Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Developers are manufacturing prefabricated apartment buildings

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 189 posts

Re: Developers are manufacturing prefabricated apartment buildings

#61

Post by Blackthorn »

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…

Modular construction is pretty big here in upstate NY. I've never seen a stigma against it vs stick built, and it does not appear to be a differentiator in home pricing here.

Re: Developers are manufacturing prefabricated apartment buildings

#62

Post by lallysingh »

Jarb wrote: post #53
kazen44 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

My architecture wife said houses today are designed (in the US) to last at least 50 years. However I seriously have my doubts that a house could make it that long without some major renovations/overhauls along the way, given that they're essentially built as plywood sheets, stapled to wood planks, protected by plastic siding, and covered with a tar sheet roof down here where I live. I wish the developers invested mor…

My house is 65 years old, built like this. The wood's kept dry, and the rest of the house is just gypsum, wire, and pipe.

As long as the roof and exterior walls hold up, there's not much to it. And the roof you change every dozen years or so.

Re: Developers are manufacturing prefabricated apartment buildings

#63

Post by aorloff »

rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #23
jgibson wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Here in Ithaca, NY, many of the houses standing today were built before Mark Twain wrote Huckleberry Finn. Ironically, they’re among the best housing stock, because unlike many mid-20th century constructions, the older houses are free of asbestos and lead paint.

More likely the quality of wood and carpentry is higher. You can't buy wood these days, certainly not economically, that compares with what was standard 100+ years ago.

Re: Developers are manufacturing prefabricated apartment buildings

#64

Post by pilingual »

danschumann wrote: post #27

What I want is an MVP house (room + bathroom + kitchen), which I can expand ( extra rooms, extra bathrooms, etc ). Normally with construction, when you add stuff, you need to break stuff, but if there could be a modular housing system that would let you expand without destruction, while being competitively priced, I'd do that. In Elon Musk fashion, it would have to be better than a normal house, right? A modular hous…

I’ve thought about this type of thing a lot and it is something I’d like to build eventually. There’s an existing market and room for improving manufacturing processes.

Re: Developers are manufacturing prefabricated apartment buildings

#65

Post by jeffreyrogers »

danschumann wrote: post #27

What I want is an MVP house (room + bathroom + kitchen), which I can expand ( extra rooms, extra bathrooms, etc ). Normally with construction, when you add stuff, you need to break stuff, but if there could be a modular housing system that would let you expand without destruction, while being competitively priced, I'd do that. In Elon Musk fashion, it would have to be better than a normal house, right? A modular hous…

Part of the problem is the foundation. You either need to pour a large foundation ahead of time (that you won't use for a while) or pour it as you go. It's not an insurmountable problem, but it does make it more difficult. Although if you decided to build up instead, by just adding more floors you could avoid that problem.

Re: Developers are manufacturing prefabricated apartment buildings

#67

Post by jpao79 »

ucaetano wrote: post #59
jpao79 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually its driven by the need for localized labor and unfortunately due to high housing costs, labor can't afford to live in downtown SF/LA and so a lot of time is wasted getting to the job site from the outer suburbs.

> unfortunately due to high housing costs And housing costs are high because of asinine zoning laws, as OP mentioned.

Ok true. Just would add that high housing costs are actually the sum of asinine zoning laws + high labor costs and that high labor costs are due to high housing costs. :)

Re: Developers are manufacturing prefabricated apartment buildings

#68

Post by bpicolo »

I lived directly across from the Berkeley one shown in the article while they were building it. I wonder how significant the cost benefits were - the time to build didn't seem substantively different (another apartment complex a couple blocks away went up in fairly comparable time it felt like), but I could definitely imagine it being faster

Re: Developers are manufacturing prefabricated apartment buildings

#69

Post by branchless »

ohazi wrote: post #8

I find it hilarious that a CA company is leading the charge in new, efficient, high-quality pre-fab design and construction. These units are going to improve construction quality and lower costs in every state except CA, thanks to our asinine zoning laws.

Nope. In urban areas land is undersupplied therefore you will be paying the "monopoly price" where you bid what you can afford.

So if a building used to cost 400k, broken into 200k land cost and 200k building cost, it will still cost 400k, 300k land cost and 100k building cost.

That's how prices are set. It's not "how much this costs to build plus a fair profit".

Re: Developers are manufacturing prefabricated apartment buildings

#70

Post by zip1234 »

Jarb wrote: post #53
kazen44 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

My architecture wife said houses today are designed (in the US) to last at least 50 years. However I seriously have my doubts that a house could make it that long without some major renovations/overhauls along the way, given that they're essentially built as plywood sheets, stapled to wood planks, protected by plastic siding, and covered with a tar sheet roof down here where I live. I wish the developers invested mor…

As long as you keep the innards dry it could last hundreds of years.
Post reply on HN