Developers are manufacturing prefabricated apartment buildings • Hacker News Board

Re: Developers are manufacturing prefabricated apartment buildings

#11

Post by megaman22 » Thu, Jun 07, 2018, 5:49 PM UTC

Joeri wrote: post #6

I’ve always found it odd that house construction is so bespoke. All that pouring and sawing and drilling and slathering of raw materials to do one-off designs for houses that are then filled with standardized ikea furniture which fits the custom room shape poorly. Manual labor is too costly for such a bespoke approach. Either we make carpenter and bricklayer robots to do the bespoke work cheaply, or we build homes fr…

It's not super expensive or time-consuming to throw up a standard, American stick-built house. Once you have a foundation poured, you can do all the framing, sheathe it, roof it, and have it ready for finish work in a week with a handful of people. What takes forever and a day is the signoffs, and waiting for all the deliveries and third-parties to show up and do their piece. And then all the fiddly stuff inside...

Re: Developers are manufacturing prefabricated apartment buildings

#12

Post by mikestew » Thu, Jun 07, 2018, 5:51 PM UTC

Joeri wrote: post #6

I’ve always found it odd that house construction is so bespoke. All that pouring and sawing and drilling and slathering of raw materials to do one-off designs for houses that are then filled with standardized ikea furniture which fits the custom room shape poorly. Manual labor is too costly for such a bespoke approach. Either we make carpenter and bricklayer robots to do the bespoke work cheaply, or we build homes fr…

I’ve always found it odd that house construction is so bespoke.

Anything else falls into the dreaded "modular home" category. You know, just one step above a single-wide trailer, at least in the minds of some. Never mind the fact that the only thing separating my ungodly expensive house in Redmond, which sits on a slab, from a modular home is that it was built onsite. "Bespoke"? phhhffft, I can find you a dozen houses within the radius of our daily dog walk that are exactly the same.

Personally, I think the status quo is equivalent to Ford dropping a box of parts at your local dealership, and you have to wait for the mechanic to assemble it. Why aren't robots framing my house in a factory somewhere?

Re: Developers are manufacturing prefabricated apartment buildings

#13

Post by mdjasper » Thu, Jun 07, 2018, 5:52 PM UTC

And have been since the 60's. Here an interesting article about one building, modularly constructed for 1968 World's Fair: https://www.mysanantonio.com/150years/major-stories/article/...

And a fascinating documentary https://youtu.be/D7shgCkCfhU?t=573. I've skipped to the fun part with people riding their hotel rooms up to the building on a crane... but the whole thing is worth a watch if you've got the time.

Re: Developers are manufacturing prefabricated apartment buildings

#14

Post by rtkwe » Thu, Jun 07, 2018, 5:53 PM UTC

Joeri wrote: post #6

I’ve always found it odd that house construction is so bespoke. All that pouring and sawing and drilling and slathering of raw materials to do one-off designs for houses that are then filled with standardized ikea furniture which fits the custom room shape poorly. Manual labor is too costly for such a bespoke approach. Either we make carpenter and bricklayer robots to do the bespoke work cheaply, or we build homes fr…

There are some places doing things similar to the Factory OS but for home. 100% prefab homes have a certain stigma in the US due to quality issues. Also many people want an at least somewhat customized home so there's limits to what can be pre-assembled. There are some parts that are being pre-assembled offsite and trucked to the home like the Factory OS in the article. It's just mainly the framing etc that is predone then the customized elements like flooring and fixtures are added on site.

One big factor preventing us from doing the same thing as the article for homes is the need to support customization. With a large apartment complex there's enough of the exact same sets of rooms being created that building them all out then shipping out makes sense, trying the same thing for homes (without a change to people accepting much more identical housing) would require stocking and setting up a lot of different tile and hardwood and loosing scale efficiencies.

Re: Developers are manufacturing prefabricated apartment buildings

#15

Post by tomatotomato37 » Thu, Jun 07, 2018, 5:55 PM UTC

I wonder how hard it would be for mobile home manufactors to support the modular stacking of units. It would look redneck as hell, but could probably go up even faster then wooden prefabs that still needs a building finished around it

Re: Developers are manufacturing prefabricated apartment buildings

#16

Post by kazen44 » Thu, Jun 07, 2018, 5:58 PM UTC

mdjasper wrote: post #13

And have been since the 60's. Here an interesting article about one building, modularly constructed for 1968 World's Fair: https://www.mysanantonio.com/150years/major-stories/article/... And a fascinating documentary https://youtu.be/D7shgCkCfhU?t=573 . I've skipped to the fun part with people riding their hotel rooms up to the building on a crane... but the whole thing is worth a watch if you've got the time.

This is just "plattenbau" but done by californians?

Like, prefab highrise has existed for more then 60 years, it is not a new thing?

Re: Developers are manufacturing prefabricated apartment buildings

#17

Post by kazen44 » Thu, Jun 07, 2018, 6:00 PM UTC

jgibson wrote: post #10

Joeri wrote: post #6

I’ve always found it odd that house construction is so bespoke. All that pouring and sawing and drilling and slathering of raw materials to do one-off designs for houses that are then filled with standardized ikea furniture which fits the custom room shape poorly. Manual labor is too costly for such a bespoke approach. Either we make carpenter and bricklayer robots to do the bespoke work cheaply, or we build homes fr…

I'm not so sure. Whats the average lifespan of a house? 50-80 years? To me it makes sense to invest the time to optimize design to make best use of the land area. I guess you could still use somewhat standarized parts though, spend more effort in the design phase.

> I'm not so sure. Whats the average lifespan of a house? 50-80 years?

make that a 100 years easily. (atleast in my country).

Heck, some houses don't even have architectural drawings because of their age.

Re: Developers are manufacturing prefabricated apartment buildings

#18

Post by drawkbox » Thu, Jun 07, 2018, 6:00 PM UTC

Reminds me of Sears Catalog Home prefabricated homes. [1][2]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sears_Catalog_Home

[2] http://www.searsarchives.com/homes/1908-1914.htm

Re: Developers are manufacturing prefabricated apartment buildings

#19

Post by vvanders » Thu, Jun 07, 2018, 6:05 PM UTC

mikestew wrote: post #12

Joeri wrote: post #6

I’ve always found it odd that house construction is so bespoke. All that pouring and sawing and drilling and slathering of raw materials to do one-off designs for houses that are then filled with standardized ikea furniture which fits the custom room shape poorly. Manual labor is too costly for such a bespoke approach. Either we make carpenter and bricklayer robots to do the bespoke work cheaply, or we build homes fr…

I’ve always found it odd that house construction is so bespoke. Anything else falls into the dreaded "modular home" category. You know, just one step above a single-wide trailer, at least in the minds of some. Never mind the fact that the only thing separating my ungodly expensive house in Redmond, which sits on a slab, from a modular home is that it was built onsite. "Bespoke"? phhhffft , I can find you a dozen hous…

FWIW that's how all the trusses on your house were probably done.

I think it's mostly a cost/benefit tradeoff. My hunch is that the overhead of building on-site isn't that great when you have to figure in the overhead of shipping/designing something in a modular way. Pretty much everything is 8ft long in terms of building materials which makes it much easier to transport.

Re: Developers are manufacturing prefabricated apartment buildings

#20

Post by vvanders » Thu, Jun 07, 2018, 6:11 PM UTC

megaman22 wrote: post #11

Joeri wrote: post #6

I’ve always found it odd that house construction is so bespoke. All that pouring and sawing and drilling and slathering of raw materials to do one-off designs for houses that are then filled with standardized ikea furniture which fits the custom room shape poorly. Manual labor is too costly for such a bespoke approach. Either we make carpenter and bricklayer robots to do the bespoke work cheaply, or we build homes fr…

It's not super expensive or time-consuming to throw up a standard, American stick-built house. Once you have a foundation poured, you can do all the framing, sheathe it, roof it, and have it ready for finish work in a week with a handful of people. What takes forever and a day is the signoffs, and waiting for all the deliveries and third-parties to show up and do their piece. And then all the fiddly stuff inside...

Having just gone through this process can confirm. You also have different states/counties having different zoning requirements for stuff like wind/snow load, etc. If you're building from materials it's much easier to go from 2x4 -> 2x6 and stronger trusses/foundation than re-engineer a whole modular structure.