By Tom & Carol Braford
It is a well-known cliché, and some may say a fact, that “Necessity is the Mother of Invention.” A corollary to that might be that throwing your hat over the wall is a guaranteed way to create necessity, if you want to get your hat back. Of course, the higher the wall, the bigger the potential invention.
In our case, that amounted to applying for a grant where we proposed to build a 700 ft² agrivoltaic grow-room. Our intention was to put it on a rooftop at the Ecovillage as a 5% scale model version of a larger future project. We got the grant, but the timeline of a larger project that we expected to overlap this one slipped, and we are now projecting higher costs. So now we find ourselves in a time and money pickle.
About the same time, a real estate developer friend called to let us know he was passing through town. We knew from previous interactions that his business model included componentized construction that could be placed on a site as an interim use and then disassembled and moved to another site if necessary later on. We were not able to find a time to meet while he was in town, and it did not seem like a good use of our time anyway.
But, what if we could componentize our grow-room, erect it temporarily on the ground and move it to the rooftop when the larger project was ready to go? That could potentially take care of the time problem, but it added to the cost.
What if we added a sleeping loft, bathroom and kitchen? We would have a 1260 ft² super-green componentized potential tiny house product that our investor friend and some of you might be interested in. If so, give us a call.
Remember invention starts with throwing your hat over the wall and the higher the wall the bigger the invention. If it does not work out, you can always get another hat or write a book about the adventure.
Contact: braford@sbcglobal.net
www.ArizmendiEcovillage.com