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Pop-Up House: The affordable passive house
- tekknolagi 13y agoSee also: http://netzero.io http://netzero.io
- ph0rque 13y agoThis concept would be awesome as a tiny house. My 7-year-old daughter just asked me the other day, "We can build a tiny house when I'm 11, right?" So I have another four years before I need to do something like this in tiny house form.
- carlosrt 13y agoFor those of you that didn't realize "Tiny House" was a thing, here's a fb list I created of Tiny Houses: https://www.facebook.com/lists/4064803732495 https://www.facebook.com/lists/4064803732495 ph0rque, your AutoMicroFarm side project looks interesting. It's a idea I think about often. Instead of an upfront purchase of the hydroponic system, a SaaS model might increase adoption. e.g. You charge $100 per month to manage the customers vegetable garden. Basically, it's a hack. The farmer just hacked a way to farm w/o having to own land, pay for water or utilities, and gets paid regardless if the crop fails. Farmer earns ~$100 per hour per customer, and can scale. Inspiration for idea: Our local non-tech gardeners.
- ph0rque 13y agoThanks for the idea, Carlos. We've already considered a variant of it, but not a full AaaS (Aquaponics as a Service) idea. We'll give it some serious thought.
- tofof 13y agoSuspiciously absent from photos: plumbing and electrical. What good is 'outstanding insulation' with no heating/cooling?
- jonsen 13y agoNo heating? There are human bodies in there. A passive house is a building whose energy consumption per square meter is very low. Heating requirements of < 15 kWh/m²/year. That's about two human bodies. 15 kWh/m²/year * 150 m^2 / ~10,000 h/year ~= 200W
- aarkling 13y agoyou'll still need electricity for your laptop, microwave, fridge etc.
- brianbreslin 13y agoI wonder what the earthquake/hurricane/storm strength of this stuff is.
- torvald 13y agoThey offer a few words on earthquakes. Strong winds on the other hand - I'm guessing «Its lightness, lack of foundations…» is not going to help. http://www.popup-house.com/useful-life/ http://www.popup-house.com/useful-life/
- ATLobotomy 13y agoAll that styrofoam makes me wonder if it would float.
- jrjr 13y agoI thought boat as well, maybe it's a feature.
- darklajid 13y agoI like the design, and like the speed. I even like the music in the video. But I cannot avoid thinking of the wolf, huffing and puffing and .. blowing that thing away. How stable is that thing?
- protomyth 13y agoI'm with you on this. This is the type of thing needed in North Dakota, but I doubt it would handle the wind up here. Also, where is the plumbing and electrical?
- bluthru 13y agoLook up "SIPS" for more info on this building technique. They're surprisingly robust.
- icefox 13y agoBut the video didn't actually really show you much of anything. The first 20 seconds were straight up pointless. Anytime they showed information it was in text that was way too small unless you watched it full screen on your desktop. They were saying stuff, but at the same time not saying stuff. Why did they make choice X,Y,Z. How low cost is it? How long will it last? What trade offs are there, etc.
- copergi 13y agoNo thermal mass makes for a horrible passive house.
- hudibras 13y agoI'm going to go out on a limb here and say that there's no way this is a passive house. No data (temps or energy consumption) and a concept (lots of insulation and nothing else) that's been tried many times and always fails.
- georgeoliver 13y agoThey're using the term passive house to mean the 'new wave' passive house, which is more about super-insulating a nearly airtight envelope. Usually a heat-recovery ventilator is added to recover interior heat when cycling in outside air. While thermal mass can be an element in this design it's not a major factor like in a 'passive solar' house.
- copergi 13y ago>which is more about super-insulating a nearly airtight envelope That last part is the problem. Insulation is a huge part in any passive home, but heating the air means keeping things airtight. Which means terrible air quality and living conditions.
- georgeoliver 13y agoYou still exchange the air with the outside, you just do it through a heat recovery ventilation system. An introduction: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_house http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_house
- copergi 13y agoI am fully aware of what they are, we stopped building them for a reason. They are hell to live in. You get the bare minimum air exchange as required by code. Try being in such a building for a day. Properly constructed passive buildings use thermal mass to maintain comfortable temperatures while allowing proper ventilation.
- scjody 13y agoLVL on grade? How is that not going to rot? You could probably get around that by pouring a slab with small stem walls and building inside that, but that's not what they're doing here...
- bluthru 13y agoThey're resting on posts. It's quite close to the ground, but I'm sure that the site grading allows for that. It's interesting that when you're dealing with this high of insulation, the earth would act as a thermal bridge instead of an insulator.
- jrjr 13y agoagree, their choices are plain stupid. fantasy island construction, but it might make a good shed if you ditch the lvl's on grade
- grannyg00se 13y ago" It must: – Have strong thermal insulation without thermal bridges, – Be perfectly airtight, – Capture maximum solar energy. " Perfectly airtight? With wood and insulation?
- benjamincburns 13y agoI guess affordability is relative. Last I checked, air locks were pretty expensive.
- andrewliebchen 13y agoIt's realtive for buildings. Air-tightness is measured in air changes/hour, which measures how many time per hour the internal air of a structure is completely replaced my external air. Normal construction has 3 ac/h, if it recall. I bet they're aiming for anything lower than 1 ac/h.
- grannyg00se 13y agoOh. That's interesting. It would read much better if they specified the ac/h rating they are referring to. It would also provide some actual information rather than a statement that sounds insane.
- grannyg00se 13y agoThese alternative house construction strategies always get my attention. But the real tough part is finding affordable and desirable land upon which to build one.
- codezero 13y agoI've said this on previous threads, the problem isn't the availability of cheap building material or designs, it's the availability of cheap land. There's no pop-up property unfortunately.
- throwaway344 13y agoCould you expand on what you mean by availability of cheap land? It seems to me that despite the problems with suburban sprawl, it did exploit cheap availability of land that is generally available at the edges of cities. Especillay consiering the vast quanties of land that is rural in the US. More stats about land usage can be found at http://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/major-land-uses.aspx#.UyUI8fldWSo http://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/major-land-uses.aspx#....
- pfitzsimmons 13y agoTwo of the biggest factors in our happiness are a) the quality of your job b) the duration/stress of your commute. America faces a shortage of plots of residential real estate that are within a reasonable commute of quality of jobs. And you need to be in commuting distance of an abundance of good jobs, because job conditions at any one company can change fast, leaving you stuck. Suburban sprawl worked for a while, but in many metros the cheap land is so far out that the commuting times are horrendous.
- contingencies 13y agoAs a remote worker, I don't commute. Therefore, I'm presently negotiating the purchase of hundreds of hectares of 50-year regenerated native forest in northern New Zealand. Price is <$1000/hectare, which is not expensive in western terms. However, my wife refuses to live there for the moment on account of the relative isolation - it's about 3.5 hours to Auckland. Because it needs a dwelling, I've been researching building over the last few years and have come to the conclusion that I'd like to try straw bale. As long as you keep it dry, you get all the high r-value (insulation) benefits of a passivhaus without being limited to modernist finishings, mass-produced truck-hauled materials and straight lines. Plus, it's surprisingly more fire and earthquake proof than pretty much anything else.
- the_cat_kittles 13y agoFor lots of stuff along these lines, Kirsten Dirksen has alot of interesting videos on youtube where she explores cool houses: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCDsElQQt_gCZ9LgnW-7v-cQ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCDsElQQt_gCZ9LgnW-7v-cQ
- cpeterso 13y agoAre there more environmentally-friendly alternatives than polyurethane foam insulation? The insulation in my home include recycled jeans material.
- bluthru 13y agoThis looks pretty interesting: http://www.ecovativedesign.com http://www.ecovativedesign.com
- dredmorbius 13y agoCellulose, rock wool, and fiberglass all come to mind. Jeans would be cellulose.
- markvdb 13y agoBoron treated paper. One popular EU make is Isofloc. When building new, you may also want to consider straw bale construction. https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Straw_Bale_Construction https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Straw_Bale_Construction is slowly improving.
- stefek99 13y ago> For the structure and insulation of a PopUp-House building (floor, walls and ceiling) it costs about 200 €/m² including labour. To this cost must be added all the finishes: waterproofing, exterior finishes, interior finishes, electricity, plumbing, heating, etc. What would be the total total cost then?
- adanto6840 13y agoAccording to Google... 200€ = 278.08 US Dollars 1 meter = 3.28084 feet So.. 278.08 dollars gets you 3.28084 sq ft, or about $84.76 per single square foot (278.08/3.28084)... If I did my math right. ;-)
- dstaley 13y ago200€/m² = $25.85/ft² http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=200+%E2%82%AC%2Fm%C2%B2+in+USD%2Fft%C2%B2 http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=200+%E2%82%AC%2Fm%C2%B2...
- DennisP 13y agoPlus all the finishes. What do those cost in a standard house?
- georgeoliver 13y agoAccording to the NAHB [1], construction is about 60% of a house's cost (the rest eaten by land, financing, etc.). Of construction cost about 20% is foundation, framing + insulation (what we have in this design). For this particular design it's not just all the finishes though, since you still need plumbing, electrical, etc. [1] http://www.nahb.org/assets/images/Table1_201035133529.jpg http://www.nahb.org/assets/images/Table1_201035133529.jpg
- kevin_p 13y agoPet peeve: "about 200 €/m² including labour" is not supposed to be accurate to 4 significant figures - and even if it was, the EUR/USD exchange rate varies by more than that from day to day. "$25 / square foot" is much better if you treat it as a translation rather than mindlessly plugging numbers into a calculator. (Maybe I'm just being a grumpy old man, but I deal with this sort of thing all the time in my day job and it winds me up something rotten).
- mattholtom 13y agoI have a suspicion that once they encounter and solve all of the challenges associated with building houses (mold, cost, weather, a second floor) they will end up approaching a pretty normal modern residential construction.
- jamiesonbecker 13y agoUnless that PSE allows water vapor, this house can't breathe. Even in a dry climate, it will eventually get mold and mildew building up inside.
- ars 13y agoDid they leave the foam exposed when they were done? That's not really a good plan. They don't prepare the ground first? Isn't the house going to sink during the first heavy rain?
- bdirgo 13y agoand what about poop?
- bananas 13y agoHaving done a lot of camping in my time, this was the first thing I thought as well. If you haven't got somewhere to poop and somewhere to get rid of it, life is miserable. Believe me, burying it isn't fun. Seems like one of those idealistic almost art project houses rather than something you could actually live in.
- dcc1 13y agoIt absolutely amazes me how all houses in US seem to be build with 100% wood, especially in areas with termites, dryness or possibilities of hurricanes! It is not that much more expensive to build a solid concrete block home, insulate and airtight it well I realise wood is more plentiful in US than here in Europe, but imho i wouldnt feel safe living in a wooden home.
- dm2 13y agoTraditionally concrete really wasn't that much stronger without rebar and is much more dangerous if something does collapse. Wood use to be much cheaper because it requires special knowledge to create strong concrete. The wooden walls also allow for pipes and utilities to be easily ran. How do you run utilities into concrete homes? The ones I've seen are either exposed or behind a wooden wall. The US has a large amount of brick homes, but it's usually wooden walls on the insides so it ends up costing more. It's also more difficult to make a concrete block home look good, and since there aren't too many major storms in many parts of the US, cheap wooden homes work fine. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Fire_of_London http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Fire_of_London might also be a reason why Europe prefers concrete to wood.
- bananas 13y agoActually I think our weather and ground is favorable as well as clay being abundant. I imagine wood is more abundant in the US seeing as we either protected or chopped down our forests.
- chiph 13y agoA building material that is in common use in Europe, but hasn't really caught on here is foamed concrete (Autoclaved Aerated Concrete, technically). They're large blocks that can be mortared together and can be worked with powered woodworking tools (drills, circular saws, etc) to make cavities/channels for utilities. They need some additional reinforced concrete to make them hurricane proof, but they're very fire resistant, are quiet, and go up relatively quickly. It's more expensive but lasts longer than wood framing. The brick and stone homes here are actually masonry facade over wood frame. You need to have an air gap and flashing between the brick/stone and the wood, as water will seep through the mortar via capillary action fairly quickly, and stay there to rot the wood. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1m5VShzxYs http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1m5VShzxYs
- adrianlmm 13y agoWhere is the bathroom?
- bigd 13y agoremovable house: come back from holidays someone has stolen your house
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