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How To Build an Open Source House?
An anonymous reader writes "I'm starting a project that I hope that the engineers, makers and general DIYers in the Slashdot crowd can help out with. The full story's on the website, but the short version is as follows: my aim is to make a cheap, recycled, sustainable building, to document the process fully and to release anything that would help others to do the same. I intend to use an old train carriage as the shell, but the ideas should extend to shipping containers, aeroplane fuselages or anything similar. I know I'm not the first to do this, but I can't see anyone else who's provided a detailed step-by-step account of the build, complete with plans and the rest. Before I start, though, I'm trying to draw on as much collective experience as possible, and to head off mistakes before they happen. My question to Slashdot is simple: what do you think I need to know before I begin?"
Use a shipping container, install drywall, utilities.
FP
First off, build a list of local electricians and plumbers, and the name of whomever is going to sign off on this house with regard to permits and other legal issues. IE: People who know your local regulations.
Get their opinion and evaluate their willingness to work with you, because the last thing you want is a finished project that gets condemned.
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
You could live in a lean-to or a sod house or a log cabin might also work, depending on what you are using for fasteners.
Or didja mean within City limits that may enforce certain structural requirements beyond your control?
crazy dynamite monkey
It's my understanding that if you GPL it, Richard Stallman can come and stay there for free.
IANAL, IAAT.
If this guy lived in North America I would suggest he instead look to help Habitat for Humanity. Blogging about that experience and posting all the details would be more helpful than building a lightly insulated, metal house.
If you don't have personal experience, find someone who does to help you. Especially where code is involved.
Get the blessing of whoever signs your permits before you choose a site.
As an engineered structure if you want to use it in your design you might have to have some kind of plan for the tube car. ISO shipping containers can probably sometimes sneak around this because they are designed to spec, but your tube car was designed for something wholly different and if it's not getting grandfathered in then you may well need its blueprints. But this goes back to the previous point; you may not.
Make sure to use a shared water wall so that you need as little plumbing as possible. You probably want an on-demand electric water heater. It's popular to mount such a thing to the wall inside the house as near the kitchen sink as possible, and to run all hot water lines outward from that point.
Insulate, insulate, insulate. And at the same time, ventilate, ventilate, ventilate. In your situation I would want to install HEPA and carbon filters on an intake fan, but I'm a country dweller, all I have to worry about is spray days. Seems like if you need a heater an underfloor unit will be easy.
I have many grandiose plans for shipping containers but first I need someplace road-accessible to site them.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
That's because every building, no matter how modular or factory-built, is very customized due to local building codes, site-specific issues, and the personal tastes of the owner or builder.
What you're doing sounds cool (London Tube train car into a home) but it's such a niche idea that of course you're not going to find step-by-step how-to guides. It's admirable that you want to share every step of the process online, but truly "open-source" doesn't really make a difference in this situation. Oh, and btw, there are legal issues with releasing your construction documents for others' use. Architects and contractors are licensed because they are taking on liability for the specifications and buildings they produce.
I'm out of my mind right now, but feel free to leave a message.....
A high-cube container is 9' 6" tall, which gives about 9' internal vertical space to work with, which means that even with 6" in the floor and 6" in the ceiling for insulation, electrical, plumbing, etc, you have an 8' vertical space.
Normal containers are a foot shorter, which means it will feel more claustorphobic, and train carrages are even shorter.
The biggest challenge is the width, with only less than 8 feet of width, you pretty much HAVE to mate containers side by side and remove the interior walls to get nice space.
Test your net with Netalyzr
Keep meticulous records, notes, and everything else. Not only are housing prices, at least for now, through the "roof" so is land the last time I checked around where I live. There is also the tid bit about permits and such that always seems to cost more than it should. It will be interesting. If you blog about it and it gets enough attention, you might just catch a break or two. Good luck!
Can I answer "You need to know how to build a cheap, recycled, sustainable building"?
Heh, had to get that out of my system.
I suppose the questions I would ask have to deal with legal regards? I don't know what its like in London. I don't REALLY know what its like in the states either, I'm Canadian, but I hear news stories about Americans in various states who run into issues with the law when they don't have the 40% plant coverage on their lawn, or homes that use solar powered get in scuffles with the electric and heating companies because the house isn't capable of heating itself proper in the winter.
I mean, all that stuff aside, you'll need the land, and I don't know how you plan to do water and heating hookups, especially without a basement.
You don't want to be sued out of existence *before* you could begin with the engineering...
Colorless green Cthulhu waits dreaming furiously.
You need to know the building codes in the area.
You may have lots of great, cheap but illegal ideas.
Inspectors can be your friends, helping you do it right, or a real pain.
Cheap, sustainable, and recycled - I suspect you can have any two.
Some of the most sustainable buildings are monolithic domes (http://www.monolithic.com) but they are neither recycled nor cheap - they are about average construction cost, but VERY efficient.
I can't see an airplane fuselage or a railway car ever becoming energy-efficient.
What do you think I need to know before I begin?
Building your own house from scratch is not for the fainthearted. But if you succeed you will have done something most people dream of their entire life.
Life starts at the end of your comfort zone.
Zoning Laws.
Doesn't matter what you're building, you need to know what's allowed for your area.
Try Mother Earth News (motherearthnews.com). They have lots of articles on that subject. You should be able to locate what you need online although their search engine sucks. You can even buy their archives on CD is you want.
Architect Samuel Mockbee's work for some creative inspiration.
A bread pan and some water is all you need; fill, freeze, stack, repeat until you have a house. To recycle, add heat. Freezing water hasn't been patented by Amazon yet, so do it while it is still an open technology.
" can't see anyone else who's provided a detailed step-by-step account of the build, complete with plans and the rest"
For the same reason you don't see much of that for more conventional houses. There's just too much that's unique and individual to a given climate, microclimate, regulatory environment, local customs, materials availability, individual preference, zoning, building lot, etc... etc...
A house properly designed for Miami will have to deal with heat and hurricanes. A house properly designed for Seattle will have to deal with cold and earthquakes. (And yes, dealing with heat and cold require different strategies - it's more than just insulation.) And that's just the big items... Here around Seattle there will be considerable detail differences depending on whether you're on a slope in the hills or down in the flats of the valleys. Get up into the mountain passes and you have a different environment, cross the mountains into the dry side of the state and you have something much closer to Miami than Seattle climatically speaking,
There's a Sourceforge project for this already. The developers have done a wonderful job on the home theater and kitchen, but nobody's worked on the plumbing and foundation yet.
You need to find out which standard to use, as there are several out there.
Unless you are going for a wireless protocol like Zigbee, and even if you do, you can't have too many tubes going to windows (for opening sensors), radiators (if you use them, you want to control the hot water feed to them), the outside (temperature, light, humidity sensors at least), the middle of a wall on each room (or coach!) (temperature and movement sensors).
Finally, if you are going to integrate the alarm system with your home automation system, you will need to find a provider that will interface to your house.
We had a french TV show here in Quebec called "Les citadins du rebut global" (loosely translated to "Citizens of the Global Trash"), which is part home building show, part junkyard wars. They have four seasons up to now, each in which they build a house in a different setting and from different found materials. It's quite a good show actually, it won a few TV industry prizes. The website also has a few interesting blurbs of video sprinkled in the "reportages" section.
http://www.citadins.tv/
In one season they have to build a house with only 15000$, in another they renovate an abandoned industrial space, in the third season they build a house supplied only with alternative energy sources.
I dont know if english subs are available for it, but the process of building a house being very graphic by nature I assume you could grasp quite a few concepts just by watching it. They used to sell the show in boxset format, but it might be obtained from "other sources" too. Just sayin'...
-- Home is where you eat your heart out.
I am in the process of building my own eco-house. The first step is to get some land outside the "rubber-stamp" "where's your permit" world because when the inspector shows up he will take one look at your creation and since it will not fit neatly in one of his stacks redtag it until it does. What we did was buy unimproved land a few miles from an unincorporated city of a few hundred people. The only regulations we are under are county which deal with water and septic, which is good all the way around. As for anything else.. I could build a match stick house on a gasoline foundation with a blowtorch door bell and no one would say squat.
What you need to know befofe you begin is......
Your local building codes!
Carlos
You are going to have to comply with things like building and fire codes, unless you want to exist in legal limbo. On the plus side, because rail cars presumably had to follow DOT regulations of various sorts(and are only one story tall) code compliance isn't going to be the biggest hurdle in the world; but you'll still have to do it.
http://bulk.resource.org/codes.gov/ is, by a fair margin, your best bet for free access to building, fire, and similar codes(run by one Carl Malamud, something of a hero in the "open public access to government documents" business). It might be less useful to someone of the Limey persuasion, which you seem to be; but many US municipal and state codes simply incorporate wholesale various industry-standard codes, many of which are of international reach. Depending on your location, you may still need one or more licenced people to sign off, for it to all be legal, and you might be able to get a copy of any local codes from some local authority.
More generally, If you want this project to be "open source" in a useful sense, you'll likely want to focus on two things: One is obvious: documentation. You want documentation anyway, just to save your sanity; but that is what you will be sharing with others. Second, slightly less obvious but more important, is modularity. An "Open Source" project that beings "Obtain 1 model XYZ-FOO-123 underground train car. Follow the following steps precisely to convert it into a house." That's a build log, which is fine; but it is of rather limited re-usability. Train cars(and probably other things you will end up incorporating during the course of the project) are the sort of item that is cheap to free(depending on the scrap/collectors market at the time) if you get lucky, uneconomically pricey otherwise. Some people will have them, some won't. Those who do have them will pretty much be stuck with the model they have.
What you will want to do, if you wish to make this a useful "OSS" project, is build it out of a bunch of documented modular components that fit in your environment; but could, possibly with some adaptation; be used in all sorts of other contexts. "Design for platform with sliding wall-mounted pivots that can be unfolded as either a sleeping surface or a table" is useful for anybody who has a flat wall and not much space. Various things of that nature will add up to the solution to your specific problem; but will also be generally applicable.
Coming back to code, and general applicability, and legality, you might also wish to explore minimizing your dependence on things like gas lines and mains electricity in your design. These are the most dangerous if a n00b fucks them up, the most likely to be code/legal-requirement encumbered, and the most likely to differ between nations. 12/24 volt electrical systems, for instance, will allow you to tap the experience of the camper/RV enthusiasts, and may well subject you to far fewer regulatory headaches. Trivial integration with solar is fun also.
Tons of info regarding using shipping containers. http://www.shipping-container-housing.com/
The "open source" idea is novel, but state, municipal, and local laws and regulations regarding residential housing code and habitability are fairly particular and the least "open source" aspect of the project.
Well, based on my experience with open source projects,... I imagine you'll generate a lot of interest, the blueprints will look great but in the end, you'll end up with a shody foundation and maybe some framework done but your workforce will abandon you before you put up the drywall...
"It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance." - Thomas Sowell
I live in a large city. The price of an apartment or a house here is so high that I could built the same size apartment from new LCD TV sets.
I mean walls and roof from the flat TVs.
The plumbing can be done nowadays practically with bare hands from metal-plastic tubes, which are not that expensive. In the past such things had to be welded on the spot and it was long and expensive.
A phone cable I do not need, I can use wireless 3G network for Internet and telephone.
I do not understand why the housing keeps being that expensive.
To the moderator who modded parent as "Offtopic":
He totally needed to know that Cheetos are tasty!
This comment, however, is definitely offtopic.
One thing I would consider wherever you are is a composting toilet. You can also compost your kitchen scraps in it. After a year, you can then use the compost in a garden. If you're going to be off the grid, you might consider trading in your TV and PC for a large laptop that is more power efficient.
Aside from the fact that it uses Google Voice, you can make a very open system for controlling lights/power/etc. from a cell phone/email/IRC/whatever.
While I'm not at all opposed to the idea, I can't help but think this is unnecessary. If you can't afford housing in London, isn't there something like welfare or section-8 that can help you? Here in the states, if you can't afford housing you can get a subsidized place via section-8. The idea here is sound but in the end I think the only persons it will benefit is you sir, because you can't afford housing in London why do you stay?
My first question is regarding the choice of starting materials - in particular how do you plan to transport said piece? A train carriage is large and heavy - and hence not even remotely cheap to move around. Your Ford Mondeo will probably not be able to tow it, and I'm guessing the odds are slim that your site has easy railroad access to have it driven there.
In other words, while said carriages may be plentiful in availability, they might not be that great in practicality.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Train tubes or aircraft fuselages were not intended to live in. They will be energy pigs: little insulation, drafty (caulk? Hah!) the metal will conduct heat, etc... Any environmental "savings" by using material like that will be eaten up by wasted energy.
Now going the path of the parent, you'll have a much better chance of being energy efficient, complying with building code, and reusing building materials.
One of the biggest wastes in building is demolition: folks just throw old homes into landfills. Tear it down. Put the crap in dumpsters. Haul it away and dump it into a landfill.
At least here in the states, there's a growing trend of recycling homes: disassembling homes and reusing wood, copper, wire when they can. You'll have to look around or disassemble some old houses yourself.
Try here for ideas on materials Green Building Advisor and FineHomeBuilding.com.
RIP America
July 4, 1776 - September 11, 2001
While its all charming and cool to come up with an "open source house" - there are many pitfalls/roadblocks to just coming up with your own home design. Most of us call that "The Real World".
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
If you can get your plans permitted in Santa Monica, you should be golden for the rest of the planet.
/Adam Carrola
Or is is just an interesting and politically correct idea you thought you'd toss out?
Because for every project like this that is actually built, about 1000 are talked about and proposed and first steps are taken. I presume from the phrase "railroad carriage", you're not in the US, so I don't know much about your local issues, but here, land will be the first issue. Before you do anything, either own the land or go to the bank and ask about a loan. Chances are "computer says no". If you can secure the land, then worry about getting your carriage, zoning, and all the plumbing, fire code and electrical issues.
There's a reason why most houses in the US are built balloon style with 2x4's. It works, it's well understood and the labor isn't nearly as expensive as you might think.
If you're going to build it in an old Railroad Carriage, you're basically talking about a Mobile Home. Why not just try to find a Trailer Park that will allow you to haul it and dump it on one of their spots. You should be right at home there, because trailer parks with low standards are pretty permissive.
I live in a large city. ... I do not understand why the housing keeps being that expensive.
Location, location, location.
A recycled tube train is tough, weatherproof and small enough to fit into a plot of land in a crowded city
I am not a backyard architect, but even if this modular or prefab home was cool looking like a Rocio Romero and was able to meet laws and deed restrictions, if this is any sort of nice urban place, you would probably be instantly hated by all of your neighbors. I like these kinds of houses though and also took an interest to tiny houses and some of the modern designs at freegreen.com. I unfortunately just can't build one in my neighborhood, and would have to build it in the local trailer park, which is a low class area I would not want my child to grow up in. As much as I dislike having my cookie cutter home, there are other factors to consider.
Secondly, Habitat work sites are horribly managed: they're dangerous. You have way too many people running around who don't have a clue and it's too easy to hurt someone or get hurt. I as doing my job hammering and someone decided to stand behind me and help and I almost took out his face with the framing hammer. And because there's so many people, you end up BS'ing with other folks - there's just not enough to do. The best build I was ever one was this church that needed an extra hand. It was just a dozen folks including the homeowner, we worked really hard and you felt like you were doing something. Unfortunately, with this economy, they don't need the extra help and I refuse to work on other teams with more than a dozen people; which means, I don't volunteer anymore.
No biggie. They have so many people wanting to volunteer that it's hard to get a spot as it is.
RIP America
July 4, 1776 - September 11, 2001
Please. RMS has no problems staying for free under an MIT license, either.
It would be most beneficial if there were a viable F/OSS CAD package you could use to document your efforts, but there is not. The best you can probably do is to use a proprietary package, and export the drawings to an open format. It is difficult or impossible to produce even rudimentary 2D mechanical drawings with any efficiency using F/OSS software. The biggest F/OSS hole there is, IMO.
They make for a wonderful elevated deck area with a built in awning
This is an account of an echo friendly house. Not exactly what you're looking for, but you might get some ideas.
http://www.simondale.net/house/
I would avoid the word "recycled" in your concept formulation, as most items are not "recycled" but "down-cycled" which, insidiously, promotes the green-washing of ill-designed products and product packaging. "Recyclable" would be a much better idea/framing to incorporate, that is, use of items that are completely truly recyclable once they have met their design life (metal roofing, hay bale construction, etc.). A much tougher standard to meet, of course, Just my $.02
If you're really and truly sincere about reducing your footprint, and want to buy a "green" house, buy a pre-existing structure. ALL of the costs and impact has ALREADY occurred, while ANYTHING that you build new is going to generate trash. If you want to get something that's really going to reduce your impact buy a much older home (pre- 1950s), since they usually have a ton of passive heating/cooling techniques built into them. (Porches, large shade trees, thermalmass) OTOH, if you're just interested in the smug factor, there's nothing like building a house that's Green, and attracts a lot of attention, before being abandoned a few months/years later when the obvious problems become overwhelmingly painful.
Your website isn't specific about why you've dismissed shipping containers. Let me explain why they're your best bet compared to the other modular materials you're considering.
Shipping containers are cheap and easy to transport and arrange. They can easily be modified with standard cutting and welding tools. No pre-existing windows or other openings than the doors on the end, so it's a sturdy, stackable modular material.
Airplanes are made of high-grade aluminum and are not cheap, easy to obtain, or convenient to transport if the plane is of any size worth using. The shape doesn't lend itself to stacking, so you don't have many options for architecture. Aluminum is also not very easy to weld, so good luck with that. Because aluminum is a valuable metal, airplanes are more prone to recycling than re-use.
Train cars- same thing as airplanes except that they're also rife with windows that will need to be covered and they are extremely hard to move to a location away from train tracks. There is a lot of high-grade aluminum and steel in their construction, so if they're transportable, they're also likely to be recycled rather than re-used.
Shipping containers really are the way to go. Don't sweat that they're too short or narrow. Simple cutting and welding can fix that. Different locales frequently collect a surplus because shippers don't want to spend the diesel to return an empty one. So you're helping to reduce the carbon footprint of the container if you can re-use it at its one-way destination.
Seth
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
Take your best real estimate.... Take your partner's best real estimate.... add them together and then double that. Oh, did you say unconventional building materials? Triple the estimate.
I have built 4 small houses/cabins, a couple barns and other structures. Your main expenses will be for utility hookups.
I have a ranch, so my experience is somewhat different since I don't have to pay much heed to local permits and regulations. I just make sure I build above code so everything works well.
Building costs are not much for a simple structure. Your major costs are going to be a septic system or sewer hookup, water and electric hookup. I can build (and have built) a small cabin with bedroom, bathroom, closet, living room, kitchen and porch for under $5000 in materials. But a small septic system, a well and electric hookup will cost over $10,000 in my area, and that's if I build the septic system myself. Just sewer hookup in a city can cost anywhere from $5000 to $20,000 or more. Electric hookup can be between $500 and $3000. Not sure about water hookup, but a well ain't cheap.
So first concentrate on the utilities. That will let you know if you can afford it.
When many, many people spend an enormous percentage of their energies in paying down mortgages and similar, there is little time left over to work on the self.
This is a huge problem, and if the housing/energy problem can be effectively solved, then you are on your way to freedom. And there ARE solutions.
Buy cheap property and build on it. There are going to be massive regulations on house building; the government has a vested interest in preventing people from growing strong, so you'll have a million and one obstacles thrown in your way. I don't know what to suggest there except perhaps keep your head down and stay off the radar, or wade in and do the paper work. It depends on your personal strengths and personality type.
As for train cars. . . Why not an old school bus? Train cars are hard to move, but you can DRIVE an old bus to a location and it provides a similar kind of of weather-proof shell to work with.
Another idea is that a simple shelter of two by fours with a tarp on raised shipping pallets, along with a propane heater can get you through the winter if need be, and provide general shelter while you build your other projects.
I know one guy who did this, and ran 150 meters of power cable from his neighbor across the property and just paid him whatever the extra cost was on the meter. Eventually you can put up solar panels to service your basic needs.
There are lots and lots of ways to do this and hundreds of web sites which have info to help you out.
The main tricks, though, are getting property where you can drill a water well. If you can get some land near farmers, then you can learn how to feed yourself also. Not a bad idea considering the way the world is turning. Though, England is kinda screwed for weather. No matter what climate change does, England is pretty much fsked, so perhaps moving somewhere warmer is a good idea. . ?
Anyway, good luck and have fun! (And
-FL
Make an all-glass house and it'll be completely open-source. Your neighbors might find that they don't like fully open-source, though.
IANAL, IAAT.
Titmouse? A little help, please.
... check out A Pattern Language by Christopher Alexander.
May not be applicable in your climate but do look at design philosophy of Laurie Baker.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurie_Baker
You can download his small booklets:
http://lauriebaker.net/work/work/booklets-and-writing-by-laurie-baker.html
Troll, duh. I can't believe this shot to +5, either, or else I wouldn't have posted as AC!
The "shell" part of a house is cheap. If you just want a box, cinder block or concrete slab construction works fine. There are also many panel building systems used for industrial structures. (Nucor notes that their product is "89% recycled content", which it is; their steel mills run almost entirely on scrap.) A useful exercise is to figure out how to build good-looking houses out of those standard low-cost components.
Here's a streamlined railroad train that's now a fixed structure in San Francisco. That location used to be a railroad siding, but the owner didn't move his cars before the freight tracks in San Francisco were removed. Now the cars are stuck there.
Albeit anonymously, I want to highlight the following project: Open Source Ecology, http://www.openfarmtech.org
Their plan is to use open source technology to create a resilient, low-carbon village. Regarding housing, they have built a "hexayhurt" and a large facility with compressed earth bricks.
* they are working on their project on a farm near kansas, and they're really doing it (I couldn't believe that at first)
* it was founded by a fusion scientist who from what i've heard felt his science work to be of limited use
* their approach, concepts and calculations appear to be very well thought-out
* they've already built some housing with compressed earth blocks and limited automation ("distillations video")
* they have developed a compressed earth block press with a low price, with free open source plans and sourcing information available as well
* they also built an open source tractor to do agriculture, digging and to power other devices, currently they're on to the second version of it.
A cool project IMHO, their homepage is a bit untidy, best is to follow their blog chronologicall I suppose. But it is a very very cool idea. So hope this hint helps and you can go on with your project and add to the open source housing landscape! I think that are hugely interesting developements!
Don't be silly. Richard Stallman is already living in a shed behind my house.
and GNU your wife
My sister and her husband built a 1500 square foot earth-roofed cordwood house for about 25K. Do not remember if the cost of their masonry stove was included in that. The insulation R-value of their home is ~35. I suggest looking into these terms and technologies. It is also known as Depression-era housing and labor-intensive to build. Worthy! Also another option is called straw-bale and one more is modular aka dome-houses.
Here are plans for a CHEAP DIY solar heater: http://www.teaters.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=217 If you poor a concrete floor you could run pipe in it and build a larger solar heater - then run the hot water through the floor to heat the house. If you are building in a rural area you could think about a biodigestor to produce methane (to run a stove, instant water heater etc...)
see: Walter Segal:
http://www.segalselfbuild.co.uk/about.html
just have everyone come and throw building materials in a pile. Eventually someone will get fed up with the pile and organize it into a slipshod approximation of a house.
It's called teepee in American English.
Railcars have been used before. Insulation, airhandling, all the rest will be relatively trivial. Not having the local council ruin your plans will be the tough part.
Moisture will be an issue. You'll need to seal it up and when you do, moisture inside the vehicle will be a problem. You can use a spray foam insulation. For inspiration on how to make confined spaces into a livable space, go tour a yatch.
My brother built a vacation place on Tenakee Springs, Alaska. First thing he did was deliver a shipping container as a quick-and-dirty, bear-proof shelter. The door of it is visible here. Obviously, it is now incorporated into a larger structure.
Best regards.
GPL: You can only tell your friend how you built your house on the condition they tell everyone who asks, along with any original ideas your friend spent time and/or money proving themselves.
Unless you superinsulate it, you may have condensation problems on the interior, leading to mold. Airplanes avoid this by constantly blowing fresh air through the fuselage. Stationary objects, particularly partially underground ones, can only avoid it by constantly running dehumidifiers. My parents house with a partially underground bottom floor with cinder block walls gets puddles on the floor if they don't run the dehumidifier.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
They are called slums and they are among the fastest-growing real-estate sectors!
Wouldn't it be cheaper to buy a houseboat?
I hope you don't live in a tornado-prone area. Otherwise, the winds may "sustain" this building in mid-air just long enough for it (and anyone present inside at the time) to be "recycled"!
Find some back issues of Mother Earth News - they've been running articles on folks doing all sorts of low-cost houses for decades. They have books / plans available, info on insulation / solar heat and power / etc.
Lots of good stuff.
So, go off grid with everything. Easier to go OS that way anyhoo.
Around here(SW Ontario), water well drilling is anywhere from $10-15/foot. So you may be talking thousands just to drill a few hundred feet. Add another few thousand for the well pump & hookup.
I don't know about other places, but in the U.S. and Canada practically every house is just about as open-source as it gets. Every house is built from materials manufactured to standards that have no royalties that I am aware of (2x4 lumber, PVC plumbing, nails, screws, plywood, wiring, fixtures, etc.) Not only that, but the materials are cheaply available to anyone at a nearby home-improvement store or lumber-yard. About the only thing that is not "open-source" is the plan for a typical spec-home. However, free plans are available and, really, making plans for a house isn't rocket-surgery.
So, given all this, what is it about the effort described in this story that makes it more "open source" than your typical house?
There are only 6,863,795,529 types of people in the world.
I suggest reading This Page about bulding homes out of shipping containers. Also, be really, really careful if you're going to bury anything, with regard to both corrosion and the amount of pressure that gets exerted on the sides of it, which is usually greatly underestimated.
Despite the silly hippy name, you might want to learn a bit about the houses known as Earthships if you don't know anything about them yet. I say this because they've been building these for a while, and they have some of the same goals of sustainability and using recycled materials. I'm not suggesting that you can just copy one of those, but you may glean some useful information. I first learned about them when I watched the documentary Garbage Warrior.
While the hippy ethos of the builders doesn't entirely resonate with me, I think one of the basic notions (as I understood it) is quite insightful, which, as a scientist, I interpreted this way: Rather than trying to use appliances and special materials to make a standard house maintain a comfortable environment, the house should be re-designed around that goal. A typical house is coupled to 3 temperature reservoirs, the sun, the air, and the ground. The temperature of the air is time dependent and so is the coupling to the sun. Each changes primarily on two time scales, diurnal (24 hr) and annual (365 days). Often in a normal house these factors don't get too much consideration, other than an attempt to limit the coupling to the air so that active heating and cooling can be effective. As a result, without active heating and cooling the temperature will fluctuate in time (on both time scales) and will often be uncomfortable (or even dangerous). You can improve the system by increasing the efficiency of the heating and cooling systems; however, it's better to alleviate the need.
The basic approach of the earth ships is to increase the heat capacity of the house to limit temperature fluctuations on the short, diurnal time scale, and then try to keep the time-averaged heating approximately constant on the annual time scale. At any instant it should be possible to use the 3 temperature reservoirs to reach an acceptable steady state, since the ground is cooler that the target temperature (10-15 C a couple meters below the surface) and the photosphere of the sun is hotter (approx. 5500 C). The remaining problem is to balance the coupling to each. To make a long story short, with appropriate use of south facing windows you can make it so your time-averaged coupling to the sun it high in winter and low in summer, to counter the variations in heating from the ambient air. And then you just balance coupling to the sun (hot) and ground (cold) until you have an acceptable steady state.
Of course, that's not quite the way they presented it...
"You call it a new way of thinking; I call it regression to ignorance!" -- Operation Ivy
I've heard of using old shipping containers as building material now that the economy has tanked and there are an abundance of them. It turns out that re-purposing these rugged containers into homes and offices work very well - arguably, it is stronger than the current construction methods. A design that would incorporate this material would certainly get my backing. This is much more eco-friendly and removes some of the urban blight.
And if it's BSD-licensed, Theo The Rat can take the house, kick him out (fork it), redecorate, and sell it as his own.
http://groups.google.com/group/openmanufacturing
"We bring free and open source software development methodology to the physical world."
I help moderate that list, which ranges over a variety of related topics. There are many other related places you can look at or ask questions at, too; some other links to get started which are often more shelter-related:
http://www.inhabitat.com/
http://www.os-house.org/english/os-house/home
http://ostatic.com/blog/open-source-house-launches-design-competition
Other general resources:
http://makezine.com/
http://www.appropedia.org/
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
You might want to check what OS-HOUSE.org is doing . They 've just announced the winner of their open-source house competition. Plans are free to get , building materials should be easy to source locally .. good luck
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It's much cheaper to build with conxes and there are multiple plans across the internet. Even better weather permitting you can build an blueprinted framed, wired, plumed, hardwood floors Safari style tent. I have two and am working on a B&B based on the concept. I have some friends that own a place named Safariwest.com they run year round and are just north of Santa Rosa, CA. My place (concept is up here paliuli.com, but we are closed until I have a few more built) however is in a bit warmer climate zone far south of California.
6.8SPC TR of 550, l xwind at 6, drift rt at 26" drops 77". AT has 503 ft-lbs at 1403 fps. FT 0.86
Depending on your State/County requirements your building will need to be issued a Certificate of Occupancy before you can live in it. Check with your local code enforcement officials before you start this project. Some code inspectors take a very dim view of unusual buildings or systems.
Some of the things you will likely need so you can live in your dream house:
A set of construction drawings with an engineers or architect's stamp. - This is the engineer saying the building is not going to kill someone once it is built. Getting a set of drawings for an existing train car may be difficult.
Code review of the drawings will required before you can start construction. Code review is required to make sure something did not get past the engineer. If the code inspector says you have to do something before he will approve for human habitation, you are going to end up doing it whether you like it or not.
DO NOT piss off the code inspector. The code inspector can make your life a living hell, if just by putting your application at the bottom of the pile and not getting to your application for the next 6 weeks. Find out in advance what inspections are required, when and in what order. Nothing is more frustrating than having Inspector A come out and then finding out that Inspector B's sign off is required before Inspector A will look at the building. Nothing pisses off the electrical inspector finding all of the cover plates have been installed before he has inspected them.
Proper compliance for water and sewer connections.
Proper compliance for heating and ventilation requirements.
Proper compliance for insulation requirements- walls, roof and windows. From what I know about subway windows, those are going to fail and have to be replaced with code compliant windows.
A licensed, insured and bonded electrician. It is almost impossible to get past this requirement. The code inspector will not certify the building if he cannot be assured that it is not going to burn down because of bad wiring.
Installation of Natural Gas/Propane may require a licensed or bonded installer. Check with your local code inspector. There is a reason why the utilities inject the "natural gas" smell into the lines.
As my signature says: With construction you can only compile once.
Consider the drawings and specifications your program. All of the libraries that you load in as well (and must comply with) are the local and state construction codes.
You cannot undo your compile without a significant amount of time, effort and money. Make sure everything is behind the walls before you sheetrock.
Architectural plans are like computer source code with a couple of differences: You only compile once.
The London waste disposal rules are very extensive. I won't even try to list it all.
In short: Everything must be presorted: Metals, papers, cloth, plastics (by type), wood, food waste (multiple types). Failure to presort can result fines.
Reason: Landfill space is expensive on an island.
Architectural plans are like computer source code with a couple of differences: You only compile once.
http://os-house.org
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Not Joe Blow wielding a hammer. It won't be standing 10 years from now.
I'm sure you've come across lots of resources on the internetz, but here's another one. My friend is building a 'green' house, as 'greenly' as possible, given certain limitations and other objectives. It's being built on the west coast up here in Canada. She has been blogging about it from day 1, noting all the tough technology decisions, regulations, etc. along the way. http://www.buildinggreenbc.com/
Rammed earth or adobe would use the stuff on location, doesn't get any cheaper.
http://www.adobebuilder.com/
Sounds like 'open source' is becoming like the word 'organic', where people hoping to sound cool just jam it in to phrases randomly whether it makes sense or not.
So there's going to be this great sustainable source of train cars and airplane fuselages? This sounds like the complete opposite of sustainable, more like a vanity/ego-trip project. Look at me, I'm loaded.
Loaded with shit, but at least that's sustainable.
We have built over 100 homes of varying sizes all from the earth and little else..... check out calearth.org
"If the King's English was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for me!" -- "Ma" Ferguson, Governor of Texas (circa
You might want to listen to this for inspiration: http://www.ted.com/talks/cameron_sinclair_on_open_source_architecture.html
My sig is better than your sig.
As long as I don't have to feed him...
Ya, toss around the buzzwords.. Building a house is rather well documented, so id not call it closed source.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
If you don't mind living close to an airport (or at least a suiteable airstrip), an old aircraft might be a cool idea. At Stockholm Airport in sweden a 747 has been converted to a hotel. http://www.jumbostay.com/ And I've read about a pilot wanting to do the same for a home. A 747 might be a bit large, and limit your location more than something a bit smaller of course. But the pilot reconned it wouldn't actually cost all that much. Once the plane is in place a lots of the equipent, like engines and hydraulics can be sold off. He estimated paying around $50.000 for the stripped down fuselage. And given that they spend a lot of time in -50C air, aircrafts are pretty well insulated. (But as pointed out elsewhere, local building codes and be problematic.)
Shipping container??? LLLUXURY!!!!
I'm not entirely sure if this is what you've intended, but someone already geeked out building a green home.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
Yeah, cause solar is so much cheaper than getting hooked to the grid
love is just extroverted narcissism
If you are building everything into a single shipping container it will be much easier. There aren't exactly pre-fabricated parts for connecting them, so you would need metal working experience for anything larger than a single container. (Not to mention connections are a good place for leaks)
Containers are typically 8-ft wide by 8.5-ft high with lengths of: 20-ft, 40-ft, 45-ft, 48-ft, and 53-ft (you can get 4.5-ft high and 9.5-ft high containers as well, but they aren't as common)
One idea would be to design an efficiency/studio apartment into a single container and build from that. ... excellent solution for low cost housing) For ideas see the floor plans for an RV or camper trailer.
If your lot is small you can stack units (12 wide by 3 high by 2 deep would take 1000 square feet for 72 studio apartments
Another method is to turn each container into a space/spaces and connect them in any efficient/attractive method.
If lot size is not an issue and you are building a "single family home", you can arrange various sized containers around a central point and build a separate single space (or spaces) that connects all of the containers. Otherwise you can go up to 3 containers high. If you drive a "smart" car you can even have a semi-functional garage.
After spending 6 months diligently searching I finally found a vintage police box from ebay for my replica Tardis and now I have to comply with the laws of physics? WTF!?!
If I have seen further it is by stealing the Intellectual Property of giants.
Okay, for all the negativity about nonsense like law and building codes and safety, I have the perfect solution. Bury it!
Build a big pit when no one's looking and have your friends help drop it in the ground, cut open a hatch, put a well on it and bury the rest before day breaks. There will be absolutely nothing suspicious about you crawling in and out of the ground.
"Most people, I think, don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?"
If you build your own house, you should be able to build it however you like. Caveat emptor!
I already did this and please, do it again. Share ideas. Read about our Tiny Cottage and how we built it here:
http://flashweb.com/blog/tag/tiny-cottage
Now I'm building a slaughterhouse and butcher shop for our farm and you can read all about how to build one yourself here:
http://flashweb.com/blog/tag/butcher-shop
You will need a foundation that passes code. eg. concrete, forms, below frost line, utility rough ins, etc. This part will likely cost 10-15K USD. figure another 5-6K for utility connections with the city(of course this varies greatly by location.) Where I live (southern Colorado) town water and sewer can cost 10-15K for the connection only!
Next buy your train car. Find one that is not rusty or crunched. Good luck with that. Trains are run until they cost to much to fix. Arrange to have it delivered and you will likely need a crane to lift it from the truck to your foundation. I can only guess what this will cost... maybe 5K?
You will have to engineer some method to secure the car to your foundation (actually this should have been figured out before you poured it!) You will probably have to bring in a structural engineer to design something. You can bet the inspector will not allow anything that has not been signed off on by a PE.
You're about $40K in the hole now, not counting the price of the car, but now you can start the fun stuff. This is where your imagination and skills will define where you go. I think at this point you are looking a project similar to building an RV or a yacht. Plans for this kind of renno are around the innertubes. I'll leave it at that, good luck!
:q! Oh crap, not again...
Materials should be based, once again, on regional availability.
For the eco-friendly, homes have been built from many materials: earth, tires, bales of hay and a large variety of other materials. The availability of the materials should dictate the construction technique. Because of this large range of source materials, it will be very difficult to produce one difinitive design.
It might be best to settle for regional designs for various 'zones' of the world and work from there.
As to building dwellings from railway cars, they are, by their very nature, inefficient thermally and narrow ergonomically. You'd spend more time retrofitting them than building from scratch.
*** Don't be dull.***
Forget it. +5, 100% Funny. You don't get karma for funny.
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
Just get your city councilors to dome your city. If you get a double-glazed dome then your house doesn't have to keep in heat, or keep out rain, or not fall over in a strong breeze; so you could easily build the walls from paper (recycled of course) and the frame out of cardboard. Domed cities don't just mean cheaper housing : you never to carry an umbrella, you don't have increased car accidents when it rains.
Search Google for shipping container house
There's this hippie architect who's been building houses out of old tires and bottles for a century. They're pretty neat and extremely functional and completely self sufficient. Check out http://www.earthship.com/ and/or the movie Garbage Warrior.
Look into Cal-Earth (http://calearth.org/). The concept is simple; domes or vaults made of coils of adobe mixed with cement. A large house is cheap, damn near indestructible, and more energy efficient than any wood cube stuffed with fluff.
" My question to Slashdot is simple: what do you think I need to know before I begin?"
The answer to the question.
my aim is to make a cheap, recycled, sustainable building ...choose any two.
A better way of estimating is looking at people who did similar projects, and see what costs they had. Expect to be in the upper range if you're a first-timer.
(an interesting phenomenon from psychology: when you ask people to estimate the time/money they need, you get a vastly different answer than when you ask how much time/money other people in similar situations need)
Last I heard you still need septic off the grid. Unless you were planning to use an outhouse.
And you'll NEVER get any hot chicks to come to your groovy off-grid house if you only have an outhouse.
This cie is doing house from containers, lots of info on there web site, I'm note related to them and never use there services but they seem to have a good product.
http://www.maisonidekithome.com/index_en.php
Bye.
Linux, un systeme qui a du caractere !
For aesthetics and uniqueness, it's a great idea. But as an eco-friendly idea, it's terrible. Such things as tube cars, shipping containers, etc are far more ecologically valuable as recycled material for things that can not be built with sustainable materials such as machine parts, tools, soda cans, and a million other things. Plus, you'll need to add additional materials, many of which are unlikely to be eco-friendly, to make the tube car a comfortable and energy efficient residence. Overall such a project is likely to cost the environment far more than it saves. Recycling is only eco-friendly when it's used to make things that can only be made from finite materials.
A much more eco-friendly pursuit than using recycled materials for building is to use renewable building materials.
A guy in Arkansas who is pushing to build support for a ballot initiative or Senate bill to legalize industrial Hemp (he apparently owns a ton of farmland and figures with all the states passing Medical Marijuana laws that it'd be a good idea for Arkansas to get it's foot in the door first where some real money could be made from pot, industrial use) built a 4000 Sq ft house, made entirely from the yield of 6 acres of Hemp which was grown in France in 5 months on an one of those ultra eco nut job farms where they capture cow farts for power and such. The only things (other than things like appliances) not made from a sustainable material is the wiring which is made from recycled copper and some lime and cement that is mixed with Hemp to make the concrete, spray-in insulation and drywall. Even the windows are made from some kind of Hemp based plastic and apparently make the house very energy efficient as they are far less thermally conductive than glass.
Being able to grow an entire house in less than 6 months with almost no ecological impact is pretty damn impressive.
I concur, that is a very good book that covers city planning, layout of individual buildings, and construction techniques. The book is structured as several hundred rules-of-thumb, along with a page or two of justification for each one.
I have a friend that has put up a number of straw bale homes, it is the best thing going in sustainable building in my opinion. Sturdy, Practical and insanely cheap to heat and cool since the R value of the structure is astronomical.
Got Code?
OK! Confess!
You are the little pig that built his house of bricks aren't you?
Visit Centre for Alternative Technology (CAT) in
http://www.cat.org.uk/
all been done before, in various materials and they know how is already there.
They have the data you need. They have built sustainable houses.
http://www.cat.org.uk/
sorry, I posted anonymously by error.
Data on sustainable houses and buildings available from C AT, Centre for Alternative Technology, with examples built already on their mountaintop in Wales!
Regards Eion MacDonald
Building underground has many advantages. The most obvious is insulation. For those who live in the mid-west: There is the added benefit that your house will not get blown away. There are some excellent resources available for those who wish to build underground: http://www.williamlishman.com/underground.htm If your looking for something that lasts 1000 yrs - subterranean is your best bet. Here is another great example of a subterranean house: http://www.homesandcottages.com/ExtremeHomes/tabid/138/Default.aspx?ArticleId=168#
Apparently, some people tried the same idea but with a boeing