Open Architecture Network

PROJECT DESCRIPTION:
http://howtolivewiki.com/hexayurt/ is the main web site. There you can see construction videos, read all about the building infrastructure package, the educational concept, rapid deployment options and many other areas.

Elevator Pitch
That picture? That's a $200 dollar building built by three people in two hours, and two of them had no training. Insulated, so it's cool in the sun and warm in the night, and lightweight so it can be relocated to a new place when the time comes to send people back to their homes.

Upgrade the materials and it will stand for decades.

For about another $100, we can provide a smokeless, energy efficient wood stove, sterile drinking water, electrical lights, and a working, sanitary toilet.

The technology is already here: volume is required to drive down the price, and we have not deployed these in the field yet, but US DOD and American Red Cross both love the design, so we're rolling forward as fast as we can.

Everything we have worked on is public domain (our stuff) or off the shelf products (our selected vendors.)

We use the open source development model, and put all of the material into the public domain so that anybody: NGOs, governments, individuals, for-profit companies, can develop and use this technology. It is too important to try and profit from.

Over to you.

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And now, the somewhat more elegant pitch.

In 2003, The Economist magazine selected Small is Profitable from the Rocky Mountain Institute as the Book of the Year. I helped edit that book, and went on to apply its lessons to a variety of humanitarian problems including disaster relief, the developing world, and US civil defense.

Small is Profitable is a book about energy economics, and centers around three arguments: that the national grid would not be built again if we were starting over with today's technology, that borrowing billions to build huge power plants is less profitable and effective than building many smaller units due to risk management and capital availability factors, and that in all cases energy efficiency is cheaper to buy than energy generating capacity.

Extending work done at RMI by Amory Lovins, Eric Rasmussen and Bill Browning, I created a housing system called the "hexayurt" that can provide essential services including housing, cooking and heating, sterile drinking water, sanitary toilets and electrical lights and small appliances for around $50 per head for the complete package. Because these essential services are provided on a house-by-house basis, with no large scale centralized physical plant (i.e. there is no diesel generator in the center of camp) the houses can be packed on trucks and transported if the population they are housing is moved or resettled. It becomes possible to divide up a refugee camp of 100,000 people into 1000 villages if the chance comes to send people home.

For example, the electrical infrastructure consists of one large solar panel per 40 homes. This panel is connected to a standard Rayovac 15 minute AA cell battery charger. People come to the charger with their empty batteries, wait in line until it is free, wait while their batteries charge and then take them home to plug into devices like small fluorescent light fixtures. These $7 lights run for about 14 hours on a full charge, enough light for two or three days. LED units with much longer lifespan and similar efficiency are coming to market soon. Cost per household is around $30 including a share of the solar panel and charger. Similar approaches provide all other basic services.

The building itself is a marvel of Scottish economy, costing as little as $100 for 166 sq. ft. ($0.60 per square foot)in mass production, or $200-$500 using off the shelf materials. The construction geometry is absurdly simple: diagonally cut six 4'x8' sheets into halves, and assemble them using industrial box closure tape into a roof. Place whole 4'x8' sheets below as walls. Because energy efficiency is cheaper to buy than generation, the building are insulated: they are made from an aluminum-faced insulation board called Thermax (from Dow.)

In field use it is possible to flat pack the cardboard version of the buildings down to about 500 per 20ft sea container. Refugee teams provide the labor to expand the cardboard and then build their own houses. Finally, all of the intellectual property associated with this project is in the public domain, except for what is embodied as off-the-shelf items like solar chargers. This means anybody, commercial or humanitarian, can build and deploy these units. Plans, videos and documentation are available online at: http://howtolivewiki.com/hexayurt/