3 ms·

I like the fact that they are extremely cheap to manufacture and also to maintain. With housing shortage in many parts of the world, could this be a solution f

by sgt 3y ago

I like the fact that they are extremely cheap to manufacture and also to maintain. With housing shortage in many parts of the world, could this be a solution for the poor? You could even stack them on top of each other like marbles (assuming an edging so they don't roll off), and be able to use a very small space for hundreds if not thousands of dwellings. Electricity and network could be done by using a meshing technology.

RhodesianHunter 3y ago
Something being individually cheap does not mean that it'd be cheaper to make and stack a bunch of them then say, a regular old apartment complex. Also, "cheap housing for poor people" has a bad habit of becoming "projects".
c22 3y ago
How would you get to the doors?
interdrift 3y ago
there is absolutely nothing wrong with the commie blocks we have in Bulgaria other than the need to fix the facade. They are extremely cheap to mass manufacture, build and also they easily can last 100 years with enough living space for everyone. This already works, it's just not done due to regulations in many countries.
CyberDildonics 3y ago
The shell of a house is not where most of the cost goes. Why would stacking spherical shells like marbles be cheap?
jillesvangurp 3y ago
This particular form factor seems inefficient. But there is quite a bit of innovation in the area of building pre-fabricated homes for refugees. These are popping up in a lot of places. Including the Ukraine recently. And of course there are also some high end options that are popular for building bespoke houses in e.g. the Scandinavian and North American markets. Basically, pre-fabricated housing is a solved problem from a technical point of view. Cheap to manufacture, easy to deploy, and pretty comfortable to live in. If you think about it, there are numerous viable ways of providing people with some form of shelter to shield them from the elements. Mostly the issue is not technical challenges but the fact that there's a lot of local push back against the deployment of any form of cheap housing projects in a lot of places. This has nothing to do with their pricing (cheap) or quality (pretty decent) but with the level of protectionism in place to guard prices of existing houses. Solving cheap housing would collapse prices. That's why you don't find trailer parks in richer parts of the US. However, they are very popular as semi-permanent slums in less rich parts and have been so for many decades. Tens of millions of people live in those actually. Just mostly not anywhere near where the housing shortages are the most urgent.
c4mpute 3y ago
There is a logical, sensible, cheap, commercially available form of housing that you can prefab, stack, transport: 40ft-housing-containers. Those are normal 40ft sea containers with a housing interior. You can load them onto anything that can transport such a container, nothing exotic or problematic, just run-of-the-mill reach stackers, trucks, ships, etc. They are cheap because 40ft-containers are mass-produced, and you can make them either out of new cheap container parts or reuse an old one into a home. Electricity is usually a 32A-3phase-CEE-connector in every corner which can also be used to chain multiple containers. What is trickier is fresh/waste-water connections, but also not really a huge problem. Biggest problem with those right now is that manufacturers are overwhelmed due to demand for refugee housing in Europe.
- danjac 3y ago
  What about insulation? A steel box in a heatwave won't be much fun either. Are there solutions for heating/cooling container homes?
  - c4mpute 3y ago
    Same as for e.g. refrigerated containers (reefers), you add foam or glass wool cladding. Heating and cooling can be done with the usual heatpump/AC machines available.
- timbit42 3y ago
  Cutting doors and windows into a sea contain compromises it's strength.

by sgt 3y ago

RhodesianHunter 3y ago

Something being individually cheap does not mean that it'd be cheaper to make and stack a bunch of them then say, a regular old apartment complex. Also, "cheap housing for poor people" has a bad habit of becoming "projects".

c22 3y ago

How would you get to the doors?

interdrift 3y ago

there is absolutely nothing wrong with the commie blocks we have in Bulgaria other than the need to fix the facade. They are extremely cheap to mass manufacture, build and also they easily can last 100 years with enough living space for everyone. This already works, it's just not done due to regulations in many countries.

CyberDildonics 3y ago

The shell of a house is not where most of the cost goes. Why would stacking spherical shells like marbles be cheap?

jillesvangurp 3y ago

This particular form factor seems inefficient. But there is quite a bit of innovation in the area of building pre-fabricated homes for refugees. These are popping up in a lot of places. Including the Ukraine recently. And of course there are also some high end options that are popular for building bespoke houses in e.g. the Scandinavian and North American markets. Basically, pre-fabricated housing is a solved problem from a technical point of view. Cheap to manufacture, easy to deploy, and pretty comfortable to live in. If you think about it, there are numerous viable ways of providing people with some form of shelter to shield them from the elements. Mostly the issue is not technical challenges but the fact that there's a lot of local push back against the deployment of any form of cheap housing projects in a lot of places. This has nothing to do with their pricing (cheap) or quality (pretty decent) but with the level of protectionism in place to guard prices of existing houses. Solving cheap housing would collapse prices. That's why you don't find trailer parks in richer parts of the US. However, they are very popular as semi-permanent slums in less rich parts and have been so for many decades. Tens of millions of people live in those actually. Just mostly not anywhere near where the housing shortages are the most urgent.

c4mpute 3y ago

There is a logical, sensible, cheap, commercially available form of housing that you can prefab, stack, transport: 40ft-housing-containers. Those are normal 40ft sea containers with a housing interior. You can load them onto anything that can transport such a container, nothing exotic or problematic, just run-of-the-mill reach stackers, trucks, ships, etc. They are cheap because 40ft-containers are mass-produced, and you can make them either out of new cheap container parts or reuse an old one into a home. Electricity is usually a 32A-3phase-CEE-connector in every corner which can also be used to chain multiple containers. What is trickier is fresh/waste-water connections, but also not really a huge problem. Biggest problem with those right now is that manufacturers are overwhelmed due to demand for refugee housing in Europe.

danjac 3y ago
What about insulation? A steel box in a heatwave won't be much fun either. Are there solutions for heating/cooling container homes?
- c4mpute 3y ago
  Same as for e.g. refrigerated containers (reefers), you add foam or glass wool cladding. Heating and cooling can be done with the usual heatpump/AC machines available.
timbit42 3y ago
Cutting doors and windows into a sea contain compromises it's strength.