Wednesday, October 12, 2016

How To Build Your Own Starter Home in Five Steps for $25,000

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Having a home to call your own is a luxury we often take for granted. Owning your own home is something many people build life goals around, and designing your very own abode a highly sought dream. But the often prohibitive costs make buying a home, never mind creating one, a mere fantasy for many people.

In a day and age where sustainability is becoming increasingly popular and, arguably, essential for our continued survival, it’s inspiring to hear of ways people are changing economic restraints and environmental concerns. Open source advocate and maker Catarina Mota and inventor Marcin Jakubowski are working to turn the dream of accessible and affordable eco-housing into a reality with their Open Building Institute Eco-Building Toolkit.  The duo have built many prototypes thus far, and have also tested their idea via a series of educational builds.

Check out the duo’s Kickstarter page to learn more about their mission and give your support, and learn about the five simple steps to building your own starter home below:

build your own home

1) Design an open source preservation of modules. 

Every part of the house is meant to be built separately. Each essential piece can then be put together like building blocks. You can start with a 700-square-foot starter home complete with ecological features such as: rainwater catchment and water filtration, solar panels, efficient LED lighting, bricks produced from your own soil, passive solar heating, and biogas. You’ll spend less than $25,000 on these materials, and can then add on things like an aquaponic greenhouse to grow your own food. As your family and bank account grows, you can adjust your home to meet your needs and desires.

build your own home

2) Educate and train people on this building process. 

Some people want to know how to build their own house, while others would like their own house to be built for them. OBI merges the two by providing intensive training programs that give home owners the chance to learn how to construct the modules and homes. After certification, people can then be contracted to build more homes.

build your own home

3) Construction is paid for. 

The fees from the training programs allows OBI to remove the cost of construction for the homeowner, as well as turn the immersion learning workshop experience for participants into financial support for OBI.

“All you need is a plot of land connected to a utilities infrastructure and a workshop space. A group of people — around 35 — who have signed up for an OBI immersion course show up to learn,” explains Marcin. “We teach them how to do the build using cordless drills and a number of saws and normal big-box store materials, which would be ordered by the homeowner and delivered. Then we assemble the pieces needed for the house, including modular electric wiring and plumbing, and install them rapidly in place.”

build your own home

4) Help people become debt free. 

Growing a house in increments makes for housing security without the threat of debt. “We’re creating a bridge between the tiny house and the mansion,” notes Catarina. “The system is designed to grow towards the bigger house that you may need one day down the road. Right now, the housing market only has one offering, which is a really big, expensive house. There’s a lack of starter homes. The incremental build approach offers an alternative.”

build your own home

5) Incorporate open source hardware and aesthetic design. 

OBI is using the Kickstarter campaign to continue on to the next level of development, which is producing simple instructional diagrams for every module and building, working with architects to construct more design options, and gathering experts to help implement state-of-the-art eco-features and create technologies and processes for developing local materials that will be accessible through an open source license.

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