5) Description of housing product/service offering: The Hexayurt is a very simple building system, about half way between a yurt and a gedoesic dome. The outstanding feature of the hexayurt is that most models require only six straight cuts on standard 4'x8' building materials to assemble. The incredibly simple building geometry makes hexayurts easy to construct in nearly any conditions, from nearly any materials.

The Complete Home Infrastructure Pak is a combination of products which allow a Hexayurt (or other shelter) to be deployed in an area without water treatment, sewage facilities, gas or electrical equipment and yet still provide clean drinking water, waste disposal, heating and lighting.

The core element of the CHIP is a composting toilet. Dealing with human waste is a huge issue in refugee settings, slums and other infrastructure-impoverished settings. Composting toilets are available off-the-shelf from a variety of manufacturers, although prices are still a little high.

Water purification can come from a solar water pasteurizer (again, off-the-shelf) or a Potters For Peace "Filtron" style water purifier. Filtrons are cheap and effective, but fragile to transport. On the other hand, they can be manufactured on site using local skills and materials: clay and sawdust.

Hexayurts can be constructed with a reflective insulation board. This approach gives natural cooling by reflecting away the heat of the sun and allowing the 58 degrees ground temperature to cool the building.

Add to this an energy efficient Wood Gassification Stove to provide cooking and heating using a small fraction of the wood required by open fires, and a simple solar-powered flashlight, and we have a system which provides basic but complete infrastructure.

My current estimate is that a small but complete house will cost well under $1000 using this approach. I strongly suspect that, in bulk, the price could fall to below $300.

This approach was inspired by a conversation with Amory Lovins.

6) Description of innovation: The Hexayurt is the simplest rigid building I am aware of. It can be provided at a cost similar to that of tents, but for a much more permanent and durable home.

The models I'm working with right now are cut straight from insulation board ($14 a sheet) using craft knives, and assembled using standard tape products. Yet they will stand high winds, have a very high insulation value, and can be constructed quickly and easily.

The CHIP approach to providing infrastructure draws from the concept of Autonomous Buildings and from the work of the Rocky Mountain Institute on making infrastructure resources the right size for the job at hand. Fine-grained provision of infrastructure services means you do not need to wait for a sewage treatment plant to be built to have waste disposal, nor do you need to wait for water treatment to have clean drinking water.

One key part of the concept is that the Hexayurt can be taken down and put up somewhere else. This means that people can take their house with them when they move, which can be very important in a refugee context. A fully-loaded Hexayurt weights less than 300 lbs, and the emergency shelter versions weigh as little as 30 lbs.

7) Benefits to clients: So far we are still at the prototype stage. I forsee two possibilities.

1> Disaster relief agencies buy units in bulk and distribute them in crisis.

2> The low cost of the units would allow them to be sold on the free market.

8) Key operational partnerships: Well, I've been talking to Pregis and Dow about custom materials. Hexacomb cardboard (the product Pregis makes) is incredibly strong and lightweight, and was used in the past to make structural panels for buildings. Dow's Thermax insulation boards are the closest off-the-shelf product to the custom panel material we envisage using in the long run.

For assembly, 3M makes some spectacularly good, but expensive products. We have had initial discussions with them about the specification for a long-term-use bonding solution.

9) Financial model: An integral part of the hexayurt approach is open intellectual property. The building geometry, the design concept, the sketches, the IP as a whole is all public domain. This means anybody can set up commercial manufacture, and hopefull this keeps prices low. Eventually I would like to see the components in the infrastructure pak also under open intellectual property licenses so that eventually the world can enjoy a building system which is comprehensive, open and cheap.

          • Costs as percentage of income: 0

          • Financing: Right now, I'm financing the operation by selling units to the Office of the Secretary of Defense (as part of the Strong Angel III demonstration) and doing custom work for people going to Burning Man. My friend Alex Gordon-Brander comissioned a large unit made from a custom laminate which is currently sitting in the warehouse out back drying.

10) Effectiveness

          • Project outcomes: So far, we've built some prototypes. I've lived in them for a while and they worked very, very well. The next year should see much more widespread testing, and perhaps some field trials.

          • Number of clients in past year: we are still at the prototype stage

          • Percentage of clients that are poor or marginalized: 0

          • Potential demand: I would estimate that the "middle three billion" are potential clients.

The income spread between $1 and $10 per day covers something like three billion people. A hexayurt housing system may cost as little as $300, but let's ballpark at $500. That represents a couple of month's income for the upper end of the poor, and just over a year's income for the lower end. Given that in the first world, mortgages are typically written for two or three times annual income, the possibilities are large.

11) Scaling up strategy

          • Stage of the initiative: Start Up stage.

          • Expansion plan: Built units. Sell them to high paying clients like the Burning Man community, the OSD and other such agencies, and build experience in production. Continue to research the cheapest way of getting these things built and, when something scalable and cheap has been found, start sending test units to aid agencies for their field workers to live in. The field worker market is large and potentially the best first use of these buildings, and from there we can build the scale to get down to the $300 home.

12) Origin of the initiative: This concept was born at the Rocky Mountain Institute. I read about the Sustainable Settlements Charette (and very nearly attended) and that set the design specification: the building has to be transportable so that refugees can be resettled. Amory Lovins discussed Autonomous Buildings in the context of Small is Profitable, and that inspired me to integrate the two concepts: a portable autonomous building. I had a background in working with geodesics, and put the pieces together into the current draft of a system.

Contact Information:
Vinay  Gupta
Designer
n/a
(individual, personal project)
2022 W Dempster, Evanston IL 60202
United States
Tel: 206 984 0122
Email: hexayurt@gmail.com
Website: http://mindismoving.org/hexayurt