An owner buildable microhome closed-loop ecosystem that decentralizes residential manufacturing w/ancient & modern tools, materials, and skillsets.

Project Overview:#

For many, whether renters or “owners”, monthly housing costs are 30%, sometimes 50% of their monthly operating expenses, with financing, permitting, maintenance, and property tax costs significantly driving those costs ever higher. As a result, low-cost, efficient to build and maintain, modular shelters are more needed than ever. By combining ancient, 20th century, and 21st century technologies humanity can now self-design, fund, and build decentralized pre-manufactured, site-installed, residential living systems for ourselves.

Decentralizing residential construction in order to empower individuals and their communities by providing cottage industries that build small cottages with tools, training, and flexible, simple, and appropriate designs will not only provide sovereignty over shelter to owner-builders, it creates the potential for organically growing physical community infrastructures and individual’s financial wealth.

Accomplishing this requires:#

• Off-the-shelf tools available at most major hardware stores worldwide. i.e. no expensive, capital intensive, difficult to operate and/or maintain tooling
• Commonly available, or easily acquirable, skills with those tools
• Locally available, low-cost, sustainable, materials with a minimal environmental impact
  • Prioritizing “upcycled” materials diverted from the waste stream
  • Non-toxic, durable, yet, easy to repair materials
  • Utilizing site resourced materials whenever feasible
• Integrated design that stacks functions, turns waste streams into resources (i.e. grey gardens, Composting worms and fly larvae, natural gas bio-digesters, aquaponics garden/pools)
• Self-funding without taking on debt burdens, permission, and/or insurance agents having authority over the decision-making processes

As E. F. Schumacher showed us in his book “Small is Beautiful”, Christopher Alexander with “Pattern Language Design”, and Bill Mollison with “Permaculture Design”, an appropriately scaled design pattern that can be varied as needed for each use case and location is what we all need and desire. Empowering individual families and communities to truly OWN their homes, because the idea, skills, and experience needed to build them have become common knowledge available to any and all willing to do the work.

Residential housing has been artificially driven up in value by speculators because the “saving” function of fiat money is broken and their prices are not driven by their functional value, financing and compliance costs make owning a home even more expensive, and poor design decisions by gatekeepers provide poor value, and dependency on specialized tools and skillsets drives up maintenance costs. Waste during initial, repair, and remodeling construction match all other daily waste going to the landfills, while chemical fire retardants, plastics, and glues often create toxic interior air quality worse than outside. Dozens of specialized crews that do not communicate with or understand others’ roles, needs, and concerns leading to wasted time, money, and materials.

Might not the best solution to the current housing affordability crisis simply be to provide families, not with over-priced, over-sized, and overly regulated shelters, but to instead empower all us to design and build decentralized, anti-fragile, and sustainable residential living systems that shelter more than our bodies and possessions_. Homes that also_ preserve and protect the supply chains for our essential daily needs. All of humanity, in every culture on every continent in every climate will be empowered by acquiring useful trade skills that can provide, not only for their own daily needs, but also deliver the opportunity to earn ongoing right livelihood providing these same livingry services to our local communities.

What if…#

• In a few weeks the tradecrafts could be acquired, that with commonly accessible and affordable tools, empower men and women everywhere to use renewable, sustainable, and locally available materials to build residential living ecosystems that, rather than consume, they produce capital over time in the form of:
• Soil, Plant, Animal, & Human food
• Water for gardens & all inhabitants
• Fuel for heating & cooking
• KwHrs to run appliances, fixtures, & tools
• Bitcoin to access global marketplaces
• Government “permitting”, zoning, insurance, and financing startup costs are reduced & often eliminated.
• Operational costs and maintenance labor are minimized, efficiency and production increase over time, and wastes streams are turned into resource streams.
• The physical, intellectual, financial, and experiential capital are re-invested into serving family and neighbors by creating a decentralized open-source cooperative cottage construction industry

Building Biology, or "Bau-Biologie" in German, provides us with a mental for our Pattern Language design stack that allows for biomimicry and biophilic design to evolve into a synergistic “macrobiome” that shows us the way to design and build living residential “super organisms”. Our house is not only our ‘3rd Skin’, the property line is the 4th skin, acting as the outermost semi-permeable protective layer of our residential ecosystems.

The How:#

By designing visible and invisible structures so that human, animal, plant, & soil organisms are ALL working together to coordinate a single living, breathing, growing entity. One with biological electrical ‘nervous system’ that cultivates, stores, & distributes electrical power, that has a ‘digestive system’ that provides for fresh water collection, filtration, & distribution, as well as grey/black water disposal. With a respiratory, skeletal, and connective tissues, organs, and systems, that nourish and protect essential organs.

By designing in more than just shelter, it becomes possible to provide all inhabitants with fuel for cooking and heating generated from passive solar heating, methane biodigesters, wood-gas/wind/water/PV generators, and BTC mining. Buckminster Fuller’s work showed us that geodesic domes are the most efficient geometries to use, and experience over time with residential domes has taught many that including a cupola and a dormer-style clerestory facilitate naturally efficient lighting and ventilation. While 3d printing, thin-shell latex cement canvas, and styro-foam concrete technologies now empower us all to design,manufacture, and build the joints, skin, and insulative in-fill for these geometric shapes in any configuration we can imagine. Adding space age insulative ceramic micro-spheres creates a non-toxic flexible highly reflective exterior coating suitable for rainwater collection and stacking the Japanese Shou Sugi Ban ancient natural wood preservation protects and beautifies the often up-cycled wood skeletal elements.

By riding on the efficiencies of scale that already exist for trampoline frames, both new and re-purposed, the existing manufacturing, distribution, and packaging of these galvanized steel skeletal framing elements we can add the wood, plastic, fabric, and cement elements as needed for each use case for this basic structural design unit. The lightweight framing, skinning, and insulation these allow for also enable more areas to become inhabitable by mounting these to docks enable residential use currently unavailable flood plane land and for Lake-steading, and eventually Sea-steading. By keeping the roofing footprint under 200 sq ft, the permitting threshold in many cities like Austin, TX the compliance costs of permitting and zoning are eliminated. By keeping costs down to 5-figures, instead of the 6 & 7-figures spent building most modern day homes, doing so with finance and insurance costs that can be kept to a minimum and sometimes eliminated.

Concept MVP#

Individually shouldering the responsibility for designing, building, and maintaining the infrastructure for sheltering our families and our business assets is now more possible by stacking our designs, tools, and materials on the shoulders of designers, engineers, and owner-builders from all other times, places, and cultures.

I built this roof of this 200 sq ft micro-dome igloo in a semi-permanent minimum viable form entirely by myself over a few months with under $3k spent on tools and materials.

The final piece of this jigsaw puzzle came when I gained access to 3d printing technology I began printing brackets for a 2v dome. The free model that I found was sized so that a single cut on an 8’ board would provide the two lengths of struts needed without any waste. (https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2483498). The initial model design happened to form a 14’ diameter hemisphere, with a 7’ height. I then realized that the upcycled trampoline frames made a superior vertical “pony wall” as is commonly used to gain more headroom around the interior perimeter of dome structures. By using 2”x12” wood with double beveled cuts to form a 14’ octagon I created a ledge that the dome could be mounted to, that also provides a mounting surface for guttering to enable rainwater catchment

The vertical poles and angled connecters from the trampoline happened to be 7’ in width, allowing for a 7’x7’ square addition to the 14’ diameter circle. The 140 sq ft of the trampoline and the 49 sq ft add-on, at 189 in total came in just under the 199 sq ft maximum allowed without a permit. This shape took form as a geodesic igloo. When I contemplated upon the partial skeletal framework for awhile before “skinning” the structure I decided that turning the 5 triangles coming off the corners of the pentagon cupola would not only provide dispersed light from any/all directions it also allowed for leaving those opening until last to allow for applying the finishing coats to the uppermost pentagon of the dome. After considering ways to keep from putting a window in the roof, with the likelihood for leaks that brings, I came up with the idea of the 5 triangular dormer style windows that are easier to seal and prevent direct sunlight while allowing indirect daylight from all sides into the dome interior. Those triangular dormers, along with the cupola vents and wall perimeter vents can be opened and closed to create and control passive ventilation

For the next, permanent version designed for occupancy by a couple I’m raising this current 30” wall to a full 8’ height to allow for a living/sleeping loft under the dome hemisphere. In order to support a second floor, arranging the floor joists in a hub and spoke layout bolted directly to the 1 ½” galvanized steel vertical support poles of the trampoline “oreo” framework. By supporting the central hub with the stair framing, rather than dropping a pole from the center of the peak of the dome, a ceiling fan can be mounted there instead to circulate air when the wind isn’t blowing. By using only 2 x 8’x4’ sheets of plywood for the floor of the private living/sleeping loft only 64 sq ft of floor space is necessary, as a wall mounted desk and mounting shelves for a futon frame as the kitchen ceiling will keep the bed from taking up precious floor space, while maximizing functionality of every cubic foot of the micro-dome igloo. The framing for the stairs provided an interior shower/toilet closet, preferably a sawdust “humanure” composting toilet to collect “night soil” in order to return nutrients back to the garden soil. Having an optional add-on door that opens into an IBC tote double-stack “outhouse” with a bio-gas generating flush toilet and another door opening up to an outdoor shower draining into greywater gardens and mulch basins, not only automates watering the garden while providing nutrients, it also allows for the natural gas to be used to fuel a cookstove, hot water heater, or natural gas generator.

Strategically, this is an advanced version of the Gradual Stiffening pattern, as articulated in the Pattern Language Design dictionary created by Christopher Alexander. Other patterns like Bringing the Outside In, which the passive lighting and ventilation features contribute to, and Intimacy Gradient, which the upstairs private/downstairs public uses of space create, came from his design library. Other design pattern strategies coming from Bill Mollison’s ideas shared in his Permaculture Design Manual, like Stack Functions, Transform Waste into Resource, and a Resource Harvesting Roof.

Collecting water, heat, and photons by tactically implementing grey-water gardens, the methane bio-digesters, the humanure composting/BSFL cultivation, passive solar water heater and PV systems, as well as wood-gas generator upgrades. By re-purposing the existing trampoline manufacturing infrastructure, adding 3d design and printing, and upcycled “re-blended” paint from the city recycling center, the capital to manufacture the steel and mats are minimized, landfill waste is diverted into a resource while cutting costs. At the same time, by training local craftsmen with on-the-job vocational technology education the tools and skills necessary for establishing e ssential infrastructure for cottage industry that build cottages for local community members. By doing so we can minimize upfront capital costs, lower environmental impact, and contribute to empowering community members with right livelihood, as well as sovereign shelters. Providing more than just a fish/shelter to those in need, instead providing fishing/building tools & knowledge of how to use them that will provide for their needs over a lifetime.

To be sovereign means to not have to ask anyone. This CAN be accomplished by dealing with all waste onsite, collecting and properly disposing of your solid and liquid waste onsite, by generating, storing, and distributing power locally. By being able to Do The Work yourself, fund the build yourself, and be responsible for the results yourself reliance on outsourced specialists is avoided. Asking insurance agents, zoning/code officers, and finance officers to manage risk, to permit your designs, and to fund your shelter with fiat debt-notes is to become a “House Slave”, living in over-priced, badly built, gilded cages designed for profit, not to cultivate quality of life for all on it.

Current compliance, finance, and insurance infrastructure, when combined with the inflexible, design, and construction processes cannot help but build "dead structures". Not designed for, adapted to, or adapted by the inhabitants, our built environments do not truly support their inhabitants or the external environment they're dropped into. An entirely new paradigm, a "Livingry Design/Build/Operate" science and art of cultivated curated living systems is how these mistakes can be remedied going forward.

Biodome Igloos:**** designed as basic 'cellular units and family 'tissues' coordinating operations to form multi-species community 'organisms'. Using good design, conscious cultivation, and responsible stewardship to customize stacked living systems out of community curated patterns and transformative process IS how **we heal all our relations by healing ourselves <u>with food as medicine, right livelihood for value-added services, and mathematics to fabricate trust and establish truth.</u>

Decentralized, closed-loop, off-grid, owner-built residential 'nodes' that are manufactured with local materials and readily available tools enables this for more of humanity than ever before.

The unique recipe of patterns curated from centuries of ideas in order to enable all this includes:

• Custom designed on-site manufacturing enabled by modern 3d printing technology controls supply chain risks while providing flexibility in sizing, geometry, and the types of framing elements used https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:6244858/files
• Latex cement canvas, thin-shell cement custom coverings using “waste” paint diverted from the landfills https://www.instructables.com/Latex-Concrete-Roof/ & https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1412039975/ref=as_li_ss_tl
• Japanese Shou Sugi Ban wood burning treatment avoids chemical off-gassing from wood preservatives to create beautiful rot, termite, and fire resistant wood framing elements http://www.ShouSugiBan.com
• Space age ceramic insulative paint additives designed for space shuttle tiles and commonly used to insulate yurts and RVs https://thermoshield.com/ & https://hytechsales.com/thermacels-insulating-additive-bulk
• Applying the thin-shell canvas cement to the flooring, over a typical earthen floor base of gravel and sand, avoids the expense in materials and labor of building a pier & beam deck or pouring a traditional cement slab
• Using re-pelletized Styrofoam as an insulative aggregate in the curtain walls as in-fill between the steel and wood structural elements brings additional sound and weatherproofing to the vertical walls, while diverting more waste from the landfills. https://youtu.be/nwv10Y9GBiQ?si=BJmMCWsKl_u9aFYX
• Mass manufacturing of metal trampolines brings economies of scale and diversion of unused waste from recycling streams delivered with durable, strong, pre-fabricated wall, footing, and perimeter beam framework.
• <u>The simple Igloo shaped framework and lightweight framing/skinning elements</u> creates an infinite variety of grouping together to create additional indoor and outdoor living, working, and playing areas that can grow organically as needs change and evolve, and can easily be modified for cold weather and/or tropical climates, as well as sand, rock, or even flood plain and water top foundations.

The biggest design/build challenges were how to reach the topmost area of the roof to apply the paint, cement, and insulation to weatherproof the canvas as the Gradual Stiffening application enables only limited self-scaffolding, without having to rent expensive lifts or build scaffolding and how to safely and effectively connect the dome hemisphere to the perimeter beam at the top of the trampoline oreo walls.

Leaving the 5 triangular dormer-style clerestory window openings until last made reaching uppermost surfaces possible. Purchasing a 12” compound bevel sliding chop saw allowed use of a 2”x12” shelf as the transition between the steel perimeter beam and the dome hemisphere. The challenge of securing the canvas to the steel framing elements was solved by using roofing screws to attach thin wood strips where needed. Not going with the stain grade finish wood would’ve allowed for use of an airless paint sprayer to lower the labor costs and use of a mortar sprayer will speed up the application of the latex cement mud mixture to the canvas. Use of removable slip forms, can allow for foam-crete wall in-fill to insulate against temperature and sound around the ground floor vertical walls.

The result of this is true Home Ownership, in the form of an ‘idea’ that cannot be taken, doesn’t need to be financed or permitted, and provides sustainable, healthy, living habitats for ourselves, our families and businesses.

BioDome Igloo Feature Stack:#

1. • Humanure Nightsoil/Nitrogen Collector
2. • BSFL cultivator
3. • 50 sq ft Grey water wicking bed garden
4. • 50 sq ft Black water wicking bed
5. • 100 sq ft, spiral herb, aquaponics, overflow wicking bed garden
6. • Methane/Nat Gas generating above ground septic bag
7. • Nat Gas stove/H2O Heater
8. • BTC Mining Spaces Heater/Clothes Dryer
9. • Indoor/Outdoor Showers
10. • Kitchen/Bath sinks
11. • Greywater Clothes Washer
12. • BioSand/3-stage/UV Light filter & disinfection
13. • On-demand water pump
14. • ~850 gal rain tanks
15. • Fridge/Freezer
16. • desks/couch/TV/platform bed
17. • 3 ext. doors & 2 int. pocket doors
18. • Solar array, charger, inverter, & batteries
19. • Passive Solar H2O Heater
20. • Indirect lighting & natural ventilation
21. • 17 windows
22. • MgO “cerama-crete”
23. • Rocket Cob Oven
24. • 2 burner cinderblock wood stove
25. • Vermiculture worm chute/bins
26. • 72 sq ft garden porch
27. • 120 sq ft utility courtyard
28. • 200 sq ft ground floor climate controlled space
29. • 64 sq ft 2nd story floor space
30. • 200-500 sq ft rainwater catching roof & awnings

Achieved with modular adaptability, expandability, & scalability, with readily available tools, materials, and skill sets.

BioDome Igloo Function Stack:

• Self-Finance & Self-Build/Maintain shelter for not only ourselves, families, and businesses, BUT, also for our tools, schools, & gardens.
• Sovereign control over the supply chains providing for universal daily needs of ALL the soil/plant/animal/human inhabitants:
  • Food cultivation for the entire ecosystem from => worms, flys, fungi, H20/soil bacteria, chickens, tilapia, cats, dogs, & humans
  • Water catchment, storage, & treatment for => gardens, fish, & animals
  • Shelter for private possessions from => wind, rain, sun, animals, bugs, molds, fire, extreme temps, prying eyes, & sticky fingers
  • Fuel for cooking, heating, drying, & charging from => wood, sun, biomass, & natural gas
  • Power for electronic appliances/fixtures, AC, BTC mining => sun, wind, nat gas, & potentially, biomass, micro-hydro, and/or hydrogen upgrades.
  • Waste management for solids, liquids, & gases from => flush toilets, compost bins, and septic tanks
  • Money for labor costs, infrastructure upgrades, and property taxes from => BTC mining, short/mid/long term rental, savings from closed-loop food, power, water, & waste systems
• Empowering Trade Skills enabling immediate ‘Right Livelihood’ through locally offered design/build/maintenance service offerings provided to neighboring communities.
• Scalable Growth designed appropriately, efficiently, and sustainably, built & maintained by those using the infrastructure.

Skill share/shelter seeding in multiple communities through a Vocational Tech Building Blitz

More useful than a fishing pole, providing knowledge on how to manufacture multiple fishing rods, nets, & traps can empower new adopters at scale with a fire of knowledge that cannot be extinguished. Owner designed, built, and maintained small scale shelter can now truly be ‘Owned’ in a way that not only address international chronic housing shortages, while also lowering monthly food costs, 3-6 weeklong Building Blitz onsite intensives create the potential spreading tradecrafts offering right livelihood by providing putting the newly learned trade skills to use for the local community. Small, but beautiful residential housing/food production/resource management in a decentralized, affordable, and communicable form factor is necessary. Providing Pattern Language and Permaculture design strategies, tactics, and skills training on a curated design dictionary, tool, and material stack is only the beginning.

Train a man on how to shelter and feed himself and his family and you offer him the opportunity for reliable right livelihood by exercising those vocational crafts as a service offered to his neighbors in his local marketplace, too. Families, schools, churches, all can organize clustered Biodome Igloo Pattern Stacks to lower their monthly food, energy, and shelter costs.

Craftsmen education through a ‘Building Blitz’ can systemize the training of the crew leaders, who can themselves train more crew and team leads. Offering land owners and craftsmen/women the opportunity to assemble one pre-manufactured kit and build out two new kits to completion over 3-6 weeks depending on the simplicity or complexity of the project. Perhaps, all crew members working together on the 1st Biodome, then 2 teams splitting off to duplicate two more under supervision from scratch, space, budgets, and time allowing, with each team completing two more Biodomes without supervision (providing 5 residential ecosystems in total), in order to earn their Designer/Builder Certification.

Resulting in 3 completed BioDome Igloo Stack ecosystems and up to 3 newly certifiably trained Crew Leaders. Costs will vary greatly depending on local economics, supply chains, and labor markets, but this Invisible Structural Pattern may allow for internationally scalable Vocational Tech training that addresses food, housing, and employment shortages worldwide.

BioDome 5 Special Features lead to 1 Unique Result:

1. 3D Printing: Free, open-sourced &/or DIY designed & locally manufactured custom structural brackets
   1. ASA plastic: mold, bug, UV, high temp, and impact resistant
   2. PETG plastic: mold, bug, UV, flexible & durable. Potentially, locally upcycled out of plastic bottles, but not as resistant to high temps
   3. Infinitely customizable and replicable
2. Latex Concrete Habitat: Low-cost, adaptable, and effective thin shell cement/canvas/latex paint ‘skinning’ technique 1st developed in the 1970s
   1. Hard or Flexible as needed, adapting to any shape and multiple materials, with inexpensive tooling or training
   2. Easily adheres to wood, metal, or plastics with staples, paint, & cement, for both initial construction and ongoing repairs/additions
3. Magnesium Oxide MgO Siding: Manufactured Non-toxic, inert, low-temp, paintable ceramic exterior & interior panels
   1. water, fire, mold, and bug resistant
   2. 50+ yr life span that adds thermal mass & soundproofing
4. Thermoshield Paint: Borosilicate microspheres, a space-age insulative material designed for space shuttle re-entry, available as both an additive and pre-mix roofing/siding/wall paint
   1. Flexible waterproofing coat providing heat reflection equivilant to R20 insulation with only 1/8” coating
   2. Non-toxic, inert, ceramic beads available as premixed ‘Thermoshield’ potable roofing paint
5. Trampoline ‘Oreo’ Framing:Flipped & stacked trampoline steel perimeter floor and wall beams, as well as load bearing poles
   1. Improved performance & lower cost by repurposing established steel trampoline mass-machining, packaging, and distribution infrastructure
   2. Use 1 ½” diameter galvanized steel tubing in low cost manufactured kits available wordwide, providing strength, durability, and light-weight efficiency at scale

‘Permit-less Design’:#

The BioDome Igloo Pattern Stack creates a durable, duplicatable, scalable, and transmittable DIY residential design pattern dictionary, integrating abstract philosophical/mathematical ideas adapted from Geodesic Geometry, Bau Biology/Biomimicry/Biophilic design, Cryptography, Austrian Economics, Permaculture, Pattern Language, & Free Open-Source Software, with tangible physical infrastructure

• Built appropriately small & light-weight, with grown factored in, to collect, store, reduce, and reuse energy production and consumption in a macro-organism, a closed-loop intentionally planned, built, and managed living residential ecosystem
• Providing a full-stack, top-to-bottom vertical supply chain for ALL of a self-contained ecosystem’s essential daily needs
• Transforms consumption (i.e. trash) into production (i.e. treasure), accruing sustainable residual surplus capital in multiple form factors, H2O, KwHrs, Bug/Plant/Animal Inhabitants, Nat Gas, Satoshis, & Compute Power
• This idea is stacked on the shoulders of these well-known & unknown intellectual giants, as well as countless peers of the realm:
  • Buchminster Fuller- ‘Critical Path’
  • Bill Mollison- ‘Permaculture Design Manual’
  • Christopher Alexander- ‘Pattern Language Design’
  • Dr. Albert Knott & Dr. George Nez- ‘Latex Concrete Habitat’
  • E. F. Shumacher- ‘Small Is Beautiful’
  • Ayn Rand- ‘The Fountainhead’
  • Satoshi Nakamoto- ‘The Bitcoin Whitepaper’
  • And many more anonymous & known peers, mentors, and clients…