tsl8.app / examples / clt-shelter
Rapid-Deploy CLT Shelter
A flat-packed cross-laminated timber module. Seventy-two hours from truck to occupied.
This is the hardware half of a legislative proposal. On its own it's a shelter product with a specific customer (state-level emergency response). Paired with the Resilient Housing Fund TSL8, it's the reason the fund's fire-rebuild program works — a pre-committed demand that lets a CLT manufacturer build a California production line. Either read is legitimate. Both should be pressure-tested. — Tom Ellsworth · sent to a CLT manufacturer + an emergency-ops director · March 2026
This is a TSL8. Sender: Tom Ellsworth, verified via linkedin.com/in/tomellsworth. Cargo: v0.3 design brief for a flat-packed cross-laminated timber shelter module with a 72-hour deployment target.
Paired with the Resilient Housing Fund. Either can be read alone. Together they describe a single supply chain. Trust model: open pre-read for a manufacturer and an agency.
A cross-laminated timber shelter that ships flat on one 53-foot trailer, assembles without a crane, and reaches occupiable condition in 72 hours on a prepared pad. Eight panels, twelve connectors, one mechanical cartridge for water/power/HVAC. Serviceable for five years. Recoverable, refurbishable, redeployable.
Target unit: a single-family 480 ft² module with a closed bath, two sleeping zones, kitchen, and covered porch. Stackable for two-story configurations. Cluster-configurable for a village of twenty units on a high-school parking lot.
Post-disaster emergency shelter in California today is FEMA trailers, hotel vouchers, or tents. Trailers arrive 4–12 weeks after an event, cost $80–120k each, and sit on a footprint they can't be removed from without specialized equipment. Vouchers scatter families across the region, breaking the social and school continuity that is the actual recoverable asset. Tents are 72 hours, then weeks of degraded habitation.
A pre-positioned CLT module arrives in 72 hours like a tent, costs roughly half of a trailer, houses a family for five years rather than fourteen months, and can be recovered and sent to the next event. The math improves at every axis — except initial capital cost, which is where the paired Housing Fund matters.
Eight CLT panels (floor, four walls, two roof, one interior dividing wall) with precision-milled connector pockets. Assembly uses twelve engineered steel connectors, torque-spec-sealed, requiring only a crew of four with standard impact drivers and a small forklift. No crane. No concrete pour — the module sits on six adjustable jack-pads on any prepared gravel pad.
A single mechanical cartridge at one end integrates water in/out, electrical panel, HVAC, and water heater, with quick-disconnect fittings for the site supply. The cartridge is the only expensive-and-fragile component; everything else is timber, steel, and glass. The timber is the fire envelope — CLT char-rate performance is well-characterized and exceeds conventional framing for this use.
The module's per-unit cost at 1,000/year is $48k. At 100/year it's $82k — worse than a FEMA trailer. The manufacturer cannot build a California production line on emergency-response demand alone; the demand is too lumpy. The paired Housing Fund's fire-rebuild mortgage program, by subsidizing CLT-construction rebuilds via rate differential, creates the steady baseline demand that makes the production line viable.
When a fire rebuild uses CLT, it is in the same supply chain as the shelter program. When the shelter program deploys, it can source from the same manufacturer as fire rebuilds. A single line produces both. The economics close because of the coupling — and the coupling is the reason both TSL8s should be read together.
Seventy-two hours is aspirational.
Panels unloaded, assembled, cartridge connected, inspected, powered, occupied — all in 72 hours — is plausible but has not been tested. Dry runs at a training site are part of v1.
Publish a 72-hour gate; accept 96-hour as the contractual SLA in the first deployment year.
"Prepared pad" hides a lot of work.
A gravel pad requires grading, drainage, and sometimes utilities trenching. In a post-disaster context that work may be an 8-hour job or a 2-week job. The 72-hour clock starts when the pad is ready, not when the disaster happens.
Pre-identified pad sites in disaster-prone counties, maintained as a standing asset. Partnership with county public-works departments.
Building-code acceptance is county-by-county.
California building code permits CLT construction, but modular emergency-shelter approval is a county discretionary matter. Fifty-eight counties, fifty-eight processes. A module that is trivially inspectable in Alameda may face weeks of review in a rural county.
Pre-certification through a statewide emergency-shelter permit issued by the Governor's Office of Emergency Services. Legislative vehicle needed; maps onto the paired Housing Fund proposition.
Refurbishment is an untested economic claim.
The "serviceable for five years, redeployable three times" claim is based on CLT panel performance in laboratory conditions. Real-world damage — a disassembly error, a storm-driven impact, a maintenance gap — has not been costed in the refurbishment model.
Refurbishment-cost audit in year 2. Insurance product covering recovery/refurb cycle. If the math fails, the unit still performs as a single-use 5-year structure at a cost comparable to a FEMA trailer lifetime cost.
The paired Housing Fund might not pass.
If the Housing Fund proposition fails, the fire-rebuild baseline demand evaporates and the unit cost stays at $82k, not $48k. Emergency-response demand alone will not support a California manufacturing line.
Fallback: partner with an out-of-state CLT manufacturer (Oregon, BC); accept higher per-unit cost; ship to California on demand. The module still works. The supply chain is slower and more expensive.
Talk to the envoy before you reply.
The envoy has read both TSL8s (this one and the paired Housing Fund brief), the CLT manufacturer's cost model, and two case studies from post-fire rebuilds. It will tell you when a number is a placeholder and when it's sourced. It will not flatter the 72-hour claim.