Seed Home v2 Requirements + Value Proposition

Transformative Value Proposition

• Solving housing - availing low cost build techniques by enabling anyone to build a high quality house at the lowest possible cost
• Awakening possibility and providing opportunity - for both house building and entrepreneurship to build for others
• Transitioning the economy from proprietary to collaborative - by creating a collaborative kernel to transform the housing industry
• Proof of concept that large-scale, moonshot collaborative development can be leveraged on-demand, in a replicable way

Progressive Value Proposition

• Only house model that comes with PV system option built-in to the main offering. Open Source means you can maintain it for a lifetime of service. OS Power Inverter.
• Future: only house model that comes with a water reuse system built-in (future).
• Open Source Smart Home - Open Source Energy Monitor + open source energy management.

Value Proposition

• Lowest cost house per square foot to address the housing issue. What Makes Housing Expensive?
• Practical starter home that grows with a family
• $50k for a 1000 sf house that you can build with a friend in one week. But you have to pre-build all the modules.
• Economic benefit - save $39k in electricity costs over 30 years, and $31k after investment, and displace $4500 of water supply costs, saving $30k in water over 30 years, or $25k after counting investment cost. But more specifically, if you can affort $80k up front one time including land - then you're saving $566/month in general on the housing part - according to Cost of Living.

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Utilities Value Proposition

The Seed Home v2 features an efficient utility strategy that reduces costs significantly while benefitting the environment. We are proposing a robust set of high efficiency, state-of-art utilities - without breaking the budget. And this is only the beginning, as we are working on making the Seed Eco-Home synonymous with state-of-art housing, easy to build, at the lowest possible cost.

Standard features that fit within the $40k-$50k materials-only budget, typically associated with much more expensive housing, include:

• Photovoltaics - the house is fully off-grid capable with a whopping 5.6kW of solar panels, 5kW continuous power inverter, and, 1 full kWhr of energy storage for night-time power. This means that in the summer, when space heating is not required - or year-round in warmer climates - the house has plenty of electricity, during the day - and has 5 hours of night power in a super-energy saving mode when only critical power such as lights, internet, and computers being on - while still allowing for cooking is allowed at night. This can save you your full energy bill on average - about $100/month.
• Energy Efficiency -
• Water-Saving Appliances - the washer, dishwasher, toilet, shower, and sinks feature water-saving as a standard option. You save on average $40/month on water bills based on a national average.

FAQ

Q: What are the goals of the prefabrication part other than for a handful of people to be able to raise it in a week?

A: The prefab is done by the owner builder. Outside of build time optimization, 7 reasons are: 1.  lowest possible cost, 2. simplest design possible, 3 portability, 4 parallel build ability, 5. lifetime design value. 6. economic value. Modularity.

1. Achieved by using common, off-the-shelf parts such as 2x6 lumber and wood panels.
2. By using repeating modules, complexity and thus skill requirement is reduced, availing the build method to more people.
3. If screws are used, structure can be portable. Since it's on helical pier foundations, even the piers can be unscrewed.
4. A predefined parametric structure allows a large number of teams to build in parallel. This means that if you have a large team, all of them could work together on making the panels, so all the panels can be build by a team in a single day - and even shorter - limited only by the size of the workspace and the number of people.
5. If the panels are modular and fastened with removable fasteners such as screws, then they can be removed and thus reused in a Construction Set Approach.Each module thus becomes a uniform and high value item that can be used as-is within other projects congruent with the Seed Home building system.
6. Think about a marketplace developing for OBI modules. If the panels are standardized into modules, they can be used readily in other projects. Thus, they retain their economic value, and can be negotiated in the marketplace.
7. The essence of prefab is modularity. If designed properly, any module can be used readily - by following basic design principles, to create a wide range of building types and functions.