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Why hasn't prefab construction taken over?

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Re: Why hasn't prefab construction taken over?

#31

Post by bluGill »

FullyFunctional wrote: post #3

I really like the concept and would take that any day over the California homes built with toothpicks and cart board by a random crew (I'm sitting on one right now and there aren't two straight lines). The bone system even looks like something I might be able to put together myself (besides stuff like foundation, pluming, and electrical).

I know it is in to make fun of "toothpick and card board" construction, but modern engineering has found them very strong when used correctly. What you intuitively think is better often isn't.

Re: Why hasn't prefab construction taken over?

#32

Post by bluGill »

sjg007 wrote: post #18
jeffbee wrote: post #4

Prefab is the wrong optimization. It targets a minor improvement in a small part of the overall budget. Most of the time and money of construction in America is tied up in land prices, permitting, and regulation. Prefab solves zero of these issues. There is a building going up in Oakland right now where Factory_OS put out a press release that they had built it in ten days. But they spent 7 years getting approvals, 18…

Huh? There's a shortage of carpenters so if you can go prefab it is a win. In fact the article shows that if you can build a house faster with prefab at the same cost as a traditional house that's a win.

There isn't a shortage of carpenters. There is a shortage willing to work for the wages offered. I've done carpentry work in the past, offer enough money and I'll leave my tech job. I'm not the only one who could do carpentry for the right price.

Re: Why hasn't prefab construction taken over?

#33

Post by xnx »

modeless wrote: post #12
jeffbee wrote: post #4

Prefab is the wrong optimization. It targets a minor improvement in a small part of the overall budget. Most of the time and money of construction in America is tied up in land prices, permitting, and regulation. Prefab solves zero of these issues. There is a building going up in Oakland right now where Factory_OS put out a press release that they had built it in ten days. But they spent 7 years getting approvals, 18…

The advantage to me seems like it should be in quality and consistency, not cost and speed. Building houses is fast enough, and as you say the cost of the land often dominates, but the quality of houses is appallingly bad compared to consumer items mass produced in factories.

This. I want homes as well designed, engineered and built as iPhones, or at least automobiles.

Re: Why hasn't prefab construction taken over?

#34

Post by bluGill »

sjg007 wrote: post #20
jeffbee wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like it would be hard to reason about. Consistency is great but it means if you order assembled wall panels from a factory, your foundation has to be exact in dimensions and dead level, or it's not going to come together. On-site framers aren't really bothered by this. I think it trades one kind of complexity for another.

I'm sure a shim kit would be included to even out discrepancies. If the tolerance is too high for that then your foundation needs to be fixed.

Having done framing in the past I assure you foundation tolerances are not close enough for a shim kit in general.

Re: Why hasn't prefab construction taken over?

#35

Post by bluGill »

falcolas wrote: post #16

This article seems to be missing some critical information - does this proposed system help with anything but the framing? Because framing a house, even a two story house, only takes an experienced crew a couple of days. And in the neighborhoods springing up around here, they are using pre-fab framed walls (still using wooden studs (which are cheap and plentiful), but they arrive on site as whole walls). Before frami…

Back when I did houses we figured it was 100 days to build a house. As you say framing was 3-4 days of that.

Re: Why hasn't prefab construction taken over?

#36

Post by markvdb »

ThenAsNow wrote: post #7
OldHand2018 wrote: post #2

As the article points out, the cost of the house is the same as the cost of a traditionally built house in the most expensive home construction area of the United States, and at the same time you are extremely limited in the geometries you can use. Does that answer the question?

While this is fine as the high-level answer, the interesting question seems to be why the as-installed cost would be the same as typical wasteful North American "stick building"? I've spent some time thinking about better ways to build houses, spoken with like-minded architects, etc., and haven't gotten to the bottom of this question. Intuitively, it seems like there should be quite a bit of room to decrease costs by…

You might want to have a look at straw panel construction. There's several across the EU. https://ecococon.eu/ is the major one.

Not affiliated with them. I built the walls of our summer house out of jumbo straw bales straight from the farm.

Re: Why hasn't prefab construction taken over?

#37

Post by JoeAltmaier »

Used to be the lumber had to be cut from local trees on-site, and nails made by the blacksmith. Our current stick-built construction IS pre-fab by an older reckoning.

I guess its a matter of how much is too far? Windows come as a unit. So do some doors. Certainly the appliances do. Nobody has to get a tinker in to make the toaster. Even so, sometimes there are hitches.

I think we have to iron out the order-to-fit issues (wrong dimensions, wrong fuel, mismatch color or design) when done by rushed workpeople on a schedule. Fix that, and you could go much further without trepidation.

For now, my house was stick-built from a drawing (not an architect) and mostly correctly. The issues came when changes were made on-the-fly, not from the initial planning.

Re: Why hasn't prefab construction taken over?

#38

Post by sjg007 »

bluGill wrote: post #34
sjg007 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure a shim kit would be included to even out discrepancies. If the tolerance is too high for that then your foundation needs to be fixed.

Having done framing in the past I assure you foundation tolerances are not close enough for a shim kit in general.

Seems like people are getting away with shoddy work then.

Re: Why hasn't prefab construction taken over?

#39

Post by potiuper »

pfhorge wrote: post #28

I built my current house recently, and our builder used a prefab factory in the region for some of the construction. I would _never_ do it again. The process has all the pitfalls of the waterfall software development model, but at the end you have to live in the failed project! It took months for the factory to do their pre-build engineering, and that's after they started the process using plans from my architect. Th…

Why not sue for breach of contract / design?

Re: Why hasn't prefab construction taken over?

#40

Post by acomjean »

When I grew up (1970s) I had 2 friends had very very similar houses in a town outside boston. They were similar to my dentist too, who had his office attached to his house. They all lived miles apart.

They were a 60's prefab house called a "deck" house. My dad ended up buying one later with a large addition once my parents split. They were pretty good, except the roofs which weren't great for snow (pitch) and lacked insulation. I helped replace one of those roofs and the lack of pitch made it easier to work on. (friends father was a civil engineer).

Pretty well made, considering, and the open layouts were pretty great.

prefab is around, just a niche.

A check of google, "deck" company still exist as a branch of a larger prefab house company:

https://www.deckhouse.com/brand/deck-house/

photos of one:

http://modernmass.com/concord-deck-house/

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