I know how to build tornado safe rooms.
I know how to build housing with enhanced tornado/hurricane survivability.
At the same time, I believe I can make housing more affordable.
I'm going to be coy about the details, because I'm seeking a patent, but I'd like to offer my opinions about the need to build housing that's affordable.
Finding a way to produce housing that's more affordable continues to be one of our biggest problems. As Iowa's Governor, Tommy Vilsack put it: "...trouble is", he says, "nobody makes a decent house, under $100,000."
The main reason it's hard to build a less-than-100K house is that Democrats (like Vilsack) have made war on big business. Answers for big problems (like this one with affordable housing) come from widescale applications of improved technologies - which almost always involves big business. Not much good ever happens for the masses, without economic activity scaled to achieve the economies discovered in large-scale manufacturing operations.
Certainly there was a housing boom in the 90's, but none of it was accomplished by anything contributed by the government - especially not by Bill Clinton (or any other Democrat). I'd argue that many of those houses that went up in the 90's wouldn't have happened without those new-fangled nailguns. Half of them may have happened anyway, but nailgun efficiency made the other half of them possible, because it brought costs down. Without it (and a host of other innovations), even a $100,000 house would be impossible.
So, what do I recommend?
Well, don't laugh:
I say, we return to discarded building philosophy.
I advocate a return to the spartan approach employed in building the homes of the Victorian Era, in the late 1880's. It was an era of conservative philosophy, emphasizing common virtues, like discipline, efficiency and prodeuctivity. Bywords though these be after our 90s-era culture-war battles with Bill and the Barbarians, you need only look around, and you'll see - the Victorian building paradigm was rather successful:
1) They built tall, rather than wide.
2) They built narrow.
3) They built deep.
4) They conserved interior space.
5) They traded floor-space for head-space.
6) They built-in the "social", or "community" factor.
7) They didn't sacrifice style for affordability.
8) They recognized that it never really hurts kids to climb stairs.
I have a unique approach. I do integrated framing. I have a plan for a manufacturing process that produces a simple pre-manufactured framing product - and, not surprisingly, it works well for the build-it-tall paradigm.The house I build will be one big "safe-room".
How do they say that?
"If I build it, they will come..."?
Interested? Contact me:
Mark Mondt
2025 S Glendale
Wichita, KS 67218
mmondtsr@yahoo.com
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