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Hey, co-founder of Acre here sharing our wares. We make Zero-Energy Smarthomes as a consumer product. We are challenging the typical model, which produces unin

Hey, co-founder of Acre here sharing our wares. We make Zero-Energy Smarthomes as a consumer product. We are challenging the typical model, which produces uninspired homes that consume far too many resources: time, energy and money. Our idea is to treat the home-buying and home-building process more like a product. We offer NetZero homes that are simple and quick to build, for a fixed, competitive price nationwide. Our first offering is upmarket a la Tesla, but will offer our own Model 3 (i.e. lower price-point) sometime next year. Vision is to replace standard homes with high quality, beautiful smart homes that are powered by the sun. We'd love to get your feedback, especially about driving sales online—how can we get better at getting people to place deposits online? and about the longer term vision of housing: zero-energy, but also sharing economy, mobile lifestyles, density. We'd really appreciate hearing the thoughts and suggestions of this community! p.s. If any of you hackers are interested, we want to experiment with making homes that go all-out on automation and logging. We'll do that at no extra cost for anyone who found out about us through this thread.

newman314 11y ago
Do you leverage something like PassivHaus and if not, why not? EDIT: Also, the line about "the home being a status symbol but you get a smaller home for the feels and the same status symbol effect" struck me as odd and somewhat off-putting.
- andrewksu 11y ago
  Yes, started with PH and applied a formula to value engineer the end result. PH is a bit academic and we are exploring where diminishing returns kick in for R Value. For us air tightness takes a bit of precedence. Note taken: Point was to shift status from size to smarter lifestyle. It's always hard to see stuff when you live it. Thanks
  - newman314 11y ago
    Well, PH > LEED =) Would be great if you had some blog posts about the decisions behind the engineering. I'm pretty interested in this stuff and would be curious for example how you arrive at ZE given different consumption patterns with different people. I see a lot of people pointing at solar as their low hanging fruit whereas I'm much more of the mindset that minimizing temperature variance is much more important. Doing pretty good with my current house already but would love to see more pointers towards a more rigorous approach towards insulation, air tightness etc.
    - andrewksu 11y ago
      LEED is not my fav. Yes, blogging is due, much to share. Reducing consumption is first step, not getting caught up by what's cool is a big factor too. Rigor is required Imo, air tightness trumps r value. Hard to do either consistently with traditional construction. Stay tuned I'll try to more on the blog.
    - dangravell 11y ago
      The thing is, for the retrofit case ("current house") it's a different ballpark of complexity. The thing is, there's no technical question about Ph levels - ALL houses should be built to that standard. The challenge there is political. The technical challenges are in retrofit. You might find Energiesprong (http://energiesprong.nl/transitionzero/ http://energiesprong.nl/transitionzero/) of interest - basically factory manufactured walls with joinery, move to site, crane on.
  - dangravell 11y ago
    "Diminishing returns" for what? PH is an extremely worthy initiative, but I can't help think it's ripe for a bit of disruption. The whole certification process adds needless cost to a build/retrofit and doesn't help with the perception of high performance homes being expensive. There's no real reason PH has to be more expensive than anything else. Just that volume housebuilders won't be able to pay minimum wages to people they find on the street any more...
    - andrewksu 11y ago
      R-Values. Exponential going the wrong direction. After R-15 or so you slip into the long tail. Good article here- http://www.energyvanguard.com/blog-building-science-HERS-BPI/bid/76941/The-Diminishing-Returns-of-Adding-More-Insulation http://www.energyvanguard.com/blog-building-science-HERS-BPI... PH is performance based, but the religion is a bit excessive on R. I do greatly value the air tightness and the quantitative approach. High R-Value walls are tough to build and get expensive quick. Double wall, exterior sheathing, more parts, more fasteners, etc. We use SIPS walls/roof that have very good R, very little thermal bridging and outstanding air tightness while being fast to build.
conductr 11y ago
"how can we get better at getting people to place deposits online" I saw your site yesterday, was put off by the fact you're accepting deposits but most of the floorplans are not even available. Also, wasn't clear to me that these were "production ready". More than saying it, prove it (pictures, videos, etc). I'm not spending 500K on a beta product, that works for software not so much for homes. Even with Tesla's roadster, I had followed for a couple years before they ever sold one to the public. I didn't realize it at the time, but they did a long-term content marketing strategy. They talked about the technology, design, and a lot of teaser content. All that probably pulled in plenty of deposits but over the course of years as people saw the progress they were making and got excited. On your site - it felt like all I saw were renderings which make me think this is at an experimental stage. Is this house built to last? Will it work in my climate? Could I just hire an architect and replicate the same thing for half the cost? What's the mortgage process like for this? I felt like I had a lot of questions unanswered. I'm not really in the market but like to follow new home solutions. I think as you get questions from potential buyers, turn that into content to educate your audience. Talk about the materials, technologies, design considerations. I think you've probably done a lot of work that could get people interested, it's a long-term thing and I would think people have to be 100% confident in this product to put a deposit. Which leads to another thought, is a deposit the best CTA? Maybe have them schedule a sales/info call with someone? Ease them into it. Answer their questions. Edit: I revisited the site and see that you are leading with a sales call, but on my first visit when I saw "reserve now" and talk of the $10k deposit, I assumed the button was going to ask for my money. Might want to make it more clear that you just want to talk.
- andrewksu 11y ago
  We should have the second design with 3 new sizes up next week and a 3rd design in March. Check out the news section for a home we just completed with video of the build process. Maybe we'll push that up front a bit more. It's at a different price point, so have to battle that, but its good example. We'll also have a model home complete late summer and available for people to AirBnB. It's hard to map out all of the differences online and in text, but the open house we had for the last home left fantastic impressions. It will still be an early adopter audience, but we can add content to build confidence. Homes were designed for the Kansas City climate initially, so will handle most weather. Easily adapted for northern and southern extremes. A custom, architect designed home of this nature will cost much more and be a long process, we are trying to amortize those costs over many homes. Maybe a couple of comparisons would help gel the differences? It's tough trying to qualify buyers in this context with out being too blunt or too wordy. Experiment away! Thanks for your analysis!
maerF0x0 11y ago
Personally I'm most interested in quite small homes because thats what I'd likely be able to afford. Something on the order of $100k. Potentially your business model could be to build some of these, rent them out at market rates, but Acre profits based on how much maintenance/energy cost is actually saved. I know it'd be capital heavy, but it would force you to actually deliver the value you claim.
- andrewksu 11y ago
  The model would work, but it's a volume game. Not quite there yet. We would probably license the model and tech to regional organizations that could better respond to specific needs.
brudgers 11y ago
The hard problem of real-estate is that it's by definition local...in Theil's terms, each parcel is a monopoly. This means that the first order aspirational feature is location. Not design [that's why people will live in a small Manhattan studio for the same money they could by a ranch in Wyoming]. The homebuilding business is about controlling land. The big boys option hundreds or thousands of buildable lots a pop. In a metro area, that's still a drop in the bucket. Controlling that many lots justifies a sales center, in house financing, and creates one stop shopping. Land converters, those who subdivide land into residential lots, usually prefer to sell to home builders. It lets them deal with professionals and let the homebuilders who buy lots do all the high touch consumer sales or take the risk of building on spec. The consumer oriented home design business is likewise bimodal. The big spike is price sensitive: it's $500 online blueprints. Everything else is high touch. Money is no object clients are both rare and tend to be high maintenance. They must be cultivated socially...church, civic club, university homecoming, whatever. They have options...those with buildable lots have even more, including just sitting on it. Regarding taking deposits, there's almost certainly going to be contractor licensing laws in play. In the best case both a state homebuilder license and a local business license. In the worst case, a local homebuilder license and a local business license. Local homebuilders' associations are fairly active. They will report unlicensed competition. Legally, laws regarding construction are far more entrenched than those surrounding other disrupted industries...they go back to Hamurabi. Unlike a taxi or a rented room, construction is visible and can't be moved. The local fire marshal has seen people die. The local council woman wants to protect property values by preventing shoddy construction. Local home owners, want to keep construction out of their backyard, unlike an Uber they're not likely to become late adopters...it comes back to location. Technically, the amount of variation nationwide is massive. There is a combinatorial explosion of wind, seismic, snow, ASHRE, moisture, and aesthetic requirements and preferences. That's before touching soils...every site is potentially different. At best there are local and regional requirements regarding radon and frost depth. At worst, there's rock to muck on adjacent lots. Anyway, it's an interesting problem. Good luck.
- andrewksu 11y ago
  Herein lies the business model magic that hopefully give us an edge. We work with local builders, providing the fully designed/engineered packages, with ALL materials needed to build that specific high performance home. You are right, trying to do this in a fully centralized and detached from community is not workable. We think our take leverages the strengths of both parties and allows us to do this much more broadly. Regarding technical challenges, we engineer our SIPS shells for seismic by default and can accommodate most snow loads (Tahoe project in the works). HOA's are a PITA no doubt, but urban infill is possible and green field is always going on regardless. From floor down is all local and must be adapted, so not so turn key there But hey, can't have everything. Gotta run, but like your approach. Maybe more later.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

newman314 11y ago

Do you leverage something like PassivHaus and if not, why not? EDIT: Also, the line about "the home being a status symbol but you get a smaller home for the feels and the same status symbol effect" struck me as odd and somewhat off-putting.

andrewksu 11y ago
Yes, started with PH and applied a formula to value engineer the end result. PH is a bit academic and we are exploring where diminishing returns kick in for R Value. For us air tightness takes a bit of precedence. Note taken: Point was to shift status from size to smarter lifestyle. It's always hard to see stuff when you live it. Thanks
- newman314 11y ago
  Well, PH > LEED =) Would be great if you had some blog posts about the decisions behind the engineering. I'm pretty interested in this stuff and would be curious for example how you arrive at ZE given different consumption patterns with different people. I see a lot of people pointing at solar as their low hanging fruit whereas I'm much more of the mindset that minimizing temperature variance is much more important. Doing pretty good with my current house already but would love to see more pointers towards a more rigorous approach towards insulation, air tightness etc.
  - andrewksu 11y ago
    LEED is not my fav. Yes, blogging is due, much to share. Reducing consumption is first step, not getting caught up by what's cool is a big factor too. Rigor is required Imo, air tightness trumps r value. Hard to do either consistently with traditional construction. Stay tuned I'll try to more on the blog.
  - dangravell 11y ago
    The thing is, for the retrofit case ("current house") it's a different ballpark of complexity. The thing is, there's no technical question about Ph levels - ALL houses should be built to that standard. The challenge there is political. The technical challenges are in retrofit. You might find Energiesprong (http://energiesprong.nl/transitionzero/ http://energiesprong.nl/transitionzero/) of interest - basically factory manufactured walls with joinery, move to site, crane on.
- dangravell 11y ago
  "Diminishing returns" for what? PH is an extremely worthy initiative, but I can't help think it's ripe for a bit of disruption. The whole certification process adds needless cost to a build/retrofit and doesn't help with the perception of high performance homes being expensive. There's no real reason PH has to be more expensive than anything else. Just that volume housebuilders won't be able to pay minimum wages to people they find on the street any more...
  - andrewksu 11y ago
    R-Values. Exponential going the wrong direction. After R-15 or so you slip into the long tail. Good article here- http://www.energyvanguard.com/blog-building-science-HERS-BPI/bid/76941/The-Diminishing-Returns-of-Adding-More-Insulation http://www.energyvanguard.com/blog-building-science-HERS-BPI... PH is performance based, but the religion is a bit excessive on R. I do greatly value the air tightness and the quantitative approach. High R-Value walls are tough to build and get expensive quick. Double wall, exterior sheathing, more parts, more fasteners, etc. We use SIPS walls/roof that have very good R, very little thermal bridging and outstanding air tightness while being fast to build.

conductr 11y ago

"how can we get better at getting people to place deposits online" I saw your site yesterday, was put off by the fact you're accepting deposits but most of the floorplans are not even available. Also, wasn't clear to me that these were "production ready". More than saying it, prove it (pictures, videos, etc). I'm not spending 500K on a beta product, that works for software not so much for homes. Even with Tesla's roadster, I had followed for a couple years before they ever sold one to the public. I didn't realize it at the time, but they did a long-term content marketing strategy. They talked about the technology, design, and a lot of teaser content. All that probably pulled in plenty of deposits but over the course of years as people saw the progress they were making and got excited. On your site - it felt like all I saw were renderings which make me think this is at an experimental stage. Is this house built to last? Will it work in my climate? Could I just hire an architect and replicate the same thing for half the cost? What's the mortgage process like for this? I felt like I had a lot of questions unanswered. I'm not really in the market but like to follow new home solutions. I think as you get questions from potential buyers, turn that into content to educate your audience. Talk about the materials, technologies, design considerations. I think you've probably done a lot of work that could get people interested, it's a long-term thing and I would think people have to be 100% confident in this product to put a deposit. Which leads to another thought, is a deposit the best CTA? Maybe have them schedule a sales/info call with someone? Ease them into it. Answer their questions. Edit: I revisited the site and see that you are leading with a sales call, but on my first visit when I saw "reserve now" and talk of the $10k deposit, I assumed the button was going to ask for my money. Might want to make it more clear that you just want to talk.

andrewksu 11y ago
We should have the second design with 3 new sizes up next week and a 3rd design in March. Check out the news section for a home we just completed with video of the build process. Maybe we'll push that up front a bit more. It's at a different price point, so have to battle that, but its good example. We'll also have a model home complete late summer and available for people to AirBnB. It's hard to map out all of the differences online and in text, but the open house we had for the last home left fantastic impressions. It will still be an early adopter audience, but we can add content to build confidence. Homes were designed for the Kansas City climate initially, so will handle most weather. Easily adapted for northern and southern extremes. A custom, architect designed home of this nature will cost much more and be a long process, we are trying to amortize those costs over many homes. Maybe a couple of comparisons would help gel the differences? It's tough trying to qualify buyers in this context with out being too blunt or too wordy. Experiment away! Thanks for your analysis!

maerF0x0 11y ago

Personally I'm most interested in quite small homes because thats what I'd likely be able to afford. Something on the order of $100k. Potentially your business model could be to build some of these, rent them out at market rates, but Acre profits based on how much maintenance/energy cost is actually saved. I know it'd be capital heavy, but it would force you to actually deliver the value you claim.

andrewksu 11y ago
The model would work, but it's a volume game. Not quite there yet. We would probably license the model and tech to regional organizations that could better respond to specific needs.

brudgers 11y ago

The hard problem of real-estate is that it's by definition local...in Theil's terms, each parcel is a monopoly. This means that the first order aspirational feature is location. Not design [that's why people will live in a small Manhattan studio for the same money they could by a ranch in Wyoming]. The homebuilding business is about controlling land. The big boys option hundreds or thousands of buildable lots a pop. In a metro area, that's still a drop in the bucket. Controlling that many lots justifies a sales center, in house financing, and creates one stop shopping. Land converters, those who subdivide land into residential lots, usually prefer to sell to home builders. It lets them deal with professionals and let the homebuilders who buy lots do all the high touch consumer sales or take the risk of building on spec. The consumer oriented home design business is likewise bimodal. The big spike is price sensitive: it's $500 online blueprints. Everything else is high touch. Money is no object clients are both rare and tend to be high maintenance. They must be cultivated socially...church, civic club, university homecoming, whatever. They have options...those with buildable lots have even more, including just sitting on it. Regarding taking deposits, there's almost certainly going to be contractor licensing laws in play. In the best case both a state homebuilder license and a local business license. In the worst case, a local homebuilder license and a local business license. Local homebuilders' associations are fairly active. They will report unlicensed competition. Legally, laws regarding construction are far more entrenched than those surrounding other disrupted industries...they go back to Hamurabi. Unlike a taxi or a rented room, construction is visible and can't be moved. The local fire marshal has seen people die. The local council woman wants to protect property values by preventing shoddy construction. Local home owners, want to keep construction out of their backyard, unlike an Uber they're not likely to become late adopters...it comes back to location. Technically, the amount of variation nationwide is massive. There is a combinatorial explosion of wind, seismic, snow, ASHRE, moisture, and aesthetic requirements and preferences. That's before touching soils...every site is potentially different. At best there are local and regional requirements regarding radon and frost depth. At worst, there's rock to muck on adjacent lots. Anyway, it's an interesting problem. Good luck.

andrewksu 11y ago
Herein lies the business model magic that hopefully give us an edge. We work with local builders, providing the fully designed/engineered packages, with ALL materials needed to build that specific high performance home. You are right, trying to do this in a fully centralized and detached from community is not workable. We think our take leverages the strengths of both parties and allows us to do this much more broadly. Regarding technical challenges, we engineer our SIPS shells for seismic by default and can accommodate most snow loads (Tahoe project in the works). HOA's are a PITA no doubt, but urban infill is possible and green field is always going on regardless. From floor down is all local and must be adapted, so not so turn key there But hey, can't have everything. Gotta run, but like your approach. Maybe more later.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]