Seed Home 2 Planning
Contents
Jan 19, 2021
Extreme Enterprise - Prep Phase Role Architecture
See roles involved in delivering prototypes and product launch - Extreme Enterprise Role Architecture
Sep 5, 2020 Executive Summary
Executive Summary
We are planning to build 2000 Seed Homes by August 2022 using an Owner-Builder model based on OSE/OBI modular construction techniques. The 2020 preparatory phase of September 5, 2020 - January 1, 2021 involves building 2 model houses at the OSE headquarters for demontstrator/benchmarking data collection/marketing purposes. Each build costs $40k in materials, takes place over one month, with full video production for both build documentation and publicity (one video product manager), and hired labor. This serves as benchmarking for the exact cost structure and build ergonomics. Two promotional videos - one for prospective Owner Builders - and another one for the Enterprise Track - will be produced. For the promotional videos, OSE is also featuring a larger narrative of solving not only housing but also plastic waste - as waste is recycled into 3D printable construction materials. This involves the deployment of open source filament making infrastructure as part of the product ecology. Thus, the overall product ecology features Universal Axis-based 3D printers, which make a CNC torch table, which makes a tractor, plastic shredder, and larger 3D printer. The resulting machines are used in building the Seed Home and producing construction materials such as plastic lumber and trim.
Target Market
Target markets for the campaign are both Owner-Builders (OBs) and entrepreneurial types. In the Owner Builder Track, OBs have the opportunity to build a 1000 sf home - in one week with 2 people - for $50k. The build is done using modular build techniques and building modules that Owner-Builders (OBs) prepare over a number of weekends prior to the build from a drop-shipped kit. OSE provides collaborative build training, where the OB is invited to take a 7 day immersion build course at the OSE headquarter - and to repeat the course as many times as the OB needs to gain full confidence in building the house. The Enterprise Track (ET) involves a deeper involvement for people who are considering build facilitation of the Seed Home as an enterprise opportunity. The ET involves the on-site immersion build training, and another week of on-site enterprise training where candidates learn the ins-and-outs of both the technical aspects and enterprise aspects of Seed Home construction - which qualifies them to facilitate builds for OBs, or to provide turnkey housing solutions where the ET effectively serves as a general contractor for a house build. To obtain certification for house building in the OSE/OBI Seed Home program, ET candidates have the opportunity to engage in additional training sessions where the candidates assist in running additional training sessions - to the point of being able to lead such training sessions fully by themselves.
Overall Narrative
The Extreme Enterprise on the Seed Home 2 aims to address the weakpoint of open hardware projects: productization. The Extreme Enterprise process is designed to address the completion of products in an open source framework by gathering sufficient effort and resources to make this happen. The budget required for such an effort matches the typical funding of scalable startups: millions of dollars - yet from the start is aimed at solving larger problems. The challege in OSE's method revolves around how to generate such support on a short time scale. OSE's answer is to select high value problems, and to gather widespread interest around those problems by open collaboration. OSE aims to demonstrate that open, collaborative development is indeed a more efficient and effective way to develop products, as compared to proprietary product development. OSE's method revolves on generating maximum value for the largest number of people - by distributing value to producers, as opposed to the current mainstream of distributing value to financial investors. Because the former is more effective in meeting human needs, we believe that it will become the new norm within about 2 decades. The Extreme Enterprise on the Seed Home 2 is our first major experiment in the new direction.
Vision and Scaling
Since 2008 - the first build of the open source CEB press - OSE has been involved in experimenting with scalable, open technologies for housing, among other areas. In 2016, Open Building Institute was formed as a collaboration with OSE, and at this time, after about a dozen build projects, we are nearing traction with the Seed Home 2. This is an opportunity to combine open source digital fabrication, machine building, renewable energy systems, aquaponic greenhouses - and other elements - into an integrated program for house building.
The Seed Home effort involves solving not only housing, but also waste plastic. High performance, large 3D printers designed for printing using common plastics from the waste stream (including polyethylene) are included in the machine infrastructure. Natural building is included via the CEB press - as an option for house walls and landscaping. Heavy equipment such as tractors and helical pile drivers are also included. So it the infrastructure for building these machines from scratch - such as 3D printers, the CNC torch table, and metal 3D printing via wire arc additive manufacturing. All together, the program is being designed for producing global solutions that address basic needs in a substantial way - by removing artificial scarcity from the human economic equation.
Execution Strategy 2020
Prep Budget
Overall Product Strategy
Based on Seed Home 2 Critical Path, these are more detailed planning documents that break the project into multiple aspects:
Hackathon Prep
Long Term Execution
Budget
Summary: Deployment requires first prototype build to validate build technique and ergonomics, second prototype validates legal issues, and third prototype validates replicability. 4th would be nice to have - for 3 test cases in different locations.
Scenarios are: 1: off grid, wild, no or limited regulation - get full ergonomics data plan - for various aspects:
- Careful data - 1 section of floor; repeat;
- Careful data - 2 sections of floor - repeat.
- Piles - 15 piles enough for 1000 sf?
- Careful data - panel building - setup + build on horses, on table, on ground
- Foundation - augering ourselves; build out auger.
- Wall - 2 techniques - 4 panels each, 2x per technique
- Wall - by a carpenter
- Wall - by an unskilled person
- Floor - by an unskilled person - 1 section
- Floor - by a carpenter - 3 sections
- Roof - one section - unskilled
- Roof - 3 sections - skilled
- Patio - trellis - overhang - skirt - finish trim
2: zoned, low requirements in rural areas; 3: zoned, urban infill. 4: zoned: urban new land. This means 4 prototypes: 1 at FeF with PV + Biodigester system. $50k x 4. Likely a $200k budget. Personal assistant role: book editor. Take the content, and make sure it is filled. That means a project manager who is good at recruiting talent. This starts with a firm design concept, and needs to reify all the aspects by hiring professionals. From the Owner Builder crew - we can only get limited support, but also ample support in taking copious video and converting to edits. Build procedures: primarily. And other expertise. If we find that none of the builders have the skills, we hire more SMEs. Maybe the assistant is a construction manager, and a product manager who knows business.
- 4 assistants - hire them asap. Budget for 6 months of their time. If we go full route - budget $2k/month for them - remote work, outsourced to Eastern Europe if rate is 1/2 the USA.
- Roles for admin assistance is effectively marketing - and on-boarding people. What exactly are they doing? Specifically. And for 2 years. Either 4 of them for full, or 2 for partial program.
- Fabrication - on site - $25/hr.
- Start with what the 4 Assistants are Doing.
- Start with $2k/month budget - 4 people - 16 months total in 4 months - or $32k.
- Then we move on to prototyping budgets - outside materials - 40 hours each for 10 - only $7k for 7 machines.
Phase 1
Compelling story consists of Seed Eco-Home 1, plus more prototyping of Seed Home 2 - as documented build with rigorous data. Data includes foundation, floor, walls, and roof ergonomics. This is also combined with walkthrough of existing system - house, PV, biodigester. For this, a compelling video is based on cost and feasibility detail (ergonomics) that lay out a final house cost of materials + time.
When this video is made and published, we start recruiting collaborators.
Prerequisites include Forum, Crash Course, OSE Linux, and legal background work. If the legal is affirmed in terms of inspection schedule (materials taken to a few building departments to pull permits) - then we have a strong case. The land and house budget is $10k of labor (42 days with one person), or 10 days with a crew of 4, supervised carefully. Contract for modules being built.
Immediate steps:
- FeF prototype and foundation documentation.
- Video person, 2 days + edit. - $1k. Shoot video (1 assistant, $12, 8hr). Edit to Upwork or someone else. OSE Video Protocol
- Invest $1k in 3 cameras + lights. 1280 HD upload.
- Foundation install - $5k.
- Make 8 videos happen for 8 builds of machines at FeF.
- 10 videos - $100 capture, $1000 capital, and $500 each edit. $7k Video Budget
- Start defining job description for the Owner Builder Vetter - it's essentially a marketing role, but must be essentially project management. To execute on a large list of deliverables using scrum, work log. Managing onsite, offsite - capable project manager.
- PM manages a whole campaign that involves builds, video production, copywriting, preparing of materials for the build, publishing materials for the build (GIMP + Inkscape). Or manages those assets to be created.
- Main PM then hires more PMs to help. Start with $50k budget - 6 months, until revenue start coming in, when we can hire more.
Seed Home 2 Planning
This is the Critical Path in the Preparation Phase.
Key aspects to solve:
- Critical is the support for vetting Owner-Builders.
- Team of 4 vetters proposed.
- Ideally the support team produces the blazing-fast 24 videos - 12 on dev method, 12 on the technology of House:
- Initial prototyping and documentation needs to happen
Onboarding Videos
- OSE Intro - methods, vision, status, new operating system for transforming the world.
- Intro to Collaboration - Focus on how and why it's missing. Patents. Universities. HeroX. Solar Challenge. Mars Probe exploded. Standards. Ultimately - Mattereum.
- OSE Linux - super short
- FreeCAD 101 - exists. But redone for OSE Linux
- Wiki, Work Log, Embedded Docs, Embedded Videos, Live Editable Docs, Part Libraries
- FreeCAD Part Libraries on the Wiki - creating them with Visual Histories
- FreeCAD Spreadsheets
- FreeCAD Seed Home Workbench Programming
Tech
- Seed Home Walkthrough - the Build Method. Panels to finished product.
- Modular Breakdown - the House. Understanding basic feasibility of rapid builds
- Build Workflow Detail -
- Sweet Home 3D Part Libraries - generic redesign - Owner-Builder submits a design where they drag and drop parts to build their house.
- FreeCAD Part Libraries - Modifying Parts. Only for Enterprise track.
- Seed Home BOM - user has to inventory. And build.
- Foundation
- Floor
- Walls
- Roof
- Second Story
- Trellis, Patio, Landscape. - Blender
- Utility Panel - Inside, Outside, Channel
- PV System
- Biodigester + Toilet/Sink.
Enterprise Crash Course
- Codes and Inspection Schedule - get some architects to do this.
- Lot Purchasing - get someone in real estate such as Dean Jackson from I Love Marketing
- Organizing Build Events - Extreme Manfuacturing. People Pay You to Work for Them.
Strategy
Welding
Basic parameters:
- Professional weld shops charge $60-75/hr around Missouri. That is scalable and replicable, but redundant in terms of paying overhead when we have onsite facilities.
- One can hire someone. Welders get paid $18-27 (mean, top 10%) in Missouri. This is a cost-effective route compared to hiring a fab shop, if one has their own equipment.
- Thus, with OSE design, designs can be fabricated.
- Welder search - by reference.
Weld Budget
- Printer - large - 40 hr
- CNC TT - 40 hr
- High T Printer - 40 hr
- Shredder Build - 40 hr
- Filament Maker Build - 40 hr
- Tractor: time of 40 hours for LifeTrac can thus cost between $720 and $1080, as opposed to $2400 for the outsource to a fab shop. From here, take $20/hr.
- [4] Power Cube - 40 hr Duromax.
- Helical Piers: 7 hours for a set of piers @15 minutes each - $140 for welding.
- Pile Driver - 8 hrs - $160
- MicroTrac - 40 hours of welding - $800
- Baler - 40 hrs - $800
- Rake - 8 hrs - $160.
- Mower - 40 hrs
- Brush Hog, Microtrac - 40 hrs
- Brush Hog - LifeTrac - 40 hrs
Design
- OSE module-based design is most effective.
- Execution for CNC machines requires 3D printing, best done with D3D Pro 3 for larger prints.
- Thus, design the following things:
- Tractor - bobcat style life LifeTrac v17.10
- Diesel power cube
- 3x geardown for OSE Universal Rotor with pile-driving attachment. Geardown can also be used for tractor drive.
- P2 pile - up to 10'
- Microtrac - with mower, tiller, small round baler, rake, and cutter. Decrease track width possibly to 8" on both LifeTrac and MicroTrac.
- Mower - Rotary Disk Mower.
- Rake -
- Baler - simple
- Brushhog
