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Comment by rirarobo | Hacker News Reader

I also find this strange. Not only are prefab homes done everywhere else in the world, but prefab homes and single family homes in general are not that common in Japan.

If you were going to take any lessons from Japan regarding housing, wouldn't it be more along the lines of how to build high density housing cost effectively in coordination with world class public transportation infrastructure?

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From a US perspective, this article was quite eye opening. I was actually walking around a prefab home lot this afternoon. They firmly occupy the poorest rung of the housing market. In Japan the cultural and build quality issues seem to have been surmounted. Very interesting.

Not always. It’s the only way to build a nice “normal” house.

I'd buy one here. It'll take a big name developer to do it well first.

Adding, I’d be a lot more impressed with the idea we should “learn lessons” from Japanese Prefab if they had even a remotely volatile climate like most of the USA does.

What is the average temp swing per year in Japan? Like a 40 degree (F) swing over the year? Lol, ok, show me those amazing looking modern prefabs for places there you get 60 degree (F) swing in day and let’s see how they’re doing. Or that cool aluminum place with 2ft of snow on it. Etc.

Not that we can’t learn lessons, but I think structures just need a lot less engineering in Asia compared to other places.

Well, it depends where in Japan you go to, like the US. Hokkaido in the north gets lots of snow, the south like Osaka and beyond gets hot in the summer.

I only spent a year in Hokkaido but it was a pretty hot summer when I was there... basically the weather over the course of a year wasn't that different than what I was used to in Massachusetts.

> I think structures just need a lot less engineering in Asia compared to other places.

That's an odd assertion. Why do you think that Asia, a massive continent with literally billions of people and wildly varying climates and terrains across it, needs less engineering of structures than other places?

I find this quite funny as from my place in the world (Scandinavia) I see US housing as exactly how you describe houses in Asia. Around here a house that isn't built with double brick walls are hard to find on the market and it is mostly sheds and garages that are built in the US wood framing/panel style.

Edit to add that I'm not saying wood is bad. I love wood houses.

That is more an issue of cost than anything... If your choices are between building a wood framed house that you can afford and will last a hundred years or much more, versus not being able to afford to build at all... Well, you go for stick and frame.

Because they are so popular, they are even less expensive- construction crews experienced in building double brick walls are scarce to non existent around here.

On a final note, tornados. We get quite a few of them around here... The odds of actually being hit by one are low, and yet it does happen, and I doubt brick walls would hold up much better facing the full fury of those.

Double brick walled home do not hold up well to earthquakes, tornadoes, or hurricanes, and anything built in the US is probably going to have to be prepared for one of the above.

How come a double brick home would be worse for tornadoes and hurricanes? At a pinch i would say the first weaknesses would be windows and roof, not the walls.

Has more to do with cost -- carpenters are cheaper to hire so wood construction is very popular.

Yeah standard wall insulation even in southern Sweden now is ~300mm/1ft. Compared to just the end of the 90a/start of the millennium the norm was 100mm less than that. Not sure what the end game is for wall insulation but it’s rapidly increasing too.

In Japan, it depends on area but needs at least 30C(0-30C), at max 50C(-15-35C) or more.

Where I lived the temperature varied from minus 2C in February to plus 38C or so in August. It's hotter elsewhere (when we had 35C they had 42C north of Tokyo). And the hot period is very humid as well. 80+% relative humidity and 35C is hard. Drop to 60% and it's much easier. The humidity is a huge issue - unless you're airing the house every day you'll get mold and worse. I've seen mushrooms grow straight out of the wood inside homes.

What are you talking about? Japan is so obsessed with the its four seasons that some Japanese people seem to believe people outside of Japan haven't heard of the concept. The climate varies widely depending on where you are (i.e., northern and southern Japan have quite different climates), but there isn't really a shortage of areas in Japan with bitter, snowy winters and hot, humid summers.

Japan has a far more challenging environment for structures than many other countries, with high humidity, temperature swings, typhoons, and earthquakes being the obvious ones.

This winter, my Japanese city in the humid sub-tropics (yes, it's true) dropped to 0ºC if not a little lower, and last summer hit 40ºC several times. We also had a rainy season where the humidity is in the upper echelons. And there's the typhoon season too.

A quick search would've saved you all those rightful downvotes.

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