I wonder why prefabs houses aren't more common.
A friend of my parents was building a house. I asked him if he considered prefab, he had no idea what I was talking about.
A friend of my parents was building a house. I asked him if he considered prefab, he had no idea what I was talking about.
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).
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').