KS Update

Dear Backers,

We are glad to report that we will finally be publishing the OBI Building Book e-Book this May. Yes, way delayed, and thanks for your patience. The Building Book is the foundational document that describes the modular OBI construction system that is intended for both DIY and contractor-build housing. that we will use for future builds. We will use that as our design reference book, and we will provide the OBI Building Book to future house build workshop participants as background reading. The principles laid out will be useful for anyone interested in using our design language to make their own designs.

Regarding future builds, we plan on 2 or 3 builds in late 2019 - in October, November, December. The November and December will be in the south of the USA, where weather still allows construction. In the meantime, there is lots of design and due diligence preparation to be done.

Right now Catarina is back to finishing the OBI Building Book, and adding designs of Compressed Earth Block (CEB) housing to our library of modules. To date, all the wall modules were stick frame, so adding refined CEB detail will be a great addition to the Building Book. The idea is that we are still treating the CEBs as a module. Thus - just like we build 4'x8' wall modules from wood - we can build 4'x8' wall modules from CEBs. The only requirement is working out the interface details of joining wooden modules such as doors and windows to the CEBs. And CEBs are much heavier - at about 2 tons per 4'x8' module.

We are also beginning work on turning the OBI module designs into a 3D-printable modeling kit. This requires going from Sweet Home 3D to FreeCAD to STL files. So if anyone knows FreeCAD, you can help in this effort - email me if you can help at marcin at opensourceecology dot org.

We are now completing the sticker and t-shirt reward tiers, so yours should be arriving soon if you funded that tier.