and plywood and start building. It's not that
| hard. Building does not have to be this complicated. The building
| systems and products out today make it incredibly easy and
| (before the ridiculously low interest rates) pretty cheap.
| [deleted]
| LegitShady wrote:
| >Just buy some 2x4's and plywood and start building. It's not
| that hard.
|
| I mean sure, if you live somewhere without building codes,
| don't need a foundation, and don't care how long something
| lasts or how safe it is. Just chuck it together. Just some 2x4s
| and plywood is all you need for a treehouse. Maybe.
| turtlebits wrote:
| The linked project/product does not include foundation, and
| most likely also needs engineering work to pass
| codes/inspection.
|
| Stick framing is cheap and simple- 2x4s are abundant. And you
| can do it yourself solo with minimal tools.
|
| Also, using plywood is way more prone to water issues than
| solid wood.
| LegitShady wrote:
| disclaimer - I work in civil/structural engineering but
| typically much larger structures than houses and mostly
| concrete and wood and haven't done wood design since
| school. the following does not constitute engineering
| advice and should not be relied upon for design or
| construction purposes. This is merely discussion.
|
| I wouldn't build most houses today out of 2x4s, simply
| because its not a big enough insulation cavity for a modern
| home. Stick framing being cheap does not substitute for
| planning. As you say - you need to design a structure and
| that includes hiring an engineer for more than just
| 'passing codes/inspection' but also for structural design
| of your home.
|
| It's unlikely you'll be able to design a roof out of 2x4s
| without making major sacrifices to the design of the house,
| and you're probably not qualified to judge the worst case
| loading in your area or capacity of a 2x4 roof (or else you
| wouldn't even mention 2x4s).
|
| The linked site includes several guides including an
| engineering guide most non engineers would struggle to
| understand. https://www.wikihouse.cc/guides
|
| Plywood is not particularly prone to water issues, and
| isn't used in the same way as solid wood would be. In
| situations where plywood would be having water issues, so
| would solid wood. You might be confusing plywood and OSB.
| Structurally, plywood sheathing is primarily used for shear
| capacity to let structures handle lateral (sideways) loads
| to resist racking, and to have somewhere to attach the
| exterior materials of the structure to.
|
| The linked engineering guide provides structural testing
| numbers of their panels for various capacities that a
| structural engineer understands. Like proper stick framing,
| it requires planning and design, rather than grabbing some
| 2x4s and letting er rip.
| yosito wrote:
| If wood-based housing can be considered "zero carbon", I must be
| confused about the definition of "zero carbon".
| WillAdams wrote:
| I'm still surprised that no one has made a CNC specifically
| designed to be:
|
| - carried on a truck - used while in place on the truck or is
| easily removed from it and then set up - which has an interface
| suited to a job site in terms of setting up a design and cutting
|
| The Shapr3D seems to get some jobsite use, and there is at least
| one digital saw where one plugs in a dimension and the stop moves
| to the correct position for the cut --- the Yeti SmartBench seems
| like it might be a contender in this space, but still not seeing
| the CAD/CAM interface which would make it workable.
|
| Really miss Saltire's SketchRight and FutureWave's SmartSketch
| for quick jobsite sketches.
| dieselgate wrote:
| This isn't my field but I'm assuming there are size/width
| constraints to the "carried on a truck" CNC machine. Of course
| it's possible but the width for a trailerable load is around
| 10' which may be quite limiting for residential structures. At
| that limit prefab units may seem more practical? I find the CNC
| housing idea interesting but similar to EVs (in the past) it
| needs to catch on
| riskable wrote:
| > the width for a trailerable load is around 10'
|
| Ahh but the maximum _height_ is 14 '! Well, on most roads and
| Federal highways anyway (plan your route!).
|
| Also, the maximum trailer width is actually 12' with a
| realistic payload for non-flatbed of around 11'. The maximum
| width that'll fit in the bed in your typical American pickup
| truck is around 5-5.5'.
| leoedin wrote:
| Do sheet materials ever come in larger sizes than 4' x 8'?
| The CNC wouldn't need to be much larger than the largest
| sheet it could cut.
| dieselgate wrote:
| I believe metals can or do - thicker gauge can't be rolled
| up but assume it's oriented vertically for shipping
| aaronax wrote:
| Drywall is commonly available at any home center in 4'x12',
| and available in 4'x16' sizes.
| leoedin wrote:
| OK - but the shorter side is still 4'. The width of a
| truck is unlikely to be an issue there.
| WillAdams wrote:
| Baltic Birch is 5'x5' (but it's more typically used for
| furniture)
| jrgd wrote:
| I remember a friend mentioning a client of his with a cnc
| mounted in a container to work on site (for building projects,
| similar if not wikihouse). Container could go anywhere the
| truck would.
| gertrunde wrote:
| There was a "Grand Designs" episode (UK TV show) where they
| used exactly that.
|
| A bit of search turns up this link: https://www.facit-
| homes.com/post/we-re-back-on-site-manufact...
| riskable wrote:
| This is something I'm _really_ hoping will take off when
| electrified trucks become more common. With an electric truck
| you have an enormous amount of power ready to go for having
| something like a bed-mounted CNC in the back.
|
| The next phase for something like this--to bring more utility--
| is to make a CNC with an automatic feeder and ejector. That way
| you could put a stack of 4x8ft plywood in one side and get
| finished parts out the other end. Presumably at the speed at
| which a worker can take the finished part, install it, and come
| back for the next one.
|
| The first use I'd imagine for something like that would be
| custom crown molding, drywall with electrical and plumbing
| holes pre-cut, perfectly-sized shims and frames for anything
| and everything, turning regular floor boards into snap-lock
| flooring, shelving and cabinetry, and other housing materials
| that _could_ be made on-site if it were not for the complexity
| /detail.
| throwabro515 wrote:
| bardworx wrote:
| Festool bought Shapr and their TS saw sounds like what you're
| describing. Both can be used but that's really finish
| carpentry.
|
| One reason I can think of why they're not used during regular
| carpentry/building a home is the time it takes to setup. It's
| much faster to measure, mark, cut vs setting up a CNC
| equivalent.
| hedgehog wrote:
| This is interesting. The Walter Segal self-build method is
| another approach that aims to use common materials (lumber,
| plywood, insulation) with little cutting so as to reduce labor
| and allow for later disassembly+reuse.
|
| https://theprepared.org/features-feed/segal-method
|
| With many of these less common methods it's more work to show
| safety, code compliance, etc. For example the Segal method
| doesn't really allow for modern levels of air sealing and
| insulation.
| xor99 wrote:
| Seagal's designs are fantastic. His approach is more convincing
| in terms of fab methods/cost and looks a little less
| standardised compared to wikihouse imo.
| hedgehog wrote:
| His approach is pretty well proven in that some of the
| buildings have been standing over 40 years which seems long
| enough to find most of the issues. Insulation/sealing and
| permitting are the two I know about, at least at house scale,
| but If I needed a temporary storage shed it would be a great
| way to build & be able to dismantle later.
| samwillis wrote:
| I really like the concept of this, it's basically a step further
| on from SIPs (structural insulated panels) by having standard
| composable blocks. The things I think are particularly good:
|
| - Standardising on screw pile foundations. Standard concrete
| foundations are often be about 30% of the build cost, with the
| quantity of earth removed and cement used it's a massive part of
| the carbon footprint of a home. For a "light weight" timber
| construction, screw piles are the future.
|
| - Having services recesses and notches built into the panels, and
| there is no need to batten the internal walls for boarding. this
| will increase the speed of construction significantly.
|
| - Being an "Open" standard allows any timber frame or prefab
| construction company to adopt it.
|
| My one concern (I wouldn't go as far as criticism) is that the
| panels have a somewhat complex manufacturing process by having to
| be CNC machined. Realisticly they almost always will be, but I
| would have liked to see the panels designed to be constructed a
| little more simply - you will always have to make changes on
| site.
|
| I wander why they went with ply over OSB, they have similar
| structural properties but OSB can be cheeper.
| kupfer wrote:
| From their FAQs:
|
| >Which material is better, ply or OSB?
|
| >Ply is lighter and generally better structurally but more
| expensive. OSB is cheaper but heavier. With the recent research
| on WikiHouse Skylark we did test both materials, but in terms
| of the full spanning floor beams it's clear ply offers
| advantages in terms of strength but also because it's lighter
| it's easier to move and carry. A hybrid approach is also a
| possibility.
| LegitShady wrote:
| He's talking about the moisture resistance property of
| plywood over OSB. OSB absorbs moisture readily and turns into
| mush.
| forgetfreeman wrote:
| Mold abatement & home restoration contractor here. OSB should
| not be considered code-compliant material, full-stop. Imagine
| your home has been constructed with slabs of sponge that have
| are purpose-engineered to provide optimal growing conditions
| for fungi when moisture is introduced. Now consider that over
| the lifetime of a structure some combination of exterior
| cladding failure, roof leaks, ground moisture issues, and
| plumbing fails are not only likely, but basically guaranteed.
|
| My biggest concern with this system is given this system's
| "tightness" to water vapor (similar to SIPs), all of the same
| issues with mold and related air quality are inherited. If
| structures don't breathe they rot. i
| signaturefish wrote:
| It is indeed a concern, and I suspect that's why they're
| recommending any wikihous project include a full-house MVHR
| system (see About=>Product, the bent arrow near the middle of
| the image map). MVHR is the solution I've settled on for my
| house retrofit project - it should allow the house to breathe
| in a controlled manner, without leaking warm air in winter.
| throw0101c wrote:
| > _OSB should not be considered code-compliant material,
| full-stop._
|
| OSB is a fine air barrier, and most water vapour volume
| happens through air leaks. Vapour diffusion tends to be a
| smaller percentage:
|
| * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXXgjvOJcYI
|
| The main place that vapour concentration really becomes a
| problem is at the highest point of the house (e.g., ridge):
|
| * https://www.buildingscience.com/documents/building-
| science-i...
|
| The main point is to not have your condensing surface on the
| inside of your structure:
|
| * https://www.buildingscience.com/documents/insights/bsi-001-
| t...
|
| Which is why so many jurisdictions are encouraging /
| mandating external insulation. When the sheathing is the
| coldest surface, of course there's going to be condensation,
| but if it's the same temperature as the inside air how would
| moisture accumulate.
|
| > _If structures don 't breathe they rot._
|
| If structures don't _dry_ they rot. There are plenty of of
| <1.0 ACH@50 structures that do not "breathe" that have no
| moisture/rot issues because they take care of water
| mechanically, e.g., ERV/HRV and (whole house) dehumidifiers.
|
| * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CIcrXut_EFA
| forgetfreeman wrote:
| OSB is absolutely a fine air barrier assuming <60% humidity
| at all times. That does not make it a sane choice for
| sheathing/flooring material given the likelihood of
| moisture ingress. Every form of seam sealant known to man
| bites it at some point due to thermal expansion cycles, uv
| damage, etc. and that's assuming perfect installation of
| all layers of the moisture control stack. It isn't even a
| good choice for cabinetry due to it's propensity to devolve
| into Nature Valley Granola when put in proximity to a sink,
| dishwasher, or refrigerator (if a cold water line is part
| of the install).
|
| _In theory_ vapor accumulation is only really problematic
| in the overhead plenum spaces. In actual practice (setting
| aside acute water ingress) 100% of the time moisture
| problems start in the crawl space and then spread to the
| plenum.
|
| Yes absolutely it is possible to design complex
| interlocking systems that at least in theory both provide
| high efficiency sealed construction and control moisture.
| In practice the complexity of these systems is sufficient
| that even top-end contractors frequently run into issues
| that lead to full blown abatement projects. There is also
| the minor issue of what happens if all of these systems
| aren't subjected to aggressive inspection regimes and/or a
| structure goes a significant amount of time unoccupied. The
| one thing all of these super high-efficiency sealed systems
| have in common is they quite literally tear themselves
| apart if neglected or the power gets turned off for any
| meaningful amount of time.
|
| The statement "If structures don't dry they rot" is
| absolutely true, but only in the context of traditional
| lumber products that are comparatively resistant to rot in
| the first place and are capable of weathering swell/shrink
| cycles without falling apart. Highly engineered products
| degrade aggressively just by getting damp in the first
| place as swelling wood fibers break down bonds with the
| adhesive that's holding the material together.
|
| I absolutely stand by my original statement that OSB
| shouldn't be code-compliant and with the exception of
| shitty flat-pack furniture has no business anywhere in a
| home.
| bombcar wrote:
| The reason OSB wins so much is that the average house is
| built to last just about as long as OSB does in normal
| conditions (even _with_ water damage).
|
| Shit is wack yo. Perfectly usable houses are remodeled
| all the time.
| wpietri wrote:
| I appreciate all of your comments here, but let me just
| pause for a moment to appreciate the perfection of the
| name "Nature Valley Granola" for that failure mode.
| That's spot on for texture and appearance. And given the
| crumbly, dry vagueness that is a Nature Valley Granola
| bar, possibly for taste as well.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| All excellent points, and why moisture vapour transmission
| direction/rate must be taken into account during a build. If
| you live somewhere where AC is the primary mode of interior
| conditioning, you will build to where the AC will pull
| moisture in from the structure for removal via the condensate
| line. If you live somewhere not so tropics, you're going to
| build where the moisture is pulled out of the home by the
| natural environment.
|
| Building sciences are both fun and fraught with peril. I'm
| somewhat excited and cautiously optimistic about Boxabl from
| a housing manufacturing perspective.
| turtlebits wrote:
| OSB is fine with a proper WRB, vapor control and venting.
| Things like rainscreen/strapping under siding and roofing go
| a long way of letting your house dry out when water gets in.
| hedgehog wrote:
| Do you see that in modern construction? As long as there is
| adequate insulation and the vapor retarding layer is in the
| right place (per code) the OSB shouldn't ever be more than
| damp for any extended amount of time.
| forgetfreeman wrote:
| I've seen catastrophic moisture damage in every form of
| home construction utilized in North America from the 1850s
| to present day. Anecdotally the most common failure modes
| break down roughly thus:
|
| 1850s-1960s: Termite damage followed by rot. This time
| frame is notable for ready availability of dense, tightly
| grained building materials. Lumber from this time period
| shrugs off all but the most egregious wetting cycles. So
| what happens is high humidity attracts termites which break
| down the structure. This in turn gives rot a plate to
| establish a foothold and spread (slowly).
|
| 1970s-1990s: This period is notable for a steady decline in
| quality of building materials and introduction of first and
| second generation engineered products. First-to-market
| siding products, condensation issues due to the aluminum
| craze in the 80s, and material adhesives edging out toward
| the end of their life expectancy all contribute to problems
| with mold/rot. Looser grained building materials also mean
| that when a problem is present it will quickly spread to
| larger areas of the structure than older materials would
| permit under similar conditions.
|
| 2000-2010: Easily the absolute nadir of home building in
| the US. The industry saw a massive influx of "budget"
| engineered materials, with no substantive changes to code
| to address the deficiencies of these materials. My personal
| favorite from this era include OSB siding that turned into
| a kitchen sponge whenever the paint layer was breached.
|
| 2010-present: same as it ever was. The market is still
| flooded with engineered materials that have a fraction of
| the life expectancy of more traditional materials. Building
| codes have largely caught up with the obvious limitations
| of these materials, however now the biggest issue is as a
| nation we are short two full generations of trained
| craftspeople in the construction industry and as such
| installation errors are rampant. This leads to more and
| bigger issues, bigger abatement projects, and in
| significantly newer homes. Case in point: a pinhole leak in
| a caulk seam on a window surround that resulted in all of
| the structural members surrounding that window, the wall
| cladding, the sill beam, a section of the floor, and
| several joists rotting out in short order. Root cause:
| didn't use plywood. Engineered sheathing acted like an
| enormous sponge both retaining and broadcasting moisture to
| all of the surrounding materials.
|
| So yeah, you're not wrong inasmuch as according to theory
| and per code it is within the realm of possibility to use
| these construction methods and materials successfully. In
| practice, however, the least competent subcontractor on any
| given jobsite presents a hard ceiling to what one can get
| away with. You design a fault-intolerant system that has
| any flavor of complexity to it's installation and odds are
| good someone's going to screw something up. The Achilles
| Heel of modern vapor tight building systems is the fact
| that houses leak. Either through incompetence during the
| initial build or breakdown of materials over time all
| houses leak. Whereas older construction methods would
| tolerate this to varying degrees, newer systems do not.
| wpietri wrote:
| This is fascinating stuff. So what would you do if you
| were building a house today?
| forgetfreeman wrote:
| Assuming I was building in the Southeast where I live,
| that someone handed me a blank check, and without
| drilling down to specific products?
|
| - Hardwood timber framing
|
| - Stone or masonry curtain wall from the foundation to
| the bottom of the window sills.
|
| - Fully sealed crawlspace with inline registers
| broadcasting conditioned air into the space
|
| - Insulate the curtain wall instead of the interstitial
| space between floor joists
|
| - Standard soffit-to-peak venting in the attic space
|
| - Two layers of plywood subfloor separated by a layer of
| tar paper
|
| - Double layered sheetrock on all interior walls
|
| - Wall-to-wall sheet vinyl floor treatments in all of the
| rooms where water is a thing.
|
| - 3/4" hardwood flooring everywhere water isn't a thing.
|
| - Passive/active solar combo meal on the roof to offset
| any efficiency losses incurred by "loose" construction
| methods
|
| - Temperature & humidity sensors in the crawl space &
| plenum
|
| - Wood window frames and sills. Modern plastic window
| frames and sills are _excellent_ at hiding a problem
| until it 's turned into a $50k project (see also:
| aluminum siding). By comparsion wood trim acts as a
| bellwether. I'd much rather have to scrape, recaulk, and
| paint a window than be looking at deconstructing an
| exterior wall that's rotted to the foundation.
| hedgehog wrote:
| Fascinating, I understand most of it but why vented attic
| vs conditioned?
| the_other wrote:
| > Realisticly they almost always will be, but I would have
| liked to see the panels designed to be constructed a little
| more simply - you will always have to make changes on site.
|
| I feel this way about the current trend in plant-based meat
| replacements. I'll trust the hype about lower carbon footprint,
| but they take food production further into industrialisation
| and profit motive territory which was, in part, how we got into
| this environmental crisis in the first place.
| Jeff_Brown wrote:
| I live in Colombia, where ag tech is a lot farther behind.
| The profit motive for farmers here is as strong as anywhere.
| They wouldn't farm if it wasn't for the money. But the lack
| of industrializacion means that more people are invested in
| the activity, producing less output, and living in poverty.
| merlinran wrote:
| Industrialized agriculture would push most people out of
| land (no longer need that many people), and if the people
| can't find alternative for living they would be even
| poorer. If there are better alternatives, peasant farmers
| will chase them anyway.
|
| There are also better ways for agriculture which can
| regenerate soil, maintain biodiversity while at the same
| time harvest more.
| Jeff_Brown wrote:
| > Industrialized agriculture would push most people out
| of land (no longer need that many people), and if the
| people can't find alternative for living they would be
| even poorer.
|
| The places where industrial agriculture has taken off,
| that seems not to be the story. Grandparents in China are
| thrilled to see their children working city jobs. It's a
| hard life still, but much easier than they had.
|
| > regenerate soil, maintain biodiversity while at the
| same time harvest more.
|
| I very much want those things. And corporations do
| sometimes make stupid decisions. But it's hard for me to
| believe there are such free lunches on a large scale. If
| there were, some enterprising soul ought to go start a
| business exploiting them, make a killing, put Monsanto
| out of business, etc.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| biodiversity doesnt make you money
|
| Also there are many potential biotech revolutions - like
| China developing rice that can use salt water - if our
| crops could use seawater like the mangroves, that wouod
| be huge.
|
| Another massive thing, is perrenial crops - meaning you
| dont have to plant them every year. There are perrenial
| cousins of our staple foods like wheat, but firstly they
| are harder to automatically harvest/manage, secondly they
| do not benefit from thousands of years of selective
| breeding. So we gave to invest massive amounts of money
| to ger their yields up, and even if you do, there is no
| guarantee consumers will eat them - they taste a bit
| different
| Jeff_Brown wrote:
| If they're productive enough, they'll be cheap enough
| that consumers will accept a little taste difference.
|
| Fun fact: Italians hated tomatoes for centuries.
|
| https://lithub.com/unhealthy-smelly-and-strange-why-
| italians...
| hpkuarg wrote:
| One man's environmental crisis is another man being lifted
| out of crushing poverty by the abundant energy and wealth
| produced by that same industrialization and profit motive.
|
| Unless you think cavemen shouldn't have burned sticks for
| warmth out of concern for CO2 emissions, the way out for
| humanity will be through (further technological gains
| enabling more energy expended per capita, hopefully cleanly),
| not backwards.
| wizofaus wrote:
| Burning sticks isn't increasing the amount of carbon in the
| natural cycle (unlike digging up fossil fuels and burning
| them). Though obviously if enough people burn them faster
| than nature can regrow them it's still a problem, such that
| 8 billion of us returning to trees as our primary source of
| fuel would be pretty catastrophic.
| baggy_trough wrote:
| How do plant-based meats take food production "further into
| .. profit motive territory"?
| nemo44x wrote:
| OSB is a really risky thing to use, especially in environments
| (like England) that are constantly damp. One leak and the panel
| is ruined. Plywood can dry out and retain its structural
| integrity. Plywood is generally considered the better material
| for home construction for all uses, walls, roofs, subfloors. I
| think the majority of homes are built with OSB today and I
| consider it the most glaring sign that the construction is
| cheap and to be avoided.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| I have questions on fire safety. I lost some close friends
| recently to a fire. I had never thought about it before.
| ruined wrote:
| most buildings in america today are wood frame, this is likely
| no better or worse. it is more important to consider what you
| put in the building, have a good electrician do the wiring, and
| design your layout and exits to fire code compliance.
| 542458 wrote:
| All wood frame is not equivalent. Modern stick framing is
| designed to slow the spread of flame both with how the wood
| is used (see modern stick framing vs balloon framing) and the
| other materials chosen (drywall is fairly nonflammable,
| whereas this seems to use plywood walls). I'm not saying this
| is better or worse (it might be that all the insulation
| significantly slows the spread of flame?), but they haven't
| really discussed the fire safety implications of their design
| that I can see.
| kupfer wrote:
| To quote their FAQs:
|
| >Is it firesafe?
|
| >WikiHouse is not really any different from most kinds of
| 1-3 storey buildings with timber roof, floors, or internal
| walls, in that the building needs to be designed with
| adequate means of escape, and the chassis needs to be
| reasonably protected from catching fire. This can usually
| be achieved either with a plasterboard internal lining, by
| using a non-toxic fire protection coating, or by installing
| a basic sprinkler system.
|
| >If you are building several adjacent houses, located close
| together in a row, you will usually need to use an external
| fire barrier material to prevent fire spreading from one
| building to the next.
| Schroedingersat wrote:
| Doesn't seem incompatible.
| pera wrote:
| They probably would use fire retardant timber/plywood. There is
| a pretty cool office building in Barcelona (still under
| construction I believe?) entirely made of wood that uses this
| kind of treated wood: https://wittywood.es/en/
| Animatronio wrote:
| By the looks of it they also rely on oversizing the columns
| and beams to achieve fire retardation.
| shagie wrote:
| This is known as mass timber.
|
| https://www.wsj.com/articles/wooden-skyscrapers-are-on-
| the-r...
|
| https://www.thinkwood.com/mass-timber
|
| https://www.naturallywood.com/topics/mass-timber/
|
| https://www.ijpr.org/housing/2022-09-04/oregons-mass-
| timber-...
|
| And regarding fire retardation - Cross Laminated Timber
| Fire Testing from the Forest Products Laboratory and US
| Forest Service - https://youtu.be/HuVTCOmRGd0
| Animatronio wrote:
| yes, you're absolutely right, I couldn't find the right
| term for it. unfortunately it works at the cost of 2x or
| 3x the raw materials it would normally take.
| shagie wrote:
| It represents a sequestration of carbon whereas the
| cement in a traditional cement framework building
| represents significant portion of the carbon footprint.
|
| As to the cost -
| https://www.fs.usda.gov/treesearch/pubs/62676
|
| > Based on commercial construction cost data from the
| RSMeans database, a mass timber building design is
| estimated to have 26 percent higher front-end costs than
| its concrete alternative.
|
| And from the paper:
|
| > The resulting TLCCs of the two buildings under these
| scenarios are shown in Table 6 and Figure 5. From the
| results of these scenarios, it was found that the TLCC
| for the mass timber building would have a cost advantage
| with its longer life span (100 yr) than the concrete
| alternative (75 yr) when other factors are the same (see
| Scenario S0 and S4), and the higher front-end cost
| (value) showed an even greater advantage of 7.0 percent
| difference (Scenario S4). When the life spans of the two
| buildings were the same, the end-of-life cost or value of
| the mass timber building was not able to be offset by the
| higher front-end costs (see Scenario S1 [12%], S2 [6.7%],
| and S3 [5.9%]). In this case study, the two buildings
| were designed to be functionally equivalent. Thus, we
| assumed the same operational utility and maintenance
| during the building-use stage. No impact from these parts
| were considered in the TLCC calculations on the cost-
| performance for the comparison of the two buildings. But
| if there are energy savings discovered in the new mass
| timber buildings, the LCC analysis would reveal more cost
| benefits (Liang et al. 2019).
|
| I can't find any sources that agree with your cost
| assessment... instead:
| https://www.bdcnetwork.com/5-myths-about-cross-laminated-
| tim...
|
| > When considering the total in-place value of a CLT
| system, it is cost competitive to other plate building
| materials. But you also need to consider all the value
| added benefits:
|
| > * More savings can be found in the reduced installation
| cost, usually 50% cheaper than installing other plate
| materials.
|
| > * With an earlier project completion date, you are open
| for business sometimes months ahead of schedule.
|
| > * The building structure will weigh less than half the
| weight of other construction types, so the foundation
| costs less money.
|
| > * Job site safety is dramatically increased due to the
| prefabricated CLT panels and usually the only power tools
| are pneumatic drills.
|
| > The intent of cross laminated timber is not to replace
| light-frame construction, but rather to offer a
| versatile, low-carbon, and cost-competitive wood-based
| solution that complements the existing light frame and
| heavy timber options while offering a suitable candidate
| for some applications that currently use concrete,
| masonry, and steel.
| Animatronio wrote:
| sorry for my careless reply to OP. I meant that e.g. a
| beam that would usually be 10x20" (totally made up
| numbers) without taking into consideration fire, would
| have to be 15x30" to have the required fire rating (say 1
| hour or whatever it should be). Thus every structural
| element has to be larger than it would be when taking
| into consideration only earthquakes or wind/snow loads.
| shagie wrote:
| Regarding mass timber in a seismic area -
| http://nheri.ucsd.edu/projects/2017-development-
| validation-s... and http://nheritallwood.mines.edu
|
| And the beam size gets into "don't design a concrete
| building and swap in mass timber".
| https://www.woodworks.org/resources/creating-efficient-
| struc...
|
| Another aspect to the beams is that the structural
| elements are often left bare for aesthetics (
| https://uploads.map-
| dynamics.com/0518_Structurlam-U.S.-Mass-... ).
|
| Table 6 in https://www.structurlam.com/wp-
| content/uploads/2019/04/Struc... gets into the snow loads
| and I don't know enough engineering to be able to do a
| comparison between mass timber and other building
| approaches.
|
| The main thing to consider is this isn't a "it costs 2x"
| or "it uses 2x more materials" because they are different
| materials with different designs. If comparisons are to
| be done, they should be done at the building level ("it
| cost X to make a N story building with M square feet per
| floor" and "building A had a sustainability rating of P
| while building B was rated at Q with a difference in cost
| of Z%").
| xor99 wrote:
| Sorry to hear that! Valid point ofc, I would like to see if
| they have addressed that with the wooden build. BTW the plans
| can be made using non-wooden materials or limited wood but this
| may change the zero carbon status/ease of fabrication.
| rmah wrote:
| Two things...
|
| First, looking through their design guide
| (https://www.wikihouse.cc/guides/design), the only thing they
| mention is that space (32mm in walls, I guess, and 70mm under
| ceilings) is provided.
|
| Given that the plumbing, electrical, ventilation, appliances,
| etc. are the majority of the cost of a home, I find this a bit
| odd. A typical American full bathroom costs something like $5k to
| $20k (and up... way up) depending on the quality. A kitchen can
| cost multiple times more. Sure, you can build them cheaper, but
| that's the rub... most people who are in the market to purchase a
| home don't want low-end bathrooms and kitchens. Or windows. Or
| lighting. Or wall fixtures. Or anything really.
|
| Second, IMO, the problem with affordable housing is not a
| construction cost problem. We can build small, livable (for
| various definitions) homes for $50k (or less) today, ignoring
| land costs. But the regulatory costs, the land costs, the _market
| demands_ all make building such homes a non-profitable endeavor.
| Why build 20 $50k homes on the land and make $200k profit when
| you can build 10 $500k homes and make $1mil in profit?
|
| The affordable housing crisis in the America do not have a
| technical solution, only a socio-political one. And since nearly
| all the power related to zoning, building costs, etc are managed
| at the local and state level, that means engaging with local
| politics.
| frankbreetz wrote:
| >> Why build 20 $50k homes on the land and make $200k profit
| when you can build 10 $500k homes and make $1mil in profit?
|
| I don't understand this comment. This is the same profit
| margin. You invest 1 million (20 * 50k) and make 20% (200k) or
| invest 5 million(10 * 500k) and make 20% (1 million).
|
| Depending on the amount of initial capitol you want to invest
| you may choose one over the other.
| kbenson wrote:
| Because the constraints are time, getting Landon, getting
| permits, etc. Each additional house is more overhead from
| regulations you have to meet and permits, as well as area
| improvements such as roads that need to be made or improved,
| and more houses mean more roads and sidewalks.
|
| Even if they have the same profit, o ly one of those
| strategies scales to allow you to pump more money in and get
| more money out without significantly changing the resources
| required to accomplish it.
| tomcam wrote:
| Landon never calls me back either. I should stop blaming
| myself for these delays.
| archi42 wrote:
| As a contractor or manufacturing company that's not what
| you're investing into. You build the machines and process and
| design the house. So in one case you get 200k out of the
| invest, and in the other 1000k. At least that's how I'm
| reading this.
|
| If you, as a single household, plan to build a 50k house on
| your land, you might be unable to find someone to build it
| for you.
|
| Of course in larger cities/projects with a single developer
| reselling units it's a bit different.
|
| As I said, that's how I'm reading it.
| enragedcacti wrote:
| The land is a fixed cost regardless of what you build on it,
| so higher return structures will win out even if the margins
| in the structures themselves are the same. Also fewer jobs to
| manage, fewer customers to sell to, simpler sewage, water,
| gas, electrical to deal with.
| nine_k wrote:
| It almost sounds like building one multi-tenant city
| building is more efficient than twenty single-family suburb
| homes.
| drekk wrote:
| Correct, although many municipalities (like Boulder, CO)
| have ridiculous zoning laws such that you can't make
| multi-story apartment complexes. So the choice for
| developers is just single family suburbia
| UtopiaPunk wrote:
| Single family zoning has become the norm in most of the
| United States. It's so broken. Even simple duplexes or
| quad-plexes are not allowed in most single-family zones.
|
| Homeowners benefit because it drives up the prices of
| homes, which has become one of the most important
| financial investment tools to normal people in this
| country.
| bzmrgonz wrote:
| A burger has small profit margin, a complex meal has a bigger
| profit margin. That's what I think he meant. Venture
| Capitalist don't like nickel and diming.
| robomartin wrote:
| > We can build small, livable (for various definitions) homes
| for $50k (or less) today
|
| Not sure I agree with this. If we assume a labor at a rate in
| the order of 1 worker-hour per square foot (this is highly
| variable, from 0.5 to 2 hr/ft^2), a 2000 sqf home would require
| 2000 hours. At minimum wage ($15/hour) that means $30K, just
| for labor. This does not include concrete, lumber, stucco,
| sheetrock, electrical, HVAC, plumbing, appliances, landscaping,
| etc. It also does not include permits and design fees. And of
| course, assuming $15 per hour would not be accurate at all. By
| the time you get a contractor involved and various trades you
| are paying significantly more than that, perhaps closer to $75
| per hour on average. That gets you up to $200K, again, just in
| labor costs.
|
| DIY is a different matter. And yet, it isn't. At some point
| opportunity cost comes into the equation. It would be silly for
| me to DIY a home until I am retired or unemployed. The loss of
| income --opportunity cost-- of devoting thousands of hours to
| home-building would be massive.
|
| If we are talking about building homes at scale, except for
| some very specific locations and types (pre-fab?), I am not
| sure you could build something for $50K these days. For
| example, I have personally had to deal with LA County's
| Building for permits and plan-checks for my 13 kW solar array
| (yes, I DIY'd that). They easily added $50K, if not more, to my
| budget without reason or justification. The most grotesque
| example of this is that they made me put in 64,000 lbs of
| concrete into the footings for my ground-mount structure. An
| architect friend of mine told me I could support a four-story
| building with that amount of concrete. Why? Nobody knows. Once
| the plan checker made that decision there was no way to reason
| with him. Power trip? It was death by a thousand cuts.
| bombcar wrote:
| "Small, livable" ... 2000 square feet ...
|
| Low-cost building is something like $85 a square, so 50k gets
| you about 600 square. It is totally doable and that's with
| "current" setups (these are often built as "cabins" etc.
|
| But the permits and other things destroy them (which is why
| so many "tiny homes" are technically mobile homes because
| then you just deal with the DMV).
|
| And you can buy brand new homes _including land_ around here
| for $300k so I suspect that they didn 't cost $200k in labor.
| But maybe they do?
| ReptileMan wrote:
| You are right to a point. But one problem is that everyone is
| trying to cram into the same couple of places. Every country in
| the world tries to become effectively a city state. The housing
| shortage is secondary to this trend.
|
| You may turn every block into kwaloon walled city and there
| will still be housing shortage.
|
| I am not against density - I am fond of European 6 story
| buildings. But you have a fundamental demand problem. The big
| cities are bleeding dry the rest of the countries.
| dsr_ wrote:
| That's very, very incorrect.
|
| At the population density of Kowloon in 1987, 1,255,000 per
| square kilometer, and today's population of 8 billion people,
| it would only take 6375 square km to house everyone.
|
| That's less than five cities the size of Phoenix, Arizona.
|
| Reasonable urban population density -- the kind where there
| is still green space and buildings are mostly just a few
| stories high -- would be about 7500 per square km, about 1.1
| million square km for the world population. That sounds like
| a lot, but it's only about one tenth the metro area of Paris.
|
| There is a clean water problem. There is a good sewage
| treatment problem. There are energy delivery problems. But
| people will happily live in much denser arrangements than
| they do on average, and cities make all of the other problems
| more efficient to deal with. These are policy problems.
| fangorn wrote:
| France takes up 643801 km2, so are you sure Paris is in the
| 11mln km2 ballpark?
| dsr_ wrote:
| Thank you, I grabbed the wrong figure from Wikipedia --
| population instead of area.
|
| 13,024,518 people, 18,940.7 km2
| ReptileMan wrote:
| In Europe we also have housing crisis in the capitals and
| other desirable places and there thr density already what
| the YIMBY want. If you want to solve the housing crisis
| don't ask why the rent is so high in NY, SF or London. Ask
| why there are so few desirable pleaces for people to live.
| nine_k wrote:
| The rent is damn high in downtown / midtown Manhattan and
| downtown Brooklyn because there is enough business
| people, movie stars, stock traders, even software
| developers who are willing to pay as much.
|
| If you step back into southern Brooklyn, Queens, the
| Bronx, the prices go down to reasonable, while still
| being within < 1 hour commute by public transport from
| the downtown area.
| dsr_ wrote:
| The main thing that makes a place desirable to live in is
| good infrastructure: water, climate, education,
| healthcare, transportation. A place that has all of those
| attracts people; work arises where people want to live;
| good work pays for the infrastructure and makes it more
| likely that people want to live there.
|
| It's a chicken-and-egg problem, made worse by people who
| want to not pay for the infrastructure and maintenance.
| tinco wrote:
| This might be true in the US, but because of stringent building
| requirements construction cost definitely is a problem for
| affordable housing in the UK and in some European countries.
| Here in The Netherlands it certainly is not possible to build a
| house for $50k (or less) according to commercial developers.
| Municipalities have been complaining about developers only
| building houses at the $400k or more price point, and
| developers have been saying that due to the building
| requirements it isn't economically feasible to build houses for
| less.
|
| Also, what's the soil like where you're building those $50k
| homes? I've often seen that being spent just on the foundation.
|
| That said, I'm not sure this construction method is cheaper
| than existing similar techniques like for example structural
| isolated panels.
| xyzzyz wrote:
| What you described (strict building requirements) is, in
| fact, a sociopolitical problem, not a technical one. We used
| to build houses for much less. They were worse houses. Many
| people would not like them today. Others would. They are not
| allowed to have them, though.
| bombcar wrote:
| In the US it's even _worse_ - we _have_ those older houses,
| but they 're almost always in older parts of the city (duh)
| and their valuation is sky-high.
| spaniard89277 wrote:
| In Europe we have stricter building codes on average but it's
| still very much a non-technical problem. Prices of land are
| insane in Spain, and I bet in other countries too.
|
| And taxes, and a myriad of other things that have nothing to
| do with actually building the thing.
| cookieswumchorr wrote:
| even in the US, i'm sure there are places where land is still
| cheap. Thinking globally, there's even more of them. That's the
| beauty of it being opensource: you can build in any part of the
| earth
| progre wrote:
| It's cheap because noone wants to live there.
| dirheist wrote:
| Nobody wants to live there because there is no local work.
| If you work remote it's an amazing value proposition.
| substation13 wrote:
| It's not just work though. It's shops, supermarkets,
| schools, community groups, cinemas, bars, ... you get the
| idea!
| cookieswumchorr wrote:
| well, schools become irrelevant once kids grow up (that
| is, if you have any). A lack of shopping is good for the
| wallet, when you grow accustomed to buying in bulk and
| stacking food. the rest is all about your lifestyle
| preferences
| wizofaus wrote:
| I thought living in huge estates (or even suburbs) with
| none of those things was fairly common in much of the US?
| There are examples of it here (Australia) too and there
| still seems to be plenty of demand to live in such
| places, despite the fact that everybody who does so after
| a few months or years starts complaining about it (in
| fairness, often such facilities are sold as "coming
| soon").
| xyzzyz wrote:
| Suburbs in US almost universally have these things, even
| suburbs of decaying cities like Detroit or Cleveland
| (which often offer more facilities than than the city
| cores themselves).
| wizofaus wrote:
| I certainly got the impression that there were newer
| suburban housing developments with many 1000s of houses
| and basically nothing else. I gathered Texas was
| particularly prone to this so randomly browsing Google
| Maps found "Ridglea hills" and suburbs to the south of it
| in Fort Worth which appear to house 10s of 1000s of
| people without a single supermarket and barely even a
| cafe etc.
| xyzzyz wrote:
| I looked at this neighborhood. It's around 1 mile in
| diameter, and there are many restaurants at its north
| edge, and a Walmart at the south tip. This means that
| residents can reach it in less than 20 minutes walk, or
| 2-3 minute drive. This is really rather accessible, and I
| can't imagine how you can get much better than that while
| still living in a large house with a yard. Seems like a
| pretty sweet place to live, if you ask me.
| wizofaus wrote:
| Yeah I saw the shopping strip at the northern boundary,
| which is why I said Ridglea hills and suburbs to the
| south of it (not a single supermarket shows up in a 5x5
| km area, though part of the problem is Maps, it seems
| quite inconsistent at what scales anything shows up). It
| may well not be as barren as it appears on Google maps,
| but it certainly doesn't appear "rather" accessible to
| me. I'm curious how it compares to the blocks of land in
| Florida mentioned a few posts up.
| bombcar wrote:
| Ridglea Hills has a stinking Walmart heh! The "Acres of
| suburbia" usually mean that it's a pain to walk to the
| store, not that the store doesn't exist.
|
| I'd be surprised if there are many suburban areas that
| are more than 5/10 miles from "stores" for some value of
| store. Taking some central place of Ridglea gets me a 2
| mile walk to Walmart. But there are no sidewalks.
| [deleted]
| ArtemZ wrote:
| There 0.5+ Acre lots that you can buy for something like
| 20-30k$ in Cleveland, OH and I'm planning to move there.
| ClassicOrgin wrote:
| Here in Florida, large parcels were bought up by developers
| and then subdivided into .25/.33/.50 acre lots. These were
| then sold off to people who eventually wanted to retire
| here. The problem is the building codes here are probably
| the most stringent in the US. So there are a lot of these
| parcels for sale on the cheap ($10k-$25k) but it's still
| not worth doing anything with them.
| notch656a wrote:
| This is the exact issue I've run into. Land in good
| location is cheap near me. But only a handful of counties
| in the entire nation have building codes loose enough
| that let you make use of it affordably.
| bombcar wrote:
| I've heard that parts (most?) of Wyoming is pretty lax
| about requirements.
| nine_k wrote:
| Would a prefab house (which normally satisfies various
| codes' requirements) be worth putting there?
| bombcar wrote:
| Even with a fully legal prefab house, you're often
| looking at anywhere between 20-100k in "other costs"
| besides delivery and installation.
|
| You have to connect to water, sewer, power (or build a
| well and septic), you still have to get it permitted and
| inspected, etc, etc, etc.
| turtlebits wrote:
| You may find land that is cheap, but you will only be able to
| build a single house on it. This incentivizes building large.
|
| Your chance of finding a sub-dividable lot in a suburban area
| is essentially 0.
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