What will be the future of pre-fab? Right now, it appears that the only people utilizing these homes are the younger moderately wealthy mold. However, the whole point of pre-fab in the beginning was to make housing affordable for everyone, specifically the less fortunate.
I actually think we should take the opportunity that prefab is giving us, by attempting some new things in terms of the urban planning aspect of these homes, or else we'll just have a bunch of cheap hotdog shaped houses sitting on lawns next to other cookie cutter homes. There have been some attempts to utillize their modularity and create clusters, but I have not seen these in reality. Just a bunch of glorified trailers. If you know of some, please share the wealth. I'd be interested to see what everyone else is thinking on this matter.
Currently, a very large builder in my province is doing projects on a pilot basis like this:
1.Buy large (several hundred acre) property bordering industrial / residential (or gain planning approval for #2 on other zoning)
2.Build HUGE pre-engineered building on industrial edge
3.Build road system (no surface utilities)
4.Roll out about a thousand pre-manufactured homes (brick & all) on patented conveyance system (starting at the fringes of the property), dropping them on foundations with modular connections for M&E
5.Convert the manufacturing facility into an arena for tax credits, or sell as industrial building.
6.Make a bunch of money throughout
The thing to understand is that these homes don't look like your traditional pre-fab home. They are as big and impressive as any suburban home has any right to be. The bonus is twofold - way better efficiency and way better quality control.
You likely won't find much more detail than this - patents, intellectual property, etc. get in the way.
Feb 13, 06 11:46 am ·
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On the brink of prefab genius or dud
What will be the future of pre-fab? Right now, it appears that the only people utilizing these homes are the younger moderately wealthy mold. However, the whole point of pre-fab in the beginning was to make housing affordable for everyone, specifically the less fortunate.
I actually think we should take the opportunity that prefab is giving us, by attempting some new things in terms of the urban planning aspect of these homes, or else we'll just have a bunch of cheap hotdog shaped houses sitting on lawns next to other cookie cutter homes. There have been some attempts to utillize their modularity and create clusters, but I have not seen these in reality. Just a bunch of glorified trailers. If you know of some, please share the wealth. I'd be interested to see what everyone else is thinking on this matter.
Currently, a very large builder in my province is doing projects on a pilot basis like this:
1.Buy large (several hundred acre) property bordering industrial / residential (or gain planning approval for #2 on other zoning)
2.Build HUGE pre-engineered building on industrial edge
3.Build road system (no surface utilities)
4.Roll out about a thousand pre-manufactured homes (brick & all) on patented conveyance system (starting at the fringes of the property), dropping them on foundations with modular connections for M&E
5.Convert the manufacturing facility into an arena for tax credits, or sell as industrial building.
6.Make a bunch of money throughout
The thing to understand is that these homes don't look like your traditional pre-fab home. They are as big and impressive as any suburban home has any right to be. The bonus is twofold - way better efficiency and way better quality control.
You likely won't find much more detail than this - patents, intellectual property, etc. get in the way.
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