liseman

i made this free app to help me hold my breath longer for spearfishing; just hit 5:20 static! feedback welcome.

I am actively working on SAI. If you'd like to help, please reach out.

Thanks; great suggestions. 1kW is more than enough to run all of that, with the heater being the only questionable element. In Oakland, we're fine with 1kW to keep ambient in-container temp at 65F year-round.

+insulation, electrical, window, door, flooring, walls, etc.

Yes: toilet, shower, water heater, kitchen sink.

This is great; I'll reach out to both of them today. Thanks!

I will be absolutely stunned if you can get a tiny home custom-built with a solar system half this size for less than 80k.

Whether parked on the street (my preferred version) or as units in a yard, law is ambiguous in Oakland. If you're in the area, you're welcome to come visit!

We live in ours in Oakland. Legality is a complicated topic in our case, but variants will qualify as Accessory Dwelling Units under state-level rules

Great ideas, thanks! We've been through 4 different attempts at photos, and results are obviously lacking... do any of you have sources you really like for outlet covers, light cases, and other fixture / finish elements?

for permanent installs, I really like the idea of containers as side supports to a quonset hut. like this, but with 3-4 containers: http://alarconbohm.com/

Both, balancing the capex needs for the latter via sales as I scale:)

The interior environment gets entirely sealed under closed-cell foam insulation applied directly to the metal, leaving no interior space for condensation on the metal. Literally all surfaces that you're exposed to are things we buy at home improvement stores: bamboo flooring, cabinet-grade plywood, etc. A big part of the 'deluxe' cost is the elaborate solar system: we're able to cook, heat space + water, etc. all off of the solar array + batteries. We're thinking about possibilities for pop-outs in the future.

We're going to do this selectively: getting the first ADU design fully licensed in a given MSA is going to be important for us. We'll want to see a year+ commitment to justify the cost.

Hi Andrew! Initial focus is the Bay Area, where rents are particularly absurd. Unlike other tiny homes, we can stack these to scale existing locations to meet demand (with some zoning hurdles, of course)

Yes. Depending on the location and length of time the boxouse will be there, we can do off-grid (tanks monitored and filled/pumped as need, RV-style) or grid-connected (linked to existing house's plumbing)

thanks for the feedback. what are the most compelling prefabs you've found that are actually shipping, and how much do they cost?

We'll make it clearer on the website, but the 49k version includes a 1.5kw solar array, ~15kwh of battery storage, all water systems, full smart home functionality (ie 'alexa, trigger windows' to go from transparent to opaque), and furnishings down to the utensils. Our 9k barebones model is closer to how most mobile homes I've seen are outfitted (but with better insulation and design in a boxouse); looks like these average over 60k new: http://www.dailyyonder.com/manufactured-housing-sales-bounce... . am i missing something?

This was firmly a hobby until a few months ago, at which point I quit my job to focus on boxouse full-time.

At thousands of units per month, we're probably off of shipping containers and onto something lighter and cheaper:)

Here's some photos of work in progress: https://goo.gl/photos/N6jiAo9696QJG6KU8

Kirsten's visited us a couple of times: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfqunEuw61k

We use several inches of closed-cell foam insulation interior to the metal. In addition to an r-value of 15+, you're not hearing much outside:)

More oriented to multi-unit, permanent builds: https://www.montainerhomes.com/ High-end, semi-stackable: http://kasita.com My favorite ultra-low-cost builder: http://relaxshacks.blogspot.com/ My favorite youtuber for sustainability broadly, with a focus on housing: https://www.youtube.com/user/kirstendirksen

IMHO, zoning is is one of the biggest challenges facing anybody who wants to do something interesting in real estate. CA actually is forcing cities to make it easier to build ADUs: http://www.hcd.ca.gov/policy-research/docs/17Jan30-ADU-TA-Me... . Worst case, we put wheels on them and have license plates to avoid having to comply with building regulations;)

Eventually, we'll make tiny homes as affordable as other factory-built products: car prices, if not cheaper.

2k is delivered to my door. Definitely still a surplus, but they're worth something as scrap: prices fluctuate directly with steel's scrap price.

Heather and I build these; happy to answer any questions! -Luke

Launch:) Short of this, get your cardboard-box-level prototype into users' hands.

No matter how early and rough, show your product to potential customers and listen to what they say. You'll learn more from an hour doing this than a month of brainstorming with your team about what features you should someday maybe add to make your product compelling.

Over many cycles of sharing many prototypes with customers, you'll figure out what your future users actually want your product to do. This will almost always be way different than your original vision.

And stop worrying about whether you're too early: many of our best startups get rejected before applying again with progress and getting accepted. Pretty much everybody thinks they're too early or late for YC, and they're all wrong;)

(Disclaimer: I work for YC advising hardware startups.)

My friend Spencer writes this. It's a high signal-to-noise weekly summary of developments in 3D printing and other advanced manufacturing news.