Read this article first (30.30.30 rule). Nowadays everything is manufactured to have a short life. The economy has to keep going. Building something that last “hundreds of years” it’s not a good “investment” in the long run. Real estate, monthly bills and expenses as well as food is a “good business”. Doors, windows, the kitchen, the bathroom (especially the fancy ones) could cost a significant amount of money. Compared to the whole investment all this represents a pretty big part.

We start from scratch. Concept: we want to use basic materials (wood, metal, stone, glass) that last “centuries” but looks like the ultimate luxury. (in case you’re into that). Basically we want the houses to look “old money”. A house and furniture that outlast anything on the market so that even your grandchildren will be safe financially. We succeed. They will have to do just minor renovations.

Just think about the really rich people buying castles as an investment. Its price will never go down. It will last “forever”. It’s a good investment, especially if it remains in the family. We wanted all of “agelessness”: “for free” or extremely cheap. We managed to make it. It’s quite simple. Basically we “cut out” anything that doesn’t support the main concept, anything that costs money or time, anything that requires special skills.

Quick example: We want wood for the doors so we call the “ranger” in the forest directly. Everything in between it’s just a waste of money and time.  More people, more companies, more factories, more transportation involved will just skyrocket the final price. Yes, that’s obvious … everybody knows this. So we designed a door that it’s “stupid simple” to make. There are few components, insulates well and resists hundreds of years. We managed to cut out most of the “paperwork” as well as the middleman. We simplified the architecture and in the engineering and manufacturing process. From the basic materials we will get the “final” product almost “immediately”.

The best doors on the market are made with 3-4 pieces of 90-degree angles and rubber in between. These fancy fittings are there to stop the air movement. Read about the 30-30-30 rule first. The metal parts lock the door its place. It’s quite complicated. The best doors lock themselves in 5-7 points.

Why the existing workflow is wrong? | taxes | plug and play components | biz to biz deals You need to buy parts that are quite expensive. You pay various other things as well. Pay their bills and taxes. The price probably involves some inventions or patterns. You then “pay” for the construction of several various factories that produce just one part of the final product. You pay their monthly bills, their kid’s college expenses, the transportation price, the car. You also pay a highly skilled team to make the wooden door. To make it “perfect ” they need to buy use extremely expensive machinery. Their workshop might cost hundreds of thousands of euros to be able to make it perfect.

Just walk with a candle or lamp near your doors to check for infiltration. If the light is flickering as you pass the door, it’s being moved by the wind and so your doors are useless.  The heat is escaping your house trough the door. You will probably not agree with me here. Just read the article mentioned above and you’ll see. Beside that, you can also take a glance at your monthly heating bills. You “have to” pay the best skilled people and the best workshops and factories. The problems is that they know that they are “good” … so they will raise their prices.

They have to buy the rubber and metal parts. Lots and lots of business to business contracts. They are the “only ones” that can assemble the whole thing to fit “perfect”. You can’t order the parts to assemble your perfect fitting wooden door. It’s not a plug and play component of a desktop computer. These doors have at most a 4-5 cm width and double glazing. Thermodynamically speaking that’s nothing …however it cost a fortune. (note that wood is not the best insulation)

Simple. We go on a totally different direction. For starters we leave out these 90degree angles and rubber fittings that stop the air movement. We make the doors thick, like castle doors or even thicker. Just think about 12cm of wood. Or we use 2 layers of thick wood with a layer of papercrete in the middle.

A 12cm door will never, ever bend. Not even if a Danish dog, an elephant …. sleeps on the “porch”. It won’t bend. By not bending in time (like normal doors do): that 15-20cm will be perfect to stop the moving air. If we put magnets on the frame. (between the door and the frame itself). Others try to compensate the bending and “throw” money at the problem. Meanwhile we try to make it “perfect” and simple from the start, if it makes sense. Simplifying things will have as consequence the lack of fancy and complicated metal parts produced by different companies, which will obviously reduce your costs. All you need is the following :

Cnc machine is optional. Cut a nice model on it. Learn about cnc machines here. Nowadays they are not that expensive. You might design it to look like an old castle door , or something modern.  Contact the local design school (if your cheap :)) or pay some designer or architect that you like to make the design for you.

You can cut out nice metal details with cnc machines.  You can send the design in an electronic format and they will ship the metal details. Send it directly to the woodworking workshop or to your home. They will put the chosen design on the door in under 30 minutes. The result will be stunning.  However the end result would cost “almost nothing”. Most of the investment will be purchasing the wood and the metal.

Repairs | let’s get cheap in a good way. Once in every 40 years take down the doors and send them to a cnc machines again. You’ll lose a few mm on both sides but you’ll get a “brand new” door. Hope you understand the absurdity of the simplicity. In 40 years your grandchildren might do it again. You lose maybe 1.5 cm in thickness in 100 years. You can use simple magnets …or electromagnets to close the door better.

Craftsmen| will go broke? No need to worry … they did already. Yes, these doors and fancy metal design are extremely hard to manufacture. It would last weeks or even months to ship one of these. Don’t hate me about being the messenger of the new era. I really appreciate art. You might buy art and you might pay skilled artist to do your furniture. I just want to show you a “cheap” option to replace “nylon” doors. It might look like ultimate “luxury”. Don’t compare these machines with the craftsman; you can’t even compare the 2 versions. Making the doors in a traditional way would cost you a fortune.  It’s like comparing an Arabian racehorse with a brand new Porsche 911.One is a living thing and the other thing is just really fast. (And looks nice as well).

Time to build it. Gluing wood together will take 24 hours. Polishing it will take a few hours. The work with a cnc machine will take a few hours. You will save weeks if not months of work and waiting. This will cut down on cost tremendously.  Find a workshop with a cnc machine today. This way you won’t pay as much on the transportation.  If they don’t have a 3d, 4d metal cnc, then simply order the needed parts. Ship them directly to their doorstep. This way everything will be ready within a few days. You won’t have the headache of organizing all of it. It’s simple. You will save lots of money, the end result will be cheap and it will look like ultimate luxury.

Safety. Just think about how can burglars smash a 12 cm wooden door in a few seconds? I am not saying it’s impossible but it’s tricky. Especially when you have tens of Arduino sensors  “watching” everything. I wouldn’t use classical locks and keys at all. Voice recognition, “voice passwords”, fingerprint, typing codes would be way better. It’s a lot cheaper and definitely safer.

Read the 30/30/30 rule first and air exchange as well. Do it! Basically make windows unmovable.  This way you will have fresh air all the time not just periodically when you open the windows. You’ll have cleaner air then closing and opening the doors occasionally. Mold will not form. Not even in the bathroom. Unmovable windows with acrylic sheets  will cut down prices majorly. It will look similar to this. Skip the frames once for all. The main idea is that you buy just these basic materials: the acrylic sheet and some superlight easy to make frames.

The end result will look luxurious. It will insulate amazingly well and it will be within normal windows price range. Seriously, read the articles mentioned above. Another good read is the thermal mass and the chimney effect. Don’t confuse closed windows with air conditioning and bad air. It is quite the opposite! Close windows and an arduino system means optimizing everything to achieve the best air quality. It’s not air conditioning …it’s just controlling and circulating the air in an optimal way. It means breathing fresh and pure air. Read about the odd pairing with the underground lake that produces first quality organic food. We get the fresh: pre heated, purified, crystal clean air from here. The air will be as good as in the middle of a forest.

Most of the tiles in the bathrooms and kitchens function as a patch. They don’t solve the problem: they don’t cure the wound. We put tiles in the bathroom because if we don’t do it: the odds are that in time mold will start to form. It’s easier to clean this way.  Just think about nature. It rains all the time and we have mist and fog …. Yet nothing molds.

That is because of the movement of fresh and dry air. We can’t do the same in normal houses because that would mean opening the doors and windows all the time. Out heating bills will skyrocket to the Moon. If your rich and you could afford a bigger bathroom, kitchen or house you would have the same problem.  Basically rich or poor… the problem is the same.

Solution. Simply let out the air (filled with water vapors) in the underground lake. This way the hot air from the house will remain within the “structure” or “ecosystem”. The “exhaust” air will heat the water pond filled with exotic fish. The air will be cleaned by the passing water. The air bubbles will pop-out on the surface of the water and the vegetables and fruits will oxygenate them. Most of the organic food is positioned in the upper part of the lake The heat, the warm air accumulates here and so the plants will grow faster. Meanwhile you’ll pump the fresh air back to the house, bathroom or kitchen. This way: the airflow can be plenty, continuous and cheap to have. Basically we use the same hot air over and over again. We heat up the air using the greenhouse effect (hyperlink) and we use insulated shutters as well (hyperlink). In case it’s done well your monthly bills will be nearly zero or nonexistent. Mold will never appear in your house and your bills won’t be affected by the attempt of fighting mold. You’ll breathe cleaner air than the outside one (except if you live in the middle of nature).

Benefits. Having “dry” air all the time in the bathroom means you can experiment with new materials. For example: ditch the tiles. Use rocks instead. They look gorgeous, they are cheap or even “free”. They will last hundreds of years without a doubt. Using them will increase the thermal mass of the building so that the overall comfort will be higher. Your heating and cooling bills will be lowered even further way this way. Read about the “battery”.

Summary. The wood is fairly cheap and it regenerates quickly (compared to other luxury material). Stone is cheap as well. Use it: in it’s original form. Use wood instead of expensive techniques and materials. Skip business-to-business payments, skip the middleman. Simplify the workflow, skip extra taxes, etc. Simplify the 3-4 pieces of 90 degree angles at doors with 20cm flat surfaces. These flat surfaces can be covered with electromagnets, normal magnets, rubber or “sponge”.  Make the door 10-12 cm thick. You might add a layer of papercrete (hyperlink) in the middle. The door won’t bend like normal doors. Read about the 30/30/30 rule. Time will be on your favor. Cut a nice model on the doors with the help of a cnc machine. For fancy metal decoration use the same cnc technology as well.

This way you’ll have a huge “shortcut” in the work phases. You’ll save lots of time and energy. Instead of needing several different companies for the “ingredients”, you will have to deal with just a few. The technology and the manufacturing phases are way simpler.… and the end result gets way better. You can hire workshops with average skilled people and “average” machines to get the perfect results. You won’t be forced to pay for what would be the best to get mediocre results. You’ll pay less to have doors that resist literally hundreds of years. And their insulation will be so much better.(30 30 30 rule). Their maintenance, reparation in every 30-40 years would cost almost nothing (compared to normal doors ). You can’t repair normal doors at an affordable price. Check this article about the insulating materials. You might cut out the middleman, business-to-business deals and taxes by buying or having the basic materials on site. Buying a forest for the terrain would provide you the wood for the frames and for the “false facade” (hyperlink). In this case you might use this material on the facade ( shou shugi ban). It should last roughly 120 years. You wont have to do any maintenance for 2 reasons:

12-15cm thick wooden frames “can’t” be destroyed. Not even by time or incidents. Use cnc machines to get some extra artwork on it. Metal would last a millennia. Just send the 3d “plans” to the nearest cnc machine and they will ship it to the guys who make the doors. Within 2-3 days it should be ready to be mounted on the door. It won’t cost much.

Sensors. Basically the sensors know better than you. Let them do their job. It’s like specialized electronics in a sports car. As an example to manage the house and “energy flow” use the Arduino system. Read about the thermal mass.

Save big | movable. Don’t make windows movable. You’ll save tens of thousands of $ in the investment stage. You’ll save hundreds of thousand $ in the long run. Read about infiltration.(30/30/30 rule). Use acrylic sheets for your windows.

Smaller and lighter. Having smaller and lighter things like acrylic sheets, you will be able to use smaller machinery, cheaper machines, fewer people, people with lower skills to assemble the parts. It may sounds strange, but simplifying things will cut down the risk factor. You are right. You don’t have to buy the fancy equipment and machinery.

However at the end of the day you and other customers are the ones that pay their bills and investments. Keeping it simple and “small” will lower their and your “investment” considerably. Meanwhile the end result will look luxurious and will last for decades. Look them again doors, doors details, and huge windows.