OBI Kickstarter Research Questions

• Why has modular housing not succeeded yet?

Insights: kit houses are too much work for the seller, and are incapacitated by skill set of owner-buikder. The result is hiring professionals, which costs too much. We address this by running professionally-guided builds with negative labor costs - by optimizing the professional assistance part. Now how to say this in plain English?

• Just another open source house project?

WikiHouse. OBI offering: 5x lower cost to performance ratio. Open Architecture Network. Habitat for Humanity. Architecture for Humanity. Open House from Portugal. This goes into the Kickstarter description.

• Just another dirt cheap house?

Earthshio, KC low cost company, Tumbleweed tinyhomes.

Popular statement on cost

Methodology: break down all costs of a house - using average construction costs for the same type of housing. That would be owner-builder - but we extend our market to the mainstream, so we compete with 'average home buyer' in the suburbs, but more likely with non-subhrn, nonurban, which can be non-rural or rural housing. Think of this as 'typically non subdivision housing' - as the people who go into the subdivision may not care, though probably many of them are in subdivisions because they have no other options.

Account for % of cost reduction across all components of cost - and weigh by % that component takes up. Do a good graph.

Do different scenarios: owner/builder without OBI involvement, or OBI contracted house.

About 70%% reduction in materials by design and open source components. 100% cheaper on labor. 10% reduction on architect's fee. 7% reduction on profit - [1]

First - understand areas of cost and what we are competing with. - [2]

Architect's fee - 10% of cost - [3]

(3 times cheaper, such as hydronic stove at $1500 instead of $5k. O We turn labor costs into labor revenue. We combine design-buikd (Jersey Devil) with modular simplocity as opposed to vanity. We socialize the design cost, SME and other. We simplify the design so it's designed to be easy to build. We optimize material waste - from average 20% waste to 5%. We reduce materials cost by open materials harvested in site (brick, lumber, and insulation.)

R&D Points

• Cost data on comparable structures. 1. $50k quote on outdoor kitchen/bath - cost per SF? Get a few quotes from professional builders.l - as a real comparison, select the middle ground. Use contractors all on their own, without our system. So pretty much baseline costs. Ask BNIM and teh other KC housing CO - breakthrough cost how?
• Lowest cost electric option - DC power center + night time TEG. Outcome: costing of components for a minimum system.
• Pellet burner - outcome: use available components, then open source a Pellet Burelner Construction Set.
• What is prefab/modular home? It is not a mobile home. Who are the best CO.panies for that? (Ask the MH3 guy to comment)