Build a House Out of Recycled Cardboard 371
Uosdwis writes "Well for a better environmental option to a new house that is affordable, "low cost". Australia architects Stutchbury and Pape have created a house out of recycled cardboard, Velcro, nylon wing nuts and tape. Also , most of the house is recyclable too. It can be built in six hours by two people and can be transportable in a light commercial vehicle. Viva homeownership!" We had a story a few years about a school built out of cardboard.
Blah screw cardboard!!! (Score:2, Funny)
Oh, and by the way, I can just imagine the SLOGAN:
"Cardboard houses: Not just for homeless anymore!"
Re:Blah screw cardboard!!! (Score:4, Funny)
I wondered where all the animals went in that picture.
They huffed and they puffed... (Score:3, Funny)
I wondered where all the animals went in that picture.
Re:Blah screw cardboard!!! (Score:2)
Re:Blah screw cardboard!!! (Score:2)
-an archaeologist on a dig or an anthropologist in the middle of nowhere who wants more than a tent, but moves often
-refugees displaced
Re:Blah screw cardboard!!! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Blah screw cardboard!!! (Score:2)
What can you afford? (Score:4, Insightful)
How many poor families are paying a lot more than $300 month and still have utility bills that the cardboard house doesn't need? Plenty, I bet. I bet you are too.
Politics of poverty (Score:4, Insightful)
You want to provide people a chance at home ownership, get rid of the bullshit local "building codes" that exist for no other reason than to keep contractors and hardware stores in business. There are homes all over Euroupe, Asia, and the Mideast that have stood for hundreds of years and are made of nothing more than mud. Cob homes, in some parts of the world, are now becoming "fashionable" again and sought by well-to-do who want something with quality and character - attributes long lost to modern construction. But because building a cob home doesn't financially benefit anyone but the nearest dirt farm and an army of unskilled laborers, it's disallowed in just about any non-rural area in the US.
At the other end of the affordable/quality spectrum, you can buy a used trailer home in ths country for just a couple thousand dollars - but most local ordinances won't allow people to put these low cost homes on their own fucking property.
You want to afford poor people the opportunity to own their own homes, give them the freedom to do with their own property as they see fit. Set appropriate national MIMIMUM standards for sanitation and structural integrity and set barriers to local communities mandating higher, purely politically motivated, standards.
Re:Politics of poverty (Score:4, Insightful)
The real problem is licensing. More specifically, the laws prohibiting the hiring of unlicensed tradespeople. Plumbers in my area (of the US) get upwards of $100/hour. I could do a similar job (to code) for $10/hour, but it would be illegal for anyone to hire me.
Re:Politics of poverty (Score:5, Interesting)
As you imply, it's not the building codes that are at fault; it's the licensing and permits (which I rant about in another post).
What the parent was really talking about was not building codes, but rather CC&Rs (aka covenants). These have nothing to do with building codes, and everything to do with "maintaining property values". Except that last is being grossly overapplied, often in ways that don't make any sense.
One example was the requirement in some California communities that all roofs be cedar-shake, so they'd all look nice the same way. But cedar is a high-oil wood, and even with fire-retardant, it's like storing gasoline on your roof -- as the big Oakland fire finally demonstrated in terms that even CC&R enforcement fanatics could understand. (Over 900 houses burned, mainly due to the susceptibility of cedar shake roofs to ignition by flying embers.) Suddenly they were no longer so interested in forcing people with fireproof tile roofs to replace them with cedar shakes.
Another example: I once looked at buying some acreage out in the middle of nowhere. It was at the very end of the road, right next to the oil lease (hardly a thing of beauty), and not visible from any other buildable property. Nonetheless, the owner-before-last (who was an architect and general contractor) had put a shitload of CC&Rs on it, such as minimum house size (rather too large for the shape of the lot), type of fencing allowed, and get this, even the colour you could paint your mailbox!! Needless to say, I didn't buy the place.
In a world that actually gave a shit about affordable housing, this isolated acreage would have allowed inexpensive housing such as a trailer, or a house built of cardboard, straw, bottles, or whatever. In California, guaranteeing contractor profits trumps affordability and even common sense.
Re:Politics of poverty (Score:5, Insightful)
You seem to be a really paranoid person, do you actually really believe this in your conspiracy-theory mindset? Okay, sure building codes can be a real pain in the ass sometimes, but they are essential other times.It's the attitude like yours that encourages demolishing antique colonial-era houses to put up cookie-cutter rowhomes with vinyl siding. It's the attitude like yours that drives non-Americans to claim we have no culture.
Have you ever been to Santa Fe or Laos, in New Mexico? These cities are really cool because most houses are built of adobe. I'm not sure if city law requires this (it probably does), but it's really neat to walk around there and feel it. If someone dumped a few trailer homes in the middle if the adobe houses, it would ruin the character of the city. Do you think restrictions to preserve a city's character are there to keep the adobe hardware stores in business?
Another example is Savannah, Georgia. That city center is one of the most beautiful I've seen. It's one of the first planned cities in the USA, and there are lots of parks amidst all the ante-bellum character mansions. I don't know what kind of building codes exist there, but I do know that some hotel chains (I forget which) built hotels in the city center. These hotels were built very cheaply and stand our like a sore thumb against the rest of the city center. Again, do you think they should be able to build what they want, create eye-sores, destroy heritage and character, just to save a few bucks?
Okay, another example now comes from the neighborhood in Baltimore where my girlfriend and I just bought our house. This area is designated 'historic' by the city and state, and this is to preserve the historic character and charm of the neighborhood. (Our house is in the cheapest little corner of the entire neighborhood, most of the other houses there are huge mansions).
When you drive around this area, the houses are really pretty and quaint, and we want to preserve this character for the future. This means any major construction projects or paintings have to meet the approval of the architectural board. if we didn't do this, the character would be lost. Already some cheap-ass home 'flippers' (ie, they buy a house, do the cheapest shoddy renovations they can, and sell it for double the price later) tried to get away with very cheap non-characteristic 'repairs'. Luckily, most of their attempts failed. Note that this is only the outside appearance of the house. You are free to do what you want inside.
If you want to put up a trailer home to save costs, then you shouldn't be living in this neighborhood but in the thousands of other places that such a home would be allowed.
You might not be able to comprehend this, but there's actually character and culture here in the states, some of which is architectural. And it's not a conspiracy to want to preserve the living history.
Re:Politics of poverty (Score:3, Insightful)
The damn shame of things is that it's almost impossible to nicely made small house, sell it, and make a profit at it.
I've worked on a residential construction crew for two years, and it's the honest truth that it only take an extra half a week to frame a $200k house over what it takes for a $100k house, and 100k isn't even cheap yet. Maybe a week more than it'd take for a "cheap" $35k or $25k house. And you're still buying the same lumber, becaus
uh oh (Score:4, Funny)
Re:uh oh (Score:4, Informative)
"The building has been treated for both water, and fire, and strength. The strength tests they used were the following: (1) The strongest man in Great Britain took a sledge hammer to one of the tubes. It was only slightly dented. I'd imagine Lumber acts the same way when he takes a sledge hammer to it. (2) They built a test bridge out of the material, and drove a 1 ton van onto it, which did not dent at all. The fire test involved taking a flame thrower to untreated and treated cardboard. The untreated burned pretty good, but the treated charred, but remained physically mostly in tact (similar to lumber). Don't expect it to survive burning jet fuel, but it should do okay. The water test involved the local fire department hosing the place down with fire hoses. The inside remained dry, with no leaks or damp spots. However, its life is only expected to be 20 years. Which really isn't that bad, for a recycable building."
Seems pretty damn durable for a cardboard building. Cheap, relatively long lasting (for the material), environmentally friendly, these things would be cool to live in, although I can almost guarantee they won't take off.
Re:uh oh (Score:5, Funny)
except in a strong wind!
Re:uh oh (Score:2)
Re:uh oh (Score:2)
That depends, does it come filled with bubble rap?
Re:uh oh (Score:2)
That is irrelevant.You could have the crappiest, lousiest Turkish concrete in a tub, let it harden, and hav ethe WORLD'S strongest man hammer at ip and only 'dent it slightly'. If you put it in a roof, it might just collapse and kill a lot of people.
That description is about as un-scientific as they come and irrelevant to a
Hah! (Score:2)
People in cardboard houses....get burnt?
Ouch.
Re:Hah! (Score:3, Funny)
No, but getting burnt is
Re:Hah! (Score:2)
Wait (Score:2, Funny)
I shudder to think what the smell would be like if a toilet overflows.
The real beauty of this house (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Wait (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Wait (Score:2)
You mean when the cardboard catches fire???
Re:Ask someone who's homeless. (Score:2)
Yes, but no matter how good it is, this clearly doesn't have the thickness to possibly compare with the insulation of a normal house.
That said, this is a step-up from a tent, and clearly not meant to be heated/cooled to 72F degrees.
Re:Ask someone who's homeless. (Score:2)
Windows are the least insulated part of any building, but the heavy insulation in the rest of the building makes up for it as much as possible...
In other words, cardboard still isn't terribly good insulation.
Obvious... (Score:5, Funny)
Step 2 - Convince media that this is the future of housing materials.
Step 3 - Profit!
Price (Score:4, Interesting)
At a purchase price of just $35,000 this is a genuine short-term housing option that could be used in a variety of applications.
So, is that US $35,000 or AU $35,000?
If it's the latter, it's really quite cheap and could be helpful to build cheap, sustainable housing. Hell, I'm an out-door buff and I'd love to buy one of these that can be reused when I go on long treks and climbs.
Sure as hell beats living in a tent for weeks on end.
I can see folks like archaelogists loving this sort of thing - they go on long digs where they'd really need to set shop, and nothing would come close to something like this. Best of all, this provides for an excellent place for storing artifacts and the like and in setting shop.
However, I think that for Joe Regular to buy it, it would perhaps need to be a *little* cheaper - US $5,000 or so.
Re:Price (Score:2)
It's not going to last 30 years. But then, forking over 5k each year for a new house might be better than renting an apartment some POS 30 year old complex for 1050 a month.
Re:Price (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Price (Score:2)
No, it doesn't. But with the $7000 you don't need to spend on rent, you can buy a nice little piece of land somewhere (of course, land prices varry from place to place, and so does you milage).
The real costs of home ownership are property.
Maybe in some places, but I see house that costed a lot more than the land they sit on. But the depends on the house and the land.
And how'd a throwaway house become the enviromenta
Re:Price (Score:2)
Re:Price (Score:2)
Until I walk up with a pair of scissors, or better yet, a box cutter.
Re:Price (Score:3, Informative)
I hear ya... (Score:2)
It is either all built up, or "protected" (parks, designated wildland, and whatnot). Try $3,000,000 USD per acre.
My nice little 2400 square foot house has a market value north of $700K, so, figuing a replacement cost at $150 square foot or so, that leave my tiny 4800 square foot lot at about $3M/acre.
Of course, it could all be a bubble in values... Is it really true that, at the peak, Tokyo land was priced more than the entire contenental USA? I think I rea
Just how temporary? (Score:2)
short-term == until the next time it rains??? (Score:3, Funny)
At a purchase price of just $35,000 this is a genuine short-term housing option that could be used in a variety of applications.
Uh, "short-term", as in, "until the next time it rains"???
Building equity in the Bay Area (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Building equity in the Bay Area (Score:2)
Aww man! (Score:3, Funny)
I just took all my cardboard to the recycling center. There was a lot of it too. I could have at least build the first floor.
Ironic future? (Score:4, Funny)
High society will live in elegant, custom constructed cardboard houses, and people who are down on their luck will be found, living in alleys in shitty brick houses.
Um.... Re:Ironic future? (Score:2)
So, you're saying poor people with few possessions will stay in sturdy brick houses, whilst rich people with lots of expensive possessions will live in houses you can break into with an exacto knife?
Somehow I have my doubts :-)
In the U.S. (Score:3, Informative)
Seriously, for those of you who don't RTFA, You could live in one while your permanent house is being built or renovated, for emergency housing, or for short-term accommodation. That's about what it looks like, too. You wouldn't spend the rest of your life in one of these.
But the real question is, how much does this MacGyver house cost? At a purchase price of just $35,000 this is a genuine short-term housing option that could be used in a variety of applications. It is lightweight, transportable, requires no more skill to erect than an Ikea product, and is very affordable. That's about $27,000 [xe.com] US dollars.
Nice concept. Wake me when they're mass-produced.
Re:In the U.S. (Score:2)
Oh come now - here in Minnesota we call these suckers ice fishing houses [wikipedia.org]. Duct tape, old trailers, plastic tarps, cardboard - it is all good. Keeping in mind most of us consider ice fishing a drinking sport, so some of the shoddiest engineering you will ever see for shelter seems to make perfect sense.
Many fishing widows will claim we do actually live in these things... on second thought...
Re:In the U.S. (Score:2)
This isn't news (Score:3, Interesting)
Home sweet home (Score:2)
There always seems to be a disconnect between what people really need (a roof, a door to lock, three hots and a cot) and what society insists they need (a three-bedroom ranch with vinyl siding and brick trim).
If it were available, I'd live in a little A-frame like that. Shower at the gym, do de
Re:Home sweet home (Score:2)
Wasn't the resolution to this disconnect the "Projects" that are now being torn down everywhere because they became infested with seed and crime?
And just tell your aunt she can come out of the closet. Then you won't have to worry about it.
Re:Home sweet home (Score:3, Insightful)
No, that's a symptom of a tangential problem: give people something, and they don't value it. Easy come, easy go.
The Aussie A-frame fills a niche like the mobile home: a cheap place to buy. Trailer parks are seedy and crimeful too, but nothing like Cabrini Green was.
Re:Home sweet home (Score:4, Interesting)
Basically, yes. Believing that people really just need a door to lock and place to sleep lead to the rational (but wrong) conclusion that projects would be an efficient solution.
People need a roof over their heads, but even the lockable door is questionable: most people in my NYC apartment don't lock their doors.
Christopher Alexander and Jane Jacobs have both written about what makes a successful residence, and monolithic blocks of cookie-cutter apartments isn't it. You need a graduation of public to private areas, places for people to gather both as individuals and groups, 24-hour activity in some places, a mix of commericial and residential at all levels, inviting outdoor areas, good public transit, etc.
It's virtual impossible to "fix" a giant low-income apartment building, but here are a few things you could do:
1) Convert 1 apartment per floor into a convenience store. Have long hours, and staff it as much as possible with people from the building. You want people to meet their neighbors, and small stores are a good way to do it. An active store = more foot traffic = less crime.
2) Add day-care centers (1 per 10 floors or so.) A mother with a child can't get a job unless there is someplace to leave her kid now and then.
3) Add a small health clinic. This is cheaper than the hospital's ER.
4) Break up the homogeneity: make a few two-storey rooms. Make these micro-community centers that show movies, host lectures, religious services, birthday parties, etc.
There are hundred more things you could do, but all are concerned with moving from a concrete box full of little locked apartments to a community where people know each other.
Re:Home sweet home (Score:2)
Re:Home sweet home (Score:2)
I own a 3-BR house. No brick trim, though :-).
I'd go for an RV or a big boat.
Hurricanes? (Score:2)
That thing looks like it will fly away in a regular thunderstorm.
Thunder.. hmm. Lightning and cardboard. Yes. Good idea.
I think I'll stick to brick and concrete.
Re:Hurricanes? (Score:2)
Same sort of argument for lightning; when it causes a wall to explode by turning trapped water into steam, I'd rather have bits of cardboard exploding around me than pieces of wood or rubble.
Re:Hurricanes? (Score:2)
(aside: what MORON made Mozilla unable to handle tiffs by default, and refused
hoboes (Score:2)
That'd be a bitch
strictly non-smoking (Score:3, Insightful)
Fire? (Score:2)
Pffft! Weekenders! (Score:4, Interesting)
*cough* that's better. Now, the fact is that down the in (British) West Country, we've been building sustainable housing for years. here's a straw house [bbc.co.uk], for example - alas it fell foul of the planning regs and the local council are insisting it be demolished; but it'll be back up in a day or two.
Re:Pffft! Weekenders! (Score:4, Interesting)
In fact, not far from here stands what is thought to be the largest load-bearing straw bale structure in North America, the Robins' Nest Retreat [robinsnestretreat.com], and even closer is the straw bale home built by Chris Magwood of Camel's Back Construction [strawhomes.ca]. With Peter Mack, Magwood wrote Straw Bale Building, which is definitive, thorough, and recommended. (Magwood, incidentally, is off the grid.)
Of course, authorities are more likely to accept structures that are thought to be permanent and safe. (For example, a post-and-beam structure with straw bale infill is a known quantity in this area.) I would worry that tearing a house down quickly only proves that... it can be torn down quickly. Good luck.
And oh yeah, before someone asks: tests by the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation show that a properly built straw bale wall has a two hour fire rating - twice that required of conventional construction.
That's Nothing (Score:2)
There's a guy around the corner from my office who built a house out of an overpass and some plastic bags.
Neat... (Score:2)
something better (Score:2, Interesting)
adobe, a house made out of soil and clay...
(not the software company)
Die in a horribly predictable fire? (Score:4, Insightful)
Careful .... (Score:3, Insightful)
Seriously, I don't get this. We've got a reasonable solution for temporary housing, and it's not as wasteful as this. Mobile homes! They are cheaper, last longer, and are easier to setup and/or move. Admitted, a cardboard house is recycled, so we aren't chopping down a small stand of trees to produce it, but can't we re-use cardboard in another fashion? Is there a need to build a home out of cardboard? Overall, it seems like a good idea until bad things happen, and then a cardboard house isn't very appealing. Thieves, arsonists, storms, and the high cost make this unappealing.
Re:Careful .... (Score:3, Informative)
From the article it would seem that relatively little skilled labour would be required to erect this cardboard dwelling.... in 6 hours. Hard to beat the portability of a couple pickup loads that the neighborhood joes can put together. Sure it might not be so easy to move _again_ but I don't think that's the ma
Frank Lloyd Write and Lustron. (Score:2, Informative)
http://149849284.home.icq.com/frank%20lloyd%20wrig ht.html [icq.com]
All steel Lustron housing were another attempt at affordable housing.
http://www.oldhouseweb.com/stories/Detailed/12270. shtml [oldhouseweb.com]
Why a recyleable house? (Score:3, Insightful)
If you want to be environmentally friendly, why not build a wood house and keep it for 50 years?
My house is 50 years old (Score:5, Insightful)
I live in the snow region which, as of last year, had up to 3 foot deep snow ON MY ROOF. That the house occupies approximately 800 sq foot on the ground, thats about 3000 cubic feet of snow sitting above my head.
No offense to the posters of this article, but... That house is absolutely worthless in my region. But I'm sure that won't stop people from going on and on about how the US is a wasteful society and should model themselves after this... blah blah blah.
Parent is right. A house is a permanent structure and stays that way save for natural disaster, fire, or intentional destruction.
Now if you'll excuse me, I'll be wandering up onto the roof with another 400 lbs of salt soon- in preparation of the winter.
Old hat. (Score:5, Insightful)
Thomas Edison was playing with this idea almost 100 years ago (with concrete prefabricated house shells). The bad news is that a shed is still a shed. Unless you have damp course (to stop water from the soil) you will have serious problems with our friends the fungi. After WWII, in the UK, there was an attempt to rebuild infrastructure using "prefab" houses (mostly asbestos etc). Took a long time to get everyone out of what was supposed to be temporary housing even there in UK. Nice in theory, ugly in practice. Might be fun here in the med where its drier though...
Now, which island do i want my cardboard house on.
(2000+ to choose from)?
Cheers,
Andy Allen
Athens Greece
Re:Old hat. (Score:3, Insightful)
That's not determined by building materials. People have made sheds out of concrete or brick and palaces out of bamboo and paper. Many Europeans look at US wood construction as cheap, temporary housing, while Americans look at European concrete buildings and think of low-income government housing. A lot of this is cultural.
The deluxe model (Score:2)
The deluxe model is made out of recycled shopping carts, and rolls.
Technical issues (Score:5, Informative)
As far as waterproofing, it's actually quite economical to make corrugated products completely waterproof. Just last monnth I was at the TAPPI/AICC SuperCorrExpo in Atlanta. That's the every-4-years trade show for corrugated machinery. The booth across the aisle from one of mine had a laminating machine which can coat paper with polyurethane. They had a little waterfall display which showed how resistant the board was. http://www.kohlercoating.com/
There was a similar display in another booth but their sample was only coating the outer surface, not all surfaces during the corrugating process. Similar methods are used to ship some delicate vegetables packed in ice to grocery stores.
We have a patent on a metering machine which allows cold adhesives to be used during the corrugating process. All other methods use large amounts of heat and steam to soften the paper and get the glue (cornstarch) to stick. The "normal" method reduces the strength of the board. We've done experiments with our machine to use multiple layers of medium (the wavy paper in the middle) and various cold adhesives which result in corrugated board almost as strong as solid wood. It was so strong traditional knives in converting machinery could not cut it.
When we did those experiments years ago I wondered about the market for "disposable" housing. The design shown in this article is hideously awkward. I was thinking more about single-level block-type housing which could be made from standardized flat pieces of our super-strong board. Throw in the full waterproofing I've mentioned above and you'd have pretty good pre-fab with strength and environmental resistance somewhere between wood and steel with a fraction of the weight. I'd envisioned something sort of like the flat pieces of a gingerbread house. The edges could even be made notched to hold the boards in place while some form of glue and reinforcement could be used to join the boards.
Having said all of that, corrugated steel is highly transportable and darn strong. It would be as easily worked by hand but it's more durable than any wood-based product.
The sample shown in the article is a joke. There's no way to economically treat corrugated after it's made. You could immerse it in polymers and take care to force it through all the flute spaces but it will still have huge structural weaknesses and be vulnerable to water. The vast majority of paper fibers used to make corrugated and non-print-surface cardboard outside the U.S. use recycled fibers which are shorter than virgin and very weak. Recycling paper breaks the fibers down. Strength of paper comes from multiple adhesions of fibers and proper adhesive. Recycled board is just not suited for something like housing.
Re:Technical issues (Score:3, Informative)
GeoDome (Score:3, Interesting)
Using the inherent strength of the dome to compensate for the fact you are using paper
Could still use the same sort of techniques, and be 'portable'.... Plus you get more 'space' for the same amount of material.
I have nothing to say to j00. (Score:2)
Oh well.
Well, let's see, maybe I should punch in a whole bunch of other trash in here to take up lots of room and make it look like as though I got lots of stuff to be talking about, but as you can see, I am totally bored out of my mind and I have nothing interesting to say. Except that Windows XP is the suxx0rz because you have to type ipconfig instead of ifconfig.
Polystyrene (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Polystyrene (Score:2)
Potential Issues (Score:3, Interesting)
1 - Humidity resistance. Place the thing in humid conditions for a few years and let's see if there is any structural weakening or fungal growth. Normal cardboard will rot and absorb water from the air (making it heavier and weakening it structurally) very quickly.
2 - Flood damage. What happens if the thing goes under 1 foot of water. A normal house needs major interior repairs, but remains structurally sound.
3 - Insulation. Done right, cardboard is a decent insulator, and they can always put in extra, but for a house with a 20 year design life, I have a feeling that decent insulation has been omitted. The house also has a very low thermal mass.
4 - Paper Acid. Unless they're using acid-free paper to make the cardboard, the acid will eat and weaken the structure. Judging from how long books printed on paper with acid last, I'd say 20 years should leave the structure weak enough to be condemned. Of course, if they're using hemp cardboard, then they're in the clear (but it might get them into legal trouble).
5 - Wiring. Inverters don't grow on trees and using 12V wiring means much thicker wires will be needed. To provide 12kW of capacity (typical of a modern built house), the wires would have to sustain 1,000 A or current, which would entail some pretty fat wiring as well as precautions to prevent the self-impedence (which is substantial at 1000 amperes) from generating dangerous sparks. You'll also need an inverter for each of your appliances (unless you can find custom built 12V DC ones), and I just cringe at how expensive an inverter for central air conditioning is. Also, if you want to connect to the grid, you'll need a rectifier also capable of handling heavy loads. I really do wonder what they were thinking of using 12V. 12V is good for a boat or a car, but its got no place in a house.
6 - Hurricane and tornado resistance. If you live in hurricane country, I sure hope its tied down well, because that thing looks like it'll blow away being so light and having no foundation. Come to think of it, it probably acts a lot like a mobile home in a hurricane.
7 - Maintenance costs. I would disagree with their rosy outlook. If I have the normal amenities (air conditioning, heat, a computer, TV, telephone, cable), I'll be paying more per month for this house than a well built steel, concrete, or wooden house. High heating and cooling bills because of poor insulation. Unsightly wires because there's no place to hide them. Having to depreciate the thing over 20 years instead of the 100+ that a well built house will last. Hard to resell house, unless these things become very popular, so you'll take a big hit in moving unless you lug the piece of junk with you. If I were to buy a property with such cheap construction, it would be to get to the land, and I wouldn't pay a cent more than the land is worth minus demolition costs.
Re:Potential Issues (Score:3, Informative)
Electricity would be more expensive, but heating/air conditioning would not. Cardboard is actually a very good insulator, all things considered. That's why homeless "early cardboard housing adopters" in America prefer cardboard refrigerator boxes to many of the alternative living options available.
However, what I believe is the issue, is to create a form of
The Newspaper House in Massachusetts... (Score:3, Interesting)
The front of the grandfather clock incorporates newspapers from the capital cities of each of the (then) forty-eight states, all oriented so that the name of the paper and city neatly face forward and are readable, although the varnish has gotten quite dark with age.
The house survives today. It is just off by itself in on a little nondescript road. There is relatively little publicity. No visitor's area or parking lot, you just park on the street.
I don't think I would travel a great distance to see it, but if I were in the Cape Ann area I certainly would take a look at it. Well worth half-an-hour of anyone's time. You are aware of being in the presence of someone very original who by gosh knew what he wanted to do and did it.
More here and here.
(Oh, and I think the Forest Products Laboratory of Madison, Wisconsin also has or had a demonstration house built out of some kind of cardboard-like material).
hygienic aspects (Score:2, Informative)
A composting toilet system produces nutrient-rich water for gardening.
the chinese used human faeces in the past, this is known as 'night soil'.
although nutrient-rich, it has a very dangereous counterside: is spreads diseases. human bacils get on crops eaten by humans.. generally this is not a good idea.
i would have prefered some methane reactor that provides in heating and/or electricity.
Using fecal-fertilzer is from the past?! LOL! (Score:2)
Fuller? (Score:2)
Finally! (Score:2)
Something that will decoy the tornados away from mobile homes!
-- Terry
I knew it! (Score:2)
Isn't this about the size of a large tent? (Score:2)
Seems to me I'd want to start off in a Wal-Mart tent and get a pile of material delivered from the local Home Depot and build a real house before living in cardboard - isn't that the material of choice for the homeless? Seems to me if you had the rights to erect a stucture on a plot of land, you'd want to have somethi
Millions of those (Score:2)
Update on cardboard school (Score:2)
How about a BEER CAN house (Score:2)
Great for American Programmers (Score:2)
Re:Wouldn't this use more wood than wood? (Score:2)
Re:American elite would not accept cheap housing (Score:2, Interesting)
We typically build patio sunrooms out of plywood laminate and foam-core insulation (Styrofoam in the middle), but as it turns out, the material also can be used to provide extremely inexpensive housing for Mexicans whose houses were destroyed in an intense storm.
So yes, American corporations are behind such technology. It's very profitable.
Could such a product be used in the united states? No, you're probably correct, such a product would li
Re:American elite would not accept cheap housing (Score:2)
Re:This isn't a troll, I totally agree, damnit (nt (Score:2)
Re:This is so wrong, where do I start? (Score:2)
No, my comment was not completely, correct. I shouldn't have implied that the most powerful Americans institutions have consciously set out to make sure that this sort of housing would be impossible, but utimately, various forces associated with those instituions would ally themselves against any sort of housing that would be radically cheaper than what we have now.
Other forces would also come to bear: NIMBY, property-values forces....
I recognize that wives and children are the
Re:This is way overpriced (Score:2)
About 10 yesrs ago, architects from McGill University developped tunnel like houses, they were real houses, insulated for winter, heated, etc and they were selling for about 40 000$ CDN. I don't believe prices has sky rocketed, the land yes, but not material to build the house and plans were very simple, so, this is not very long to build one and it is even cheaper to manufacture them and just assembl
Re:less expensive option (Score:2)
"The YBE 2004 Houses of the Future project which will feature six houses, each made of a different base material. Each architect-designed house will be environmentally-sustainable, affordable and futuristic:"
So there are 6 houses, concrete [housesofthefuture.com.au], steel [housesofthefuture.com.au], timber [housesofthefuture.com.au], cardboard [housesofthefuture.com.au], glass [housesofthefuture.com.au] and clay [housesofthefuture.com.au].
I know the old joke, but that glass house looks cool!