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- Hacker News
- It's kinda ridiculous that we still build walls brick by brick, on site, instead of just building most of the house elsewhere and only assemble at the site.by nsonha
- Eh? Such houses are now common, at least here in Europe. I live in one! Entire walls were manufactured in factory, then brought on site and assembled. But the house is not from bricks, the structural material is wood and oriented strand boards (OSB).by Marha01
- Ever try putting a brick wall on a truck?by knollimar
- The other issue with manufactured homes, aside from the logistics and local codes, is financing. Loans are harder to obtain and are more expensive than onsite construction.by mtakhar
- If you're interested in the topic, the author writes extensively on manufactured homes.by xnx
- I think the Problem is transportation of larger Units, different buildung Codes from region to region and induvidual requesttby IronyMan1
- Theres less efficiency here than would be thought. Building codes, technologies, materials, styles, needs etc vary a lot by location.by tylergetsay
- Manufactured homes are a thing. You can literally buy one for 100k-300k
- IIRC the cost of a stick built home is only ~15% higher than an equivalent manufactured home, but by building on site you have more flexibility for custom layouts and other choices which fit the local environment better. A modern home builder typically has a set of plans to mix and match and their build process is really dialed in -- eeking out a bit more efficiency by doing it in a factory is offset by the cost of getting the completed product on site. Plus a good chunk of the cost in a home is site prep anyway.
Also, at least in my area, the trend seems to be towards smaller lots and two story homes. There might be modular homes that could fit that niche, but currently manufactured homes are just big single story rectangles.
by rootusrootus - My idea is you mass produce a housing core. A large unit with dividers but is a single big object consisting of a toilet, shower, kitchen sink, electric induction kitchen stove, dishwasher, heating/air-conditioning heat pump, and a living room wall with a TV. "Just" one giant unit to plop down as the central core of a living space, and then everything else can go up around it.by fragmede
- Sounds like a desktop machine with a few USB ports. You could probably sell this architecture to today's home buyers, especially those who have been lionizing the Sears mid-century "homekits". Many of those homes looked "cookie-cutter" when they were assembled, but small alterations to facade, adaptations to account for terrain, and a few customer preferences led to cozy neighborhoods. Too bad HOAs became drunk on power.
People love the promise of renovation and "growing with the home". When my wife and I bought earlier this year, I was enthusiastic about one underutilized wall on the mudroom; I could already imagine a "bump-out" that becomes an in-law suite.
by schnevets - You still have to solve all the MEPs so where does that go in your process?by knollimar
- They don't. They come in later and do their thing as normal.
MEP workers have huge regulatory moats and trade groups with war chests which is why their bit of the process isn't being discussed here. If the tech isn't at a point where it can beat the relatively "exposed to the free market" framers and brick layers then there's no way it can fight the MEPs who have the laws and rules and codes they can leverage.
- What does MEPs mean in that context?by dgellow
- 3D printing of concrete homes ?
- Interesting, but currently more of a novelty.by xnx
- Lego bricking with ICF is probably as best as it gets right now.by xattt
- Even more labor-intensive, actually. Needs significant babysitting for things like electrical fixtures and window opening, and the final wall is a maintenance nightmare if it isn't plastered smooth.by crote
- I wouldn't put that in the "success" category just yetby wongarsu
- The big changes I've seen over my lifetime have been tooling and materials. I remember when framers did everything with a hammer, a circular saw, and a speed-square. Now we have nail guns and cordless impact drivers and miter saws. Fiberglass batt insulation is still a thing, but now there's also urethane spray foam. We have engineered beams and OSB sheathing pre-coated with a moisture barrier. There's a lot of things that all add up to better performance and less manual labor.
- > Construction is famously labor intensive: direct labor makes up close to 50% of the cost of constructing a new single-family home in the US, compared to around 6 to 8% of the cost of manufacturing a car.
Is this only calculating last mile labor, or all the labor along the way? Like, for a car, does it count the cost of steel as purely non-labor costs, or do they factor in the labor cost for mining the ore, etc?
Because I feel like at the end of the day, almost all costs are 'labor' costs, they are just paid by different people/companies earlier in the process. Housing just has a lot of the labor as the final step, assembling the house on site. Cars have more of their labor at earlier stages of the process, and the assembling is mostly automated.
by cortesoft - As I understand it, even just considering ‘last mile’ costs, labour is a majority of the cost, and fit-out is the majority of the labour. Then again, where I live skilled trades cost a lot, so this is probably different elsewhere.by taneq
- I wonder how much of home construction efficiency improvements are held back by taste for traditional appearance vs. other cost/performance characteristics.
The difference in styles between residential and commercial construction is probably an example of this. Not many commercial buildings with tar paper shingled roofs.
by xnx - The only reason I can think of that houses don’t usually have metal roofs is because they cost at least double, if not triple. I have seen homeowners use metal roofs, but it’s one of the first cost reductions because a good shingle roof is already good for 30+ years.
For a business, it can make more sense as it might be a more long term structure, plus it would contain more valuable items (or at least cause more loss if business is interrupted).
by lotsofpulp - > Not many commercial buildings with tar paper shingled roofs
I mean, this is kind of true and kind of untrue. There aren't a lot of commercial roofs with literal residential asphalt shingles, but many commercial roofs are things like mod bit which are practically the same concept, just a mod bit needs to handle an extremely low to flat pitch while residential shingles assume a decent pitch to the roof. Tons are also just single-ply membranes, which often don't even last as long as a good residential asphalt shingle install.
Its not like every commercial building has a metal roof. Just look at this random commercial/industrial office park:
https://maps.app.goo.gl/7X1NUTwrTUdH21o1A
Take a look around. You see a lot of metal roofs, yes. You also see membrane roofs. You see mod bit. And you'll even see some old built-up roofs.
by vel0city - They made a new office building a number of years ago that I had the pleasure of watching it go up. At first it was all grey concrete that they poured, but then, they hung, like giant paintings, a brick facade on the exterior and the columns. If you hadn't seen it go up, you'd think it was a brick building. I'm sure it cost extra, but looks don't have to go out the window in the name of efficiency.by fragmede
- I live near a 3d printed neighborhood in Georgetown, TX. We would have bought one if they'd had more than 3 bedroom floorplans. They are concrete and stay cool in the summer, they also all have solar panels...
Everyone I've talked to says they are wierd looking like the movie set of Edward Scissorhands or something, but it's mainly because they didn't leave old growth trees so every tree is < 5 years old (maybe for the printer to have room to move around?) and they are very very similar. People also don't like the concrete factor.
I don't know if it counts as successful but if we'd had fewer kids I'd be in one right now!
- I remember reading this article about Swedish home manufacturing two years ago, and immediately thought of the Hudson Valley (where I lived at the time) https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/08/headway/how-an-american-d...
The Hudson River used to be a main manufacturing artery of the United States but has since become a relic. I still believe that region upstream of NYC could address the housing crisis plaguing the northeast of the United States. Imagine barges of housing components drifting down-river to be assembled in any coastal metro on the Atlantic coastline.
by schnevets - You’d need to reform the Jones Act unless you plan to build the ships too.by ch4s3