More Ideas on Shelters

A relatively new design in metal buildings reworks the truss so that two moments are carried on two sides rather than one moment being carried by a single truss overhead, the traditional strategy. In this way the building assembly is simplified and made more DIY friendly. One metal building manufacturer, Perka, will custom fabricate such trusses, offered as its 4000 series design.

A question arises as to whether this design would work with plywood rather than steel. At this point I have no engineering studies to validate the idea, only my artistic renderings showing what such design might look like. I was inspired by the Shelter 2.0 idea that every building component can be cut out of plywood using an 4 x 8 3-Axis CNC machine. The smaller shelter 2.0 design is ideal for emergency conditions where there is a pressing need to get shelter set up quickly. My thought was toward a longer term solution where a single inexpensive building can give each resident a kind of minimum level of amenities including a private cubicle like room, private bunk, closet space, builtin desk, shelves, desk, and storage. As well it seems like you would want fit it out with an HVAC system. I like the so-called 'package' units, in this case a gas / heat pump hybrid put out by Bryant.

The building is set on a concrete pad. To get an idea of costs here is a link to another manufacturer called AAMetal Buildings. They will apparently give you a 40' x 50' x 14' building kit for $ 32,000.00 - which by my arithmetic would allow you set up pretty near 32 cubicles. The Bryant heat pump is around $ 3,000.00 - maybe $ 5,000.00 installed.

If you figure a 6" concrete floor costs around $8 / sq ft including labor, there's another $ 16,000.00. If each berth costs around $500.00 thats another $ 16,000.00 - so maybe you're looking at $2,500 per unit all in.

Now in the case of the Shelter 2.0 the thinking seems to be that to the extent the residents can learn the skills needed for assembly, all the better. The hope is it would be the same with these more permanent and long term structures.

If the total capital outlay for such structures is held to even $4,000.00 per resident then at 4% interest amortized over 72 months that's a cost per resident per month of $60.00.