[brudgers]

How do you finish the joints between sections of prefabricated walls?

Where do you store hundreds of running feet of prefabricated wall during construction delays?

How do you move sections of prefabricated wall into and within a dryed-in building?

How do you trim a section to fit and extend another when construction is not ideal?

Who is responsible when something is not right?

And of course there’s getting UL listings for any proprietary electrical connections and issues of inspection for code compliance.

Prefabricated walls are common and are suitable for cubical farms. They tend to cost more psf than regular construction but can be depreciated as furniture and reconfigured more easily than site built walls and fixtures.

[lowbloodsugar]

I feel like you’re telling ford how the Model T production line can’t work because someone wants a different color.

Yet, it’s ironic that we still end up with cookie cutter houses, but they are all built as if they are bespoke.

[brudgers]

You cannot build an airplane out of bricks.

[ben_w]

I don't understand the metaphor and how it would apply to this.

(But also, this feels like a Mythbusters episode challenge, and they managed to get a lead balloon flying).

[brudgers]

Yet successful balloon building businesses don’t build balloons from lead because of the fundamental nature of the balloon building problem.

[ben_w]

Again, I really don't understand how this metaphor fits with housing getting more or less customisation with more or less 3D printing vs. prefab vs. whatever the other option(s) is/are called at higher or lower costs.

[brudgers]

The article describes nearly 100 houses printed at 2-3 weeks per house and 25 sold. That is very poor economics for single family development. Working capital tied up, carrying costs for the land, interest on construction loans, etc. are all coming out of the developer’s pocket. [1]

There’s also the capital cost of the printer, the inherent complexity of pumping concrete, and the material cost of concreter per unit volume.

My opinion is based on my bullshit detector. I worked in a precast plant with its own concrete plant, for a very large home builder, and for and with residential developers as an architect. Sure I might be wrong, but my opinion is formed from directly related experience with the materials and with the industries.

But even on the face the article is talking about moonbases as future projects not suburban Atlanta.

[1] Most likely this project is subsidized with non-commercial resources.

[wycx]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huf_Haus Construction of a Huf Haus in the UK featured in the 2004 series of Grand Designs.

[pxmpxm]

Those are awesome, does anyone export this to the states? We just got a prefab studio from Schildr that's manufactured in Turkey and disassembles into a sea container. I imagine something similar would work for Huff houses?

https://schildr.com/en/@schildrusa

[wombatpm]

Standardized wall sections, JIT inventory management, dedicated install teams?

[brudgers]

We have standardized components delivered just in time by ordinary vendors and installed by subcontractors specializing in that work.

It is all commoditized and builders and trades people have choices about who they work with and long standing business relationships.

The inherent complexity of construction is a job shop scheduling problem which is not just in NP it is NP hard.

With a whole additional dimension of human social relationships and woven in. Everyone is trying to solve their own NP hard problem across a different set of projects and under a different set of constraints.

[dhosek]

My parents’ home, built in the 1950s was built from pre-fabricated components. From what my dad says (his mother was the original owner of the home), the fit of walls was very poor and they had to do a lot of patching to fill in gaps between the walls and the ceilings. There have been numerous attempts at prefabricated building but all have failed to gain any traction.

[teruakohatu]

A lot of homes in New Zealand were sent over 150 years ago from Australia and Europe as prefabricated kits. Apart from the abysmal lack of insulation, they are still going strong.

Right now most new houses have the wood framing CNC manufactured based on plans, shipped to the building site and assembled, then modified as needed by the builder.

Our roofs are almost exclusively steel, which are also CNC cut and shipped to the site and installed by roofers.

[throwaway173738]

Some Quadrant homes in Washington are built this way. The framing is done in a factory on a gantry and the walls are trucked out and assembled on site. There are subdivisions of thousands of houses built this way.