I have one of these houses. Just built it and moved in. Save time and increase quality. Dried in with insulated walls / windows in 4 days!
Price is still an issue.
Part of the reason is that we pay no penalty for crappy energy hog homes. You can build with prefab panels and get airtight really quickly. So all the extra $$$ goes into better build and overhead for the factory.
> Part of the reason is that we pay no penalty for crappy energy hog homes.
You pay higher heating and cooling costs over the lifetime of the building. It's just the penalty is a 'death of a thousand cuts' that may be less noticeable than a proverbial broadsword to the face of paying for some extra insulation and proper house wrap upfront.
Just improving airtightness and mandating blower door tests in building codes would probably go a long way towards more efficient homes. Once you're more airtight you then of course have to ventilate right: HRV/ERV for refreshing of the air and stand alone dehumidification units.
Hah yes. In the early days of Zipcar in NYC (not sure if this is still allowed as I moved to the country and now drive a gas guzzling truck), I reserved every weekend for 48 hours for a full year in advance. Then on the Friday before the reservation started I would decide what I really needed, as there was no cancellation penalty. I probably only used it every second or third weekend, but noticed it really improved my "get out there and do something" motivation, as I set the default for "I have a car."
Let me reply the counter case. Someone very close to me suffered a severe episode of manic depression. So much so that they were getting evicted from their apartment and losing their job. We tried to escalate help from across the country and NONE came from the medical establishment. (Talked to both the psychologist and psychiatrist.) No offer of evem brief inpatient care, which would have helped ameliorate the damage which they are still facing caused by clearly a medical problem. Their answer was to let my friend ride it out, even though he was vandalizing buildings and threatening neighbors in his delusion. (Friend being heretofore a very high performing person in grad school.)
So yes, the profession is BS but I would say the pendulum has swung a bit too far based on the help we were asking for and didn't get.
I don't have any system in mind but really anything that will streamline production and manufacturing.
One of the biggest problems usually in this sort of business is inventory management and getting from the inventory to final product to the client, this is where you money is.
I realize this is a bit generic, but you are missing a lot of details here (and that's fine, in your place I would do the same until the deal is final).
From the sound of it though, this is a business ripe for improvement, almost anything you'll touch with good spirit and intentions will likely benefit.
Very interesting. I'm going to be in "next gig mode" next year and am a Vet. Was thinking about what kind of company to start. Would you be available for a short chat? My email in my profile.
Yes, but... There are now a huge number of new wells being drilled precisely because of the fracking boom. So if no fracking, then the water doesn't get contaminated. It's not the actual fracturing of rock thousands of feet below that does it, true, it's the pipe that goes there and back. But the responsibilty does roll up to "the driller" which are the guys getting gas out of the ground.
What I'd actually likes as a feature is an output telling me WHEN to start my trip based on the lowest travel time due to traffic. Would be wonderful to have a histogram by hour for journey times based on traffic prediction.
Very interesting. I have been on a kick recently on how to really attack the college market with a different offering, and had thought of some of these same points. (Which you are executing on! Well done!)
My concept was to try to create a study abroad program, which combined a concentrated "learning community," along with some MOOCs, and on-site tutors/navigators. I think you could run this at a RADICALLY different price point than most colleges, and therefore nip at the edges of the market. Basically take a semester or two share from traditional colleges.
Of course, the challenge is in accrediting and ensuring credits would transfer back to the college. But it just seems when colleges are charging $40k / year tuition that there is some room to attack this on the edges. And the college students then get the benefit of a fun study abroad which would be even cheaper than home....
Price is still an issue.
Part of the reason is that we pay no penalty for crappy energy hog homes. You can build with prefab panels and get airtight really quickly. So all the extra $$$ goes into better build and overhead for the factory.