These Students Can Build A House In Two Days

This post is presented in partnership with CQUniversity.

“Say… two days,” is how long Angus Hughes, 20, reckons it takes to erect one of his award-winning Pallet Houses.

Two days. Forty-eight hours. Transformers: Age of Extinction played back to back, 17 and a half times. That’s an absurd figure when talking about assembling substantial shelter; something most (frustrated, bruised and bandaged) dads attempting to patch together tree-houses in their backyard could only dream of.

But it’s no lie.

The idea was born when CQUniversity student Angus, on a whim, attempted to construct his own house out of pallets in 2013.

“I noticed lots of pallets lying around and no on one was using them, so I decided to design and build my house out of these,” he told Student Edge.

“When it started, it was just something that I wanted to do.

“I’m a structural engineer student,” he throws in, implying that’s all the reason he needed for his large-scale LEGO project.

Pictured: Angus with his Pallet House.

After living in the house for a year, he recruited like-minded CQU students Jessica Kahl, 20, and Mattison Rose, 20, to assist in developing a business plan they could enter into The Big Issue’s Big Idea competition. (It’s a comp they won, BTW.)

The pitch for ‘The Shelter Project’, as they christened it, involved constructing a “flat-pack” version of Angus’ house that could be built by disadvantaged Australians and used in disaster areas.

“It’s something we’ve noticed in regards to relief housing, and being in the Central Queensland region, we’ve come across cyclones and Cyclone Marcia even recently, and it’s something we thought was necessary,” said Angus.

“Part of the design is developing a house that families could construct and live in on the same block of land as they’re rebuilding their home.”

“There was a real gap in the market we found,” Jessica added.

“When people go through disasters and they become disaster victims, they tend to not have their house anymore because of either fires of flood, and they need to find shelter in either a caravan or tents; that’s only immediate relief. We want something a bit more mid-term.”

Though engineering students, the trio chalks up their success to chemistry (science pun definitely intended), with Angus and Mattison being long-time friends, and Mattison and Jessica, a couple.

“Jess brought more of the managerial aspect - getting everyone sorted; Angus, brought the original ideas - more the concepts man; and me, the putty that goes in between everything,” Mattison laughed, as he described the divvying up of responsibilities.

Jessica came to his defence, saying, “Matty was more involved in the electrical side of it, because he’s an electrical engineer.”

“He did a lot of the solar system design, so we could incorporate chargers for phones and fridges, et cetera, that could be included in our disaster house.”

The end game for Angus, Jessica and Mattison’s award-winning Shelter Project is to get those Pallet Houses into production and start helping out disaster victims who could seriously use the assistance.

“The flat pack itself could be constructed in a couple of weeks,” Angus notes, as the three of them muse over “maybe building another couple Pallet Houses with the flat-pack design” as a research project.

First, however, they’ve got graduation.

Still, the Shelter Project is no pipe dream. Angus’ original Pallet House withstood the 285km/h winds of Cyclone Marcia in February; a wind-speed that destroyed 350 other domiciles.

Few tree-houses or LEGO monuments could manage the same.

Photo supplied by CQUniversity.

Open up your universe and consider a degree at CQUniversity, just like Angus, Jessica and Mattison. For more information, go to cqu.edu.au