Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by shashashasha 5622 days ago
Prefab has a bunch of hurdles and it's kind of a chicken and egg problem right now.

A friend of mine used to work at Michelle Kaufmann's firm in East Bay, and what would happen is that there is such a low volume of prefab orders that they can't get the costs down enough to justify building prefab. Plus it's not standard "from scratch" construction, etc. It's really sad, and the firm shut down for a while in 2009 (I think they're back now though).
1 comments
widgetycrank 5622 days ago
Can you explain why "not from scratch" construction is a bad thing? AFAIK most houses these days are built from cookie-cutter plans.
link
shashashasha 5622 days ago
Sorry, yes most houses are built from cookie-cutter plans. I guess I meant from scratch in that they're mostly built up with wood framing (simple to do), vs a lot of prefab which may require welding and more specialized skills to assemble the panels (harder to do, or at the very least less conventional).
link
jacquesm 5622 days ago
In the US yes. In Europe most new houses use a concrete inner structure with a brick facade if they're family sized houses.

That makes them particularly well suited for prefab, a whole wall segment can be constructed including isolation, ducts, windows / doors etc and hoisted in to place by a crane in one movement. Because the brick is laid in the mould a bricklayer can work on a gantry under a roof instead of in the open air which means year round bricklaying instead of only when it's not freezing or raining (you can't lay brick in pouring rain).

Because the wall segments are made on a guaranteed flat surface a section is always going to be perfectly straight without any measurement at all.

Note that these are full bricks, not the typical 'slices' of brick used to give US houses a brick-like appearance over a wooden interior ('brick siding').

link
shashashasha 5621 days ago
Ah that's great. I'm definitely slanted because of my experience in California, where earthquake regulations basically mean no masonry construction ever, and very rarely anything other than wood framing for residential houses.
link