London teen designs micro-home to help solve home affordability crisis

A student at Western thinks he may have a solution to affordable housing woes, CTV's Bryan Bicknell caught up with the 19-year-old visionary.

A London teenager known for his engineering ingenuity is at it again.

Nineteen-year-old Ribal Zebian has built a low-cost modular home that he’s hoping can help with Canada’s affordability crisis.

However, it’s not your typical micro-home.

Currently located in his family’s backyard in White Oaks, the home is built and designed with all the necessary comforts of its occupant.

That includes a patio on the roof with fold-out stairs to reach it. Indoors it has a bed, a fold-out table, a kitchen area, a fireplace, and an RV toilet and shower.

“If I’m going to live in it, it’s going to be exactly what would make me comfortable. If needs to be humane, it has to be humane,” explained Zebian.

CTV News first introduced viewers to Zebian one year ago, when as a high school student, he designed and built a wooden, all-electric replica of a Mercedes G-Class SUV. Now an engineering student at Western University, he’s turned his attention to affordable living solutions.

“We started off with a concept and with a prototype on what affordable, luxury-looking modular houses could be and look like,” he explained.

The home is powered by a generator. For water and plumbing, it is equipped with a water storage membrane under the bed for regular water use. Zebian says it’s constructed with steel, fibreglass, and artificial stone.

“It’s a lightweight steel skeleton, and then there’s an insulated layer, and then there’s these panelings. If you look around the edges up there and at the bottom, those are the hinges, the folding hinges- those are welded directly to the frame and the skeleton,” Zebian explained.

In size, the home is 22 feet by 11 feet, and is 10 feet tall. It’s also foldable for easy transport.

So far, Zebian says four such homes have been manufactured and self-funded. He’s seeking investors to be able to produce them on a larger scale. Zebian says each home will have a price-tag of about $20,000. The goal is to get multiple units set up on a piece of land within the city, creating a small community.

Right now, he says the homes are being tested for durability.

“But also, moving these from spot to spot, potentially, you know when there’s strong, heavy rains. We move it to a farm area where it could take the most abuse,” he said.

The ultimate test will come as Ribal is set to reside in one of the homes himself for one year, to make sure it’s suitable for every day living.