Wikihouse: Open-Source Houses
wikihouse.cc
wikihouse.cc
It is great, however, if your approach to construction was formed by playing Minecraft.
AFAICT we have far more excess material than excess labor, so it doesn't seem particularly crazy to me?
As for materials, for a theoretical 2 story 20Wx50Lx20H home (2000 ft^2), you have 1,000 ft^2 of roof (assuming flat) and floor, as well as 20,000 ft^2 of wall.
Cheap fiberglass insulation is $1.32 per ft^2 10 in thick (1/10/24) https://www.homedepot.com/p/Owens-Corning-R-30-Faced-Fibergl...
Assuming we use this for everything that is $29K
I'm going to pull some ratios roughly out of this article.
https://www.greenbuildingadvisor.com/article/how-much-insula...
This is in the high energy efficiency area of construction but I'm using this to illustrate the inefficiency of a standard floor/wall/roof thickness, take it with these caveats.
So if you were building to this insulation cost would be:
1,0001.32 + 20,0001.32(2/3) + 1,0001.32*(1/6) = $19K
You could view that as $10K of wasted material or, if you chose not to fill the blocks with full thickness material, calculate how much of their volume is being wasted to achieve a standardized thickness. Lots of ways to look at it but, to put it simply, I think however you look at it, it's not optimal to be unable to adjust your floor/wall/roof thickness.
Electron is regularly considered a horrible waste of "materials" in the tech world. It is still sensible to use as RAM is far more abundant than tech labour.
Consider this: if you're raising the temperature of your floor to say, 25C, that won't do much if you're doing so on an uninsulated floor where the temperature of the ground beneath is 10C or so. UFH at that temperature is very efficient and thermally comfortable.
Consider further that you might then have walls which let all that lovely heat out even if your ceiling and floor are well insulated. It makes sense for them to be just as good, not least because your windows will in all likelihood be the worst part of the room in terms of insulation. Having as uniform a u-value across the room (and building) makes for uniform temperatures throughout. It lends itself to using heat pumps, further raising the efficiency of the building.
Further, lifetime emissions of the building are increasingly front loaded in construction as operational emissions drop. Standardising will presumably cut down on costs as well as emissions at that stage.
Building physics is an entire subject of its own and is worth studying. I'd suggest looking at the Association of Environmentally Conscious Builders and their CarbonLite course to learn more.
"WikiHouse Skylark blocks include a cavity for 250mm insulation in the walls, and 350mm insulation in the roof, giving exceptional levels of thermal insulation."
One thing that strikes me as at odds is that they tout their reusability as well as the customization aspect of the block. It’s cnc cut so they’re super accurate, but how would you reuse it in a different project? It’s like saying you can reuse puzzle pieces in a different puzzle. The shape may match but they won’t fit together.
Its seems like every episode of Grand Design does include an almost spiritual journey to a glue-lam pre-fabricated wood factory in Germany. I’m not sure that stuff is as easy to get over here.
> how would you reuse it in a different project?
The blocks are standard sizes so you can reuse them like legos.
This is really weird to me because nobody builds like that here. Brick and concrete rule supreme and people living in wooden houses are seen as old hippies who cuddle with termites.
Glue-lams are not used for walls, they are used for floor support. While a lot of multi-unit concrete residential construction in Germany uses concrete for the floor without supports), for single family houses there it is still relatively common to span rooms with beams to create floor support.
This is also true for earthen buildings, which are remarkably popular (on a per-capita basis) in Germany. I say this as a US resident in New Mexico, where it is hard to imagine a place (Germany) less likely to use variants on the same best-practices as housing we build here.
This also presumes in 40-100 years when a house presumably makes sense to demolish, the same standard design is still considered good and the new owner has heard of your weird bespoke construction style.
Consider that currently the age of a house maybe worthy of demolition is 1978 and earlier at this point, and many many people refurbish and renovate houses significantly older than that.
The only other stuff in the walls is either in demand (copper, plumbing metals) or we just throw it out (drywall, insulation).
So if these engineered materials are sturdy enough, I would give favorable odds to them being reclaimed.
https://www.ladbs.org/adu/standard-plan-program/approved-sta...
The frame is the cheapest part of a permanent structure, and a 300-500sqft ADU is not going to have much in the way of plumbing, electrical, and hvac. Paying a plumber, electrician, and hvac tech for new construction on a tiny building is not going to represent a significant chunk of your budget for what amounts to 1-3 days work maximum.
https://www.hcd.ca.gov/sites/default/files/2022-07/ADUHandbo...
That's pretty interesting and while I sincerely hope it works as advertised, what is the repair process when (not if) the connections inside the wall fail? As the owner of multiple homes, a part of me is very skeptical that those connections will last for decades untouched.
In the US, code does not allow for splices and connections inside walls, period. In a pre-fab, I would like to see all of the cabling run inside tubes so that I can fix/add/replace easily myself in many years down the road. This is prohibitively expensive for residential mains wiring but not terribly unusual for low-voltage stuff like coax and ethernet that the homeowner can do herself.
Here's the full episode: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6hsxwd
It's pretty cool to see, but in the end it seemed like way more effort than nailing some 2x4's together.
The video doesn't clearly show they deal with electrical and plumbing. They actually have slots built in where you can run the utilities. Then some small boards are screwed into the blocks and drywall is nailed into them.
Japanese houses depreciate over a ~30 year cycle where, at the end of that cycle, the only value left is in the land and the home is demolished and rebuilt.
If you can use highly recyclable materials, this would encourage more adaptable cities where the housing is more easily adjusted for the needs of the people at the time. Density can go up or down over the course of these long cycles.
The other approach is to build simplified floor plans which are highly robust but adaptable to maximize reusability - like the two column, three row warehouse layout which can be be adapted for almost any use case.
This is my issue with builders like Icon, who are making 3d printed cement walled homes. Homes that last a long time get adapted many times in their life span, and these structures don’t really enable the growth and adaptation we see from buildings that are useful for many decades.
The rejoinder to that being that most housing I've seen in Japan is of scandalously low quality.
I love the idea of modular buildings, but this doesn't quite seem to fit. The materials don't seem ideal for the wet climate, the manufacturing process seems expensive; either you buy or rent a cnc, or have panels manufactured 'locally' then trucked. And the fact that it's precision cnc suggests this is really not modular at all, but custom designed.
Steel frame, and panels in standard sizes, eg steel sip, or home-poured foam-concrete, would be cheap, reusable/recycleable, modular etc. Maybe ugly too, but then mount a nice wood, stone-veneer, or enamel rain screen/siding, and interior paneling.
That said, Japan treats 1 storey dwellings as single-lifetime and have a different view on the ephemeral value of a house.
I think that would be more fun as an art installation than a home. Comments from the neighbours on the edit page would be wild!
But seriously, it looks like they're open sourcing their block designs to allow people to modify them, and any third-party with suitable CNC machining equipment to create them. Whether that's a Wiki is another question...
Lay your foundation with strong types.
The greatest limiting factor is not the concrete itself, but rebar. It will eventually rust, causing the concrete to spall and crack. So in most cases it makes no sense to really optimize the concrete lifetime, because why bother?
If you're willing to build structures that rely only on compression and gravity, then we can totally do stuff that the Romans never dreamt of. Just look at any modern concrete gravity dam as an example.
timespandays : int, timespandays > 0
They also seem to be touting their accuracy and since plywood is dimensionally stable (well, more so that 2x4s anyway) that’s probably why ply.
That seems quite unappealing for something with a certified life of 60 years (even if it lasts longer in practice, mortgage brokers won't be keen)
For example, the material list for a 3 bedroom house is 130k. https://www.menards.com/main/building-materials/books-buildi...
Say the land is 130k in your region. You won't find 3b houses for less than 360k. If you're looking at not so cheap builders, it will be 500k.
I think there's a revolution coming in the way we build houses, it must be - because costs are through the roof. It could be either in the form of prefabricated walls, like we have now trusses, or lego bricks like the OP, or something.
If they save time and provide convenience or reassurance, then they'll provide value for some people.
It remains to be seen what the demand will look like, especially given the heavily regulated market.
edit: the "Fit out & finishes" drop down really brings the costs up. I'm not so sure about this product after all.
Structural insulated panels (plywood/foam sandwiches) have been around since the 70s. They're a useful building technology.
There's no way they can provide an equivalent amount of product to a SIP cheaper. They're operating at small scale, and CNC machining everything which is expensive. The math ain't mathin'.
A 1x6 is .75 x 5.5 inches.
Plywood is still more expensive with your numbers. OSB may cost a little less than the plywood though.
Apart from that I noticed that building my current home with their method would cost about 20% more than building it the oldschool way. That might be a problem for their business model.
Supposed to be all the machines you need to supply a whole village, made from low cost basic materials.
I think it’s from 2014 not sure if it’s still being worked on or if anyone actually has used the blueprints in a real world scenario.
A multiple-CEB unit that makes interlocking blocks that don't require mortar could build on work from this project.
Add'l notes on CEB, Algae, Sargassum, Hemp in the 2024 International and US Residential Building Code, LEGO-like Hempcrete block: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37693225
FWIU Round homes fare best in windstorms: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37175721#37188180
And curvy half walls one brick wide don't fall down
[CEB] "Crinkle crankle wall" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crinkle_crankle_wall
They have a page about interlocking blocks and according to it, they are simply too expensive, as you need a higher share of cement in blocks to stabilize them.
There's probably a way.
Are non-leaching bioplastic frames or filler comparatively economical for interlocking CEB?
Yes, it's about 4x less drag. That's why nomads have round yurts.
Nonetheless wood houses are frowned upon in Europe. Except in the UK where housing is low quality overall anyway.
No, not where I live.
> Remote work alleviates that.
Remote work doesn't change where I want to live, because I want to live where there are things to do, regardless of where I work.
I dont care where you want to live. Those who want to live where land is affordable should be given the option.
Given that land is expensive where you want to live this type of house build wont solve your issue - might make it worse since people have said it’s more expensive to build.
If more people would be allowed to work where they can afford property then demand in your area may drop.
Meaning you could afford buying where you enjoy. But most human farm advocates demand others to work from farms, and there is the issue. It drives land prices up in such places.
You seem to be arguing as if I disagree.
> Given that land is expensive where you want to live this type of house build wont solve your issue
No, actually, construction costs are enormous and that's the problem where I live. Building a house would be 3-4 times the cost of the land - and we're not talking about rural land but semi-urban near the second largest city in the country.
However, watching the video on the front page makes me wonder what code they are following. I can't imagine there is any country where you still can build with such low ceilings. It makes me wonder if you actually then save money using this approach when you still have to pay the full fees for your architect?
Starting with the tagline "Simple, beautiful zero-carbon building for everyone". WHAT? - Claiming that timber building products are carbon neutral is dubious, just talking about the timber alone, before any value added lifecycle. They should put some pictures of the Spruce forests their plywood comes from and let people decide for themselves. - Simple? Not really. They don't say much at all about what happens after you get walls and a roof. Who is going to plumb and wire, and how? How simple will it be to find a tradesperson who wants to actually figure out from scratch how to pull cable through your ikea home and put their license on the line? - Beautiful? Meh.. ask again in 30 years and see if people don't say it looks like it was built in 2023.
And then just all the stuff that doesn't matter. The problem of making a building isn't putting up walls and a roof. That's usually the part that goes the fastest. Who cares that it's 'precision engineered' (spoiler alert, if it's OSB, theres no precision) and that it has 3x more compressive strength than stick frame. When was the last time you thought to yourself 'I wish I could put a car on my roof'?
The land?
Permits?
Appliances?
Construction costs (labor + materials) were 61%, with interior finishes 24% of construction costs, framing 20%, and major systems 18%.
Appliances were under 2%. Margin was 10%.
https://www.nahb.org/-/media/NAHB/news-and-economics/docs/ho...
The biggest problem with container-based buildings is that the standard road size of 2600 mm is very narrow. Subtract 150 cm on each side for insulation and walls material, and you're left with 2300 (ISO container is 2350 mm wide inside.) (Standard bed is ~2100 mm long, so you can't put it laterally -- I tried, and discovered you can't walk normally in 20 cm isle.)
Unless you want to build in very specific spots the house is almost always going to be more expensive than the land it sits on.
[1] Step 3 here: https://www.wikihouse.cc/process
Using plywood for all of the structural components means if you get a leak, which all houses get, you are in danger of much more significant damage than lumber framing. And with this system you still need to do all the normal things to build a house (get a designer, route plumbing, electrical, get a civil engineer, install all that stuff, etc.) just instead of framing you have custom blocks you need made.
I just don't think these make sense.
As is tradition :)
The approach taken here is similar to what people are commonly doing in Scandinavia. Most generally almost all houses are pre fabricated in factories and assembled on site. The actual blocks vary quite a bit, mostly they are large wall sections, but there are approaches using blocks like this. There is also a manufacturer that makes all sections out of plywood. With all of the approaches I have never heard of issues with leakage. In fact they tend to be much more tight then houses build on site (often meeting passive house standards).
SIPS absolutely do have issues with leakage, the same as any construction method. Joints, penetrations, windows, etc. can all be sources, same as in traditional framing, the difference is again that plywood / osb / glued together wood scraps are atrocious at handling moisture. I do think they are interesting though, more reading for the curious below.
https://buildingscience.com/documents/enclosures-that-work/h...
One of the benefits of SIPs for airtightness is that the layer that provides that is built in (or atleast can be) at the factory. This eliminates alot of the variables that hurt airtightness when you are building onsite (working in temps/humidity where seals don't get installed right, poor workmanship, etc.).
When that's factored in, you may as well build with straw bales. (really, it is great, and much cheaper)
I shudder thinking about all the structures built with those things that're one undetected bathtub drain leak away from serious structural failure.
Weatherproof LVLs are actually much more water resistant than a regular solid piece of pine. Even indoor engineered beams are quite water resistant.
WH is not a perfect system, but the approach is commendable for its comprehensive take on building systems. And building systems are broken. For the past two years I've been trying to build my own house (using a contractor), and even as a trained architect the process is ridiculously opaque, costs are exorbitant, and quality control is difficult to manage.
I applaud the fact that WH has tried to tackle the entire structure (and for that matter the entire building process – their parent organization has additional projects [0] for design, local building codes, and innovative financing structures). Yes, in the US 2x framing is cheap and relatively inexpensive, but is still complex in its own ways. Floor systems are different from wall systems are different from roof systems. I like that WH has tried to make one unit type (plywood boxes) work for the different systems. Is it the most efficient way? Probably not, but it affords other opportunities.
From an ideological perspective I also like that they prioritize sustainability, low energy use, and accessibility of design information to laypeople. On top of that, they've organized their building information like a programmer – they use GitHub to track versions and even have the start of a components database. They are an API short of making this really something the HN community could easily play with.
That said they have a long way to go. Framing a house is the easy part. I think if they could standardize the interface for cladding and interior finishes they would be in a better position to disrupt the building industry, but for now contractors will still be a requirement – so there goes your budget and quality.
If the goal is to create opensource plans / design framework then doing that where the industry is (framing in the USA, maybe brick in the UK from other comments, etc.) is the way to benefit people, not trying to push them towards a unique "block" system that no builder has ever used.
If the goal is sustainability then a focus on locally sourced materials, energy efficiency, building longevity, or numerous other parameters would make sense. If I have a main criticism it's that their system seems to be based on the idea that using a block based design is a good starting point and not as a consequence of aiming to find a system that maximizes the aforementioned parameters.
Having worked in the industry I feel your pain and would agree that so much is broken. Here in the USA it is hard to find good contractors and harder to find ones familiar with building highly energy efficient buildings that normally require a very high level of attention to detail. Often the only projects I see that are highly energy efficient and/or green/sustainable are for very high end clients that are paying far more than a normal person could afford.
To offset that wall of negativity, if anyone wants to read about some (imo) good stuff check out the Pretty Good House (PGH) standard and Building Science Corporation (BSC).
I'm not seeing any IFC files on Wikihouse repos, but they look old (https://github.com/wikihouse). Do you know where they're hosting?
[0] https://github.com/wikihouseproject/Skylark/tree/main/SKYLAR...
Yeah, IFC is neat. It's actually a dialect of STEP, so able to carry the geometry and tons of BIM metadata. We've estimated the spec is ~7k pages printed. It's like an abstract toolkit for working with building codes
Happy to chat more too. We have our project Discord and DMs on Twitter
The premise isn't terribly flawed though, prefab everything into 4x8ft panels, standardize your roof trussing, standardize your layout, and you can probably dig up a little more margin for builders to put directly in their pockets, and have perfectly cookie cutter houses with no regard to the environment they're placed in. Not really a neighborhood I'd like to live in, but, also not too dissimilar from what most of america lives in, so, I suppose it's tolerable.
But what we definitely don't do is stick build homes using 2x4s apart from interior walls. An exterior wall where I live would probably use 45x220mm studs and probably more wood as well for a total depth of 350+ mm.
Also not all of the US uses timber framing, for instance, in costal florida, it's not uncommon to have concrete walls that are framed with sheerwall inside, so they can survive a hurricane.
Neither of these statements are true. 2x6's are commonly used for a variety of reasons in vertical placement. 2x8/2x10 and even 2x12 are still common for floor joists where manufactured beams (e.g. I-beams) are not used. Trusses are not always built with 2x4s either.
I'd also mention (as a recently certified firefighter) that the use of trusses in modern construction causes real headaches for the fire service: a minor failure in one part of one truss can lead the entire roof surface to become a collapse hazard. They are efficient uses of lumber but have few other merits as a construction technique.
- I don't think it's super common in the US - it's a high-tech product that quickly loses its legolike value if quality controls get sloppy (you have to spend hours sanding down each row or switch to mortar) - it's just walls, you still need a system for building foundations, floors, ceilings and roofs.
AAC floor and roof panels do exist.
My impression is that ICF is a lot more common in my area than AAC, though it's still not super common compared to, say, stick frame construction. I'd guess that's probably because with AAC you'd need to add additional insulation, whereas with ICF you wouldn't -- but maybe there are other reasons.
Northwest AAC claims even higher values: "[f]or example, the R-value of a typical <...> 12-inch wall is R-29", so either I'm converting the wrong values or the measurement standards are very different across the countries. Xella (Hebel) claims their blocks are warmer than standard blocks, but 50% more sounds like too much.
It's worth pointing out that this is a UK-based project (where typical houses are concrete construction). A lot of the comments dismissing it are suggesting it should conform to American standards on the assumptions that those standards are universal.
As an open-source initiative it should certainly have a broader perspective than being purely UK-centric, but replacing that with a US-centric one isn't the solution.
In the US nothing is EVER going to beat light gauge wood framing on cost. That's why you see even large (but not tall) complexes build from it.[1] It's been reduced to the 0th degree of expense because of the profit motive. That said, this is only when the "unskilled" labor of rough framing is cheap. But this doesn't necessarily hold for other economies.
The early WH work seemed cartoonishly idealistic (they were literal kids so I don't really fault them). But that foundation never changed and a lot of what they built on that has seemed like solution in search of a problem. Especially when you consider you don't even have to leave the UK to find a better model for self-build[2] and automated modular small scale construction is a really active space right now.
Other competitors[3] actually have online configurators that work well to arrange these kinds of elements. But they've realized that's where the value is and are holding their systems closer so they can maintain quality and monetize the expertise they brought to bear.
And yet other systems have been using industrial scale and logics to great effect for a long, long time.[4]
TBH the "open source" aspect is really kind of a gimmick. Their designs are useless without the overall system and the system is useless without some way of arranging it all properly. Plus - what are you going to do - buy and learn to run a mill, work your own ply with an extremely slow machine, assemble it in this (ridiculously) finicky way, source and install the insulation properly yourself, and still be confronted with the nontrivial tasks of... everything that's not structure and insulation? Not to mention approvals. In the end you'd need an architect to do all this for you. And... doesn't that defeat the point? It's very generous that they've assembled all the guides they have but there are cheaper and more flexible construction systems (light gauge wood, block, SIPS, ICF, etc) that are much more mature, non-proprietary (except ICF), much better documented, and much easier to train a helper or two for assistance.
I really do appreciate what they're -trying- to do. But again, I just think it's a solution in search of a problem.
[0] Architecture, Engineering, and Construction [1] https://lamag.com/urbandevelopment/geoff-palmers-faux-italia... [2] https://architecturefoundation.org.uk/programme/2015/walter%... [3] https://automatedarchitecture.io/ [4] https://www.ithouseinc.com/
I wish it was possible to develop such a thing, but it would be very hard to gain traction without major support. And who with means to do so wants to support a movement to consume and waste (and thus spend) less, do more with less, do it on your own (thus not "create jobs"), etc?
We've been at this FOSS housing thing for 20 years, aiming for upgradable shelters for climate refugees rather than middle class housing. I've known the wikihouse folks from before the beginning and (frankly) I've always found the to be predatory jerks. Wikihouse came out of a potential collaboration between that team and the hexayurt project. We spent quite a bit of time discussing doing an FOSS house together, then they cut me out of the deal and six months later launched wikihouse.
Never have I been more grateful that somebody ignored every bit of advice that I gave them. Nothing of our thinking is in this bloody thing. Fortunately.
The core problem with wikihouse is that *it is designed to get grant funding* not to be buildable. The architecture group behind it is a grant farming operation with a rumoured tendency to implementing ideas that are very close to (but not exact copies of) things which are around in the ecosystem. So they took a good look at the hexayurt, ignored everything about it which made it practical (uses standard 4x8s, uses widely available fasteners like deck screws or aluminium tape), and then shipped something which they knew was never going to be economic to build but hit the grant funding sweet spot: CNC machines, parametric design, and so on. That's why it looks this way.
Like any technology which is designed to live on grand funding practicality has never been the point. The point is that universities etc. can noodle around with it, learn from it, get some ideas tested, make a contribution, and then move on. Architecture has a constant need for things to design and things to do.
Architecture for Humanity used to have a web site which collected together hundreds of designs for emergency shelter and basically it was just a place for students to publish impractical designs because they had to be published somewhere.
No harm in it as long as nobody expects it to be buildable and fortunately that mistake was not made: theory stayed theory.
Hexayurt Project has never been incorporated, and never taken grant funding. Once or twice people have paid me as an engineer to work on specific projects, but I make a living as a tech CEO. Many thousands of builders for Burning Man, and a ton of genuine grass roots innovation on multiple fronts. It is, by any standards, a pretty good open source project with a lot of contributors and a lot of users.
What it isn't yet is a refugee shelter. To turn the "well proven at Burning Man" design into something that can be built at scale to cushion climate refugees and other displaced people is going to require a serious investment from somebody in testing in a range of environments, and refining the designs particularly when it comes to flooring and variants like spraying the shelters with shotcrete to make them permanent where needed.
https://www.appropedia.org/Hexayurt_project/Master_List_of_D...
Donor driven aid is a huge problem. Lack of testing regimes for new shelter technology is a huge problem.
There is a total revolution in open source architecture coming but nobody seems to know how best to get it started. Neither one of these projects is it.
Not yet. Roll on the day.
Maybe you put in 1200 sq m instead of converting from sq ft?
Also, it would be nice to see this technique for multifamily, would be a big improvement to how they build apartments in the US.
I’m gonna have to raise the alarm at this remark. There is no reasonable license that would permit enforcing this, that anyone should dare construct a structure bound by such license on their property.
I am all for the idea of an open building system, but get real.
They aren't telling you what you can and can't do with the house itself.
Build with it at your peril
The designs are available on GitHub:
https://github.com/wikihouseproject/Skylark
They're marked as being made available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International licence[1]. The page also says you have to agree to the 'EULA'[2] of WikiHouse, but these explicitly give precedence to the CC licences:
All content should be considered to be protected by copyright, with all rights reserved other than those materials that explicitly carry another licence, for example an Open Source or Creative Commons licence. In these cases, that licence shall be clearly marked on or by the relevant media, file or repository.
I don't see how this arrangement could be considered objectionable?
[1]: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode.en
Nothing until the architect hands them to someone else in violation of both the CCSA and the EULA which the distributor claim apply to all of the published material. I can’t believe you linked to that nonsense and can’t understand why it might be objectionable.
I’m not saying anyone would come after you or care if you add some different dormers to your cabin or whatever; I just maintain it’s unreasonable to think that you can fold CCSA content into the existing framework of architectural IP and expect that everything is gonna be cool. It’s incompatible.