Podzook: a simply stunning backyard office pod

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If you equip it with a recoilless rocket launcher, would the addition be a podzooka?

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Prices range from 32-40K depending on how you chose to craft your pod.

Itā€™s a beautiful little woodshed, but good god thatā€™s a lot of money.

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Yeah, for less money Iā€™d rather have a Yurt.

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Does it have any ventilation other than the single door?
Anywhere south of 50 latitude, that thing will be an archisauna

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Thatā€™s what I was thinking tooā€¦

I was told a couple of years ago that yurt is a pejorative Russian word (юртŠ°), meaning something like ā€œshackā€ or ā€œhovelā€. The nomadic peoples that created the original buildings that modern yurts resemble call them gers, or terma, or kherga.

The person that told me this is Mongolian, and was trying to explain friction between American yurt enthusiasts and the modern descendants of nomadic peoples. Basically Tuvans and Turkmen come online and discover that Americans call their houses dirty huts, and in the language of their conquerors, no less.

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ā€¦redefined their word.

That happens with languages.

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Is it just me or is there a whole lot of form over function going on here? Like Jony Ive kept whispering in their ear ā€˜thinner!ā€™ whoops I meant ā€˜rounderā€™ ā€˜no, rounderā€™ ā€˜not round enough!ā€™ ā€˜is it a sphere yet? no? rounder!ā€™ Ahhhh, now thatā€™s artisanal!

For $40k you could build your own tiny house to your own design. Skip the trailer part and it could be bigger as well, much bigger. An interesting shape, but right angles would be easier. I like the idea of the gull-wing door, maybe a tiny house has a large top to bottom door that cantilevers out to form part of a awning or shade structure?

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Interesting. Iā€™m a fan of gers and like them even more now that I know the correct term sounds like a gar.

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What about using a cargo container? How posh could be a house made at this budget from one or two such containers? Would also be easy to transport.

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Here in Lancaster (UK), the University has two archipods (ā€œpodzookā€? WTF?) in the woods outside its ā€˜Institute of Contemporary Artsā€™, presumably as rehearsal/thinking/seminar spaces.

They look good, even as the shingles weather from a beautiful russet to greenish-grey, but I did know their price, which rather overshadows their attraction - thereā€™s a rumour that the University blew a pretty big ā€˜public artā€™ budget on buying a pair of novelty sheds.

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I will continue to use my good olā€™ English pejorative terms to refer to my own little backyard hovel. Or shack. ā€œHermitageā€ is probably too fancy-pants.

I mean, it doesnā€™t have running water and contains more than two spiders, so I shouldnā€™t get uppity about it.

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Used 20ā€™ shipping containers can be had for ~$2000 in good condition, maybe twice that insulated. How much customization would it would take to make them comfortable (and unobjectionable to the neighbors?) Probably less than $36K worth.

You might run into zoning wrinkles too. An acquaintance of mine ran into trouble with the city of Berkeley partly because his shipping containers, stacked only two high, werenā€™t approved as seismically sound. The same type of shipping containers that routinely cross oceans stacked six high. :confused:

That said, there certainly is a lot that can be done with shipping containers.

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I looked into this. To get a single shipping container that you would want, plus shipping unless you have your own semi, and placement on a foundation unless you have your own crane is $8-$10k. The container is $2-$4k of that price.

Then you will be getting very well acquainted with your plasma cutter. I was thinking about getting one for high intensity gardening (hold your horses, orchids and microgreens). But unless you have the ability to move them cheaply, stick built kinda wins out.

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Yep! And it helps if you are near a port. If they have to be moved hundreds of miles,the cost rapidly rises.

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A plasma cutter is overkill for gardening anyway. Most people make do with pruning shears.

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When pruning basil no less than a sawzall, some Norwegian death metal, and a case of Mad dog.

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This is true. Weā€™re a family of pyros, and we frequently talk about buying a shipping container to build a fireworks manufacturing bunker to the proper codes. So far itā€™s just a pipe dream though.

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Wouldnā€™t such thing be better done with good walls on the sides and a very lightweight one at the top and maybe back? So in case of a mishap the energy dissipates in a known-good direction?

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