81–90 of 189 posts
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.
Great idea.. still unlikely to bring down rent prices I assume without zoning changes.
In some cases, your conclusion is correct while the problem is completely different. I live in a college town, where rent and housing prices obey different laws of economics. Unlike the Bay Area, a brisk 15 minutes drive in any direction will bring you to dirt cheap rural property, but because a huuuuuuge proportion of renters are college students, they tend to live in the city and put the rent on their student loans…
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.
China has been able to do this for at least 7 yrs now. 30 Story building in 15 days. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hdpf-MQM9vY
Yes, they build 30 story building faster then most single family homes take to do the foundation.
1) Site is cleared, maybe foundation complete (which means excavation done etc) 2) All prefab pieces are done 3) No restrictions of number of people on site (besides physical realities)
#3 is no small case. I've often noticed that construction companies in the west have very few people on site. Certainly not 50 people per floor, for example. IMO this is due to wages and contracts. a) wages are too high to risk idle people and b) contracts are insufficiently written to incentivize speed of delivery (probably in favor of cost).
China has been able to do this for at least 7 yrs now. 30 Story building in 15 days. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hdpf-MQM9vY
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…
I live in Denver. Houses last way longer than 50 years here. Old houses here are quite desirable due to many of these neighborhoods proximity to downtown. The last two houses I rented were from the 1929 and 1943. They were in great shape. They were not the "old house" on the block either, both neighborhoods dated to that era.
Of course they have had several roofs in that time, but roofs don't last much longer than 15-20 years here due to hail. Siding has a limited life, but Hardie Plank which most new builds I see around here has a very long life. Brick will last basically forever along with plaster walls and hard wood floors. The foundation, framing, and plywood basically last forever if you keep it dry.
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…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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...
Sure, that's sensible; a house is at this point almost an artisanal good, like a wicker chair. Something people buy to go against the grain of standardization and conformity. But isn't it weird that there aren't more copy-and-paste condo buildings? Maybe not even in the same city—you don't want a Brasilia[1]. But, once you've gotten an architect to design a large building, why not get N times the materials, and then…
Regarding the article, pre-fabricated buildings have been a thing for decades. For example in my area Quadrant Homes contracts out framing to a local builder that assembles interior and exterior walls in a factory on a gantry and then ships the entire wall package out to the house to be assembled.
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.
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…
With some exceptions, every site is different. The lot may be shaped one way or another. Maybe it's long and thin or maybe it's roughly square. There might be a tree that you want to save. Maybe the area is hilly and the lot slopes downward from back to front, so you want to build on the flatter front portion because it's easier, and there's adequate drainage so that's OK. Or maybe there isn't adequate drainage so yo…
We did that with our new house, flipped where the kitchen/livingroom would be so the good view out of the back of the house is much more usable. Super easy to do with a stick-built house, probably a fair bit harder with modular.