23rd Nov 2009
Prefabricated Houses
Prefabricated houses are a kind of pre-manufactured home that seems to be getting more popular as time goes on. People all over the world are becoming more environmentally aware and this naturally includes looking a little closer at the structures in which they live. After all, if you live in a single-family dwelling your house is one of the biggest use of resources that you and your family have.
Imagine the difference in energy usage between building 100 prefabricated structures in a factory environment versus building 100 houses in the suburbs. All materials are brought to a central location, assembled and then taken as complete houses or major components of houses directly to the building site or sites. The point is that often one or two trucks is enough to transport the entire prefabricated house. The efficiency advantage of this method over many contractors bringing what they alone are concerned with building or installing to each of 100 sites can’t be overstated. There is some similar efficiency achieved if all the homes are being built in the same development or subdivision, but this is still quite a different thing from prefabricated home construction.
There isn’t any doubt that a home that is constructed at least partially in a remote location then shipped to the building site, makes for a much more efficient use of materials than a home that is constructed entirely on-site. If all the basic materials used in a prefabricated house are dropped at a factory or central location, then the processes used to create the major components of the prefab house like walls or ceiling, or even the entire house, are more systematized and precise.
Even for people for whom environmental concerns are not a major consideration in the way their homes are constructed, there are still very attractive cost savings that come along with choosing a prefabricated house. Depending on size and design one could be looking at a reduction in price of 30% to 50%, possibly even more. Aesthetics are probably the main reason why people reject the idea of modular homes, but if one could find a design that would suit them, it’s pretty clear that there is a lot of money to be saved.
A final attractive aspect of some environmentally friendly prefabricated houses, for some people, is that they enable one to live off the grid in a very rural area. Prefab houses that have provisions for things like water catchment and solar power now make it possible to place a house in locations where formerly would have been very difficult or impossible to live (even apart from the construction difficulties). You have more flexibility than ever today-do your homework.
[...] on the rise. If you’re planning to build a home, you owe it to yourself to look seriously at prefabricated houses, because as a building option they are more attractive than ever. building a home prefabricated [...]