Vantem builds modular homes out of energy-efficient panels
singularityhub.com
singularityhub.com
I'd be all up for a low-cost, IKEA style house (in my locale the cost of the building is a small fraction of total cost of property in a city anyway). If nothing else, construction work is such a gamble, the variance of outcome of quality is enormous.
The thing that hampers it, as far as I know, is generally quality constraints. Pre-fab houses just tend to be low quality. This is in part self-selecting, there is a stigma to a "pre-fab" or "portable" home, but in part also that somehow building prefab houses to a good standard is hard. I don't just mean colour and feel, but just basics like "not leaking".
The staple of Eastern European bleak suburbs, the high-rise apartment buildings, were all built out of prefab components. These were built in central locations ("home factories"), transported and only assembled on site. These were certainly not created equal, and customer satisfaction wasn't high on the requirements list, but they generally suffered from this kind of problems (leaks, poor quality plumbing / gas connections etc.).
I wonder how this company would tackle these problems.
Known costs (building a house from scratch can cost 2x or 3x the original estimate)
Assembly time (could be the difference between living on-site in a caravan for 1 month vs. 2-3 years).
When someone hires the same builder to make the same house the price often will be 2x or more of the estimate, but that is because it isn't the same house. It starts with the same plan, but instead of putting the $10 lights in they put in the $300 ceiling fan. Instead of putting in the cheap toilet they put in the upgraded one. They put in the more expensive doors and trim. they choose the more expensive counter tops. they get the more expensive stove. And on and on with many little upgrades, each alone isn't very much money, but the end total is doubling the cost.
If you are willing to stick with the same cheap choices the builder would choose you can build a house for the estimate. It is safe to bet money that you wouldn't.
First, you'd think high-quality hand-made houses ought to be more expensive than high-quality prefab houses, made in a well-optimised factory process. Cost, quality etc. should just be more consistent.
Second, the amount of general headscratching should be much lower. If I can design the pieces together and the on-site job is just to put them together well, that cuts out a lot of general "how do I connect these pieces" work, not to mention all the painstaking work of laying bricks etc.
Finally, as also mentioned by sibling, the variance of cost should just be drastically lower.
Clearly it doesn't work like that, but I wonder what the root cause is.
Let me introduce you to Huf Haus [1] premium quality prefabricated houses.
They go for modern designs, but I don't see why you couldn't target a traditional look with the same quality level.
Huf Haus is world reknown for their quality, but they are not cheap.
There isn't much room for doing more in a factory. Most pre-fab houses are cheaper only because they carefully limit your floor plans and options, and thus can just pay off a few jigs, but there isn't much savings possible there. They also often cut quality to save money.
I'm far from an expert though.
It's all around you. I don't even have to ask where you are. This has been the dominant construction technology for decades.
You know, those 6-8 story apartment buildings with weird metal surfaces decorating the outsides, which are in wanna-be jazzy colors?
Those are panelized. That's someone playing The Sims on a real building, picking weird textures out of a catalogue and being bored with regular options.
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> Clearly it doesn't work like that
It does. You just don't notice it.
One detail though, they were really more like house kits, not pre fab homes.
Pre-fab is different, and generally more expensive per square foot than your traditional built on site stick frame house. Until people care about energy efficient homes, they are a tough sell.
Prefab tends to be the second cheapest option, behind panelized.
Given the higher quality control standards that would be possible with a modern automated manufacturing process, each individual panel would now be higher quality than the variation of contractors building housing from scratch on-site.
From there, its just a matter of ensuring the final build site is prepped to spec. Leveling and grading, water runoff, etc. This would be the only variation between homes, and could be accomplished by a more highly trained crew with specialized equipment, as this would be their regular job.
In the end, its just a better way to go than building homes from scratch on site.
[0]https://www.mansionglobal.com/articles/the-million-dollar-vi...
Sure, these are "cement like" instead of wooden but otherwise nothing that interesting here. It is common to overskin these pre-made houses with render or bricks if needed for more protection but most wooden framed houses don't get blown down by high winds in Europe, mostly roofs getting blown off from buildings where they weren't tied down properly.
The problem I have with the video is the fact that they're installing these panels on short, thin little stub walls made of concrete. These have almost zero insulation factor. They basically have a large thermal gap under each wall.
It appears to be basically a styrofoam house --- not nearly as sturdy as ICF.
That sounds a little scary. Basically a Styrofoam house with stucco as the other commenter stated.
Then we paniced because it was asbestos.
This is just an asbestos replacement. You put a shell outside it for impact resistance. This is a bunch of people loudly misunderstanding a simple evolution in a common technology.
McDonalds, Starbucks etc. seem to have moved to this model, new standalone premises go together like Lego.
>One notorious regulation that could go up for review is a longstanding rule that manufactured homes must be delivered with a chassis still attached, even if the homes are built in place permanently.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-05-20/mobile-ho...
A land value tax would hit his portfolio pretty hard.
If lead is suitable for feeding people, presumably we'd like to keep doing that.
Were land made into more of a liability the lobbying to inhibit development to keep land values up (zoning/nimbyism) would end up being pointless and would probably dry up.
Those SF homeowners who want to keep their area "single family homes only to preserve the feel of the area" are simply trying to inhibit development to keep the value of their leveraged investment stable.
Flip the switch to turn land into a financial liability and all that ends along with the land hoarding that has inhibited property development for decades.
It would have to be done nationally, though - and that would mean, among other things, deliberately crashing Bill Gates' agricultural land investments.
I'm assuming Gate's immense holdings in land, big pharma, the WHO etc is less altruistic, more long term political control and profit driven.
i'd disfavor a national LVT however, as i disfavor more power being concentrated in fewer hands. it should be a state level concern at most.
That has relatively little to do with building homes. More to do with zoning and nimbyism.
You can get a home in area where there are no jobs or the commute distances are too long.
You're first comment is a pointless argument to the statement "As you might have heard, we’re in the midst of a housing crisis" which is simply stating a fact not the reason behind it.
You then switch to a sarcastic comment making light of what could be a horrible situation if you can't find a job because of where you live.
The Gates Foundation is doing something, who did your comment help?
I think they're comment is valid conversation.
The Gates Foundation is likely more interested in the company's impact in South America, or in being climate friendly. I don't see anything in article that actually makes the case for why these would help alleviate the housing shortage. Maybe the could, but the info on that isn't in the article.
"Breakthrough was founded by Bill Gates in 2015 to invest in sustainable energy and emissions-reduction technologies"
The article it trying to hook the reader by promising to tell them about this problem. What follows is implicitly delivered as a solution to this problem.
GP is correctly pointing out that it's not a solution. They are further lamenting that the current solutions to the problem (earn little of commute a lot) are sub-optimal.
The Gates foundation is doing something, kudos to them, but they are unlikely to make a dent in solving this problem.
Rust Belt cities don't really offer the same advantages. They might have cheaper rent but that doesn't help if no one wants to relocate to there. No company wants to be on the hook for revitalizing a city.
Call it what you will, but people generally want to live around other people - preferably people they care about but at least people who are not dangerous to them or impose much social or financial cost on them.
> People don't want to live there because nobody is moving there and making improvements.
Actually many previously declining places have reached critical mass and people are making improvements and attracting more people. But those places (i.e. Pittsburgh, Cincinnati), are sucking up most of the interest and creating their own gravity, leaving little left for Youngstown and Flint.
> It's easier to just move where everyone else is moving.
Of course it's easier - it's simple economies of scale. People seek access to physical and social resources. Raw land or emptied cities and towns with crumbling infrastructure don't provide that.
With remote work there is no reason you can't hire people who want to live in whatever rust belt city, and there are a lot of them. Just giving good salary to people in rust belt areas would go a long way to helping those cities.
Remote work is one way rust belt cities can revitalize themselves. There's a lot those cities can do to attract remote workers even if they're not attracting the companies themselves. Their states need to help by harmonizing some employment and tax laws with the states where tech companies are based. No one is moving to Cleveland if a "no working for competition" clause in an employment contract is legal in Ohio.
Side note: I don't mean to pick on Cleveland but it's sort of the rust belt poster child.
Economies of agglomeration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economies_of_agglomeration
Productivity increases in urban centers. Bigger, the better. At some point negative externalizes and bottlenecks that limit growth but if those would be solved, the potential upside could be even greater. For human capital the benefits from labour pooling and matching and knowledge spillovers are enormous.
Zoning and nimbyism, while contributing factors, are not the root cause. It's the idea that real estate should be seen as an investment - it gained popularity in China in recent years, causing a lot of unnecessary construction and spilling over to the rest of the world.
Fortunately(for us at leat) there are early signs that this scheme is collapsing:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2022-08-03/china-rea...
Funnily enough in my neighbourhood (Eastern EU) there's already a:
- Block of so-called "microapartments" - units too small to be legally considered housing. This one was started before the respective law was changed due to an explosion in such projects.
- A project which took people's money in 2019 and then... never did anything. It's not even a hole in the ground - it's the previous building still scheduled to be demolished.
Apparently the madness also spilled over outside of China.
Also, Vantem's website seems to be having issues. It would have been interesting to see what these houses can look like other than the "modern" gray thing in the picture, as well as get more technical info.
Judging by the photos, my guess is these buildings wouldn't appeal to homeowners. The architectural style is too different.
With concrete blocks you would cut a chase in the wall, but the primary rigidity seems to come from the panels on either side, so that seems like it might be a bad idea...
https://www.incredibletinyhomes.com/ith-incred-i-box-style-e...
They built a large assembly line building so they could start creating many homes per week. Been fun to watch them get their factory built, and each assembly section going, floor, electrical, plumbing, walls, roof, etc.
The youtube channel has been pretty good on showing the progress.
How much is it? At our place (developing country, heavily depends on imports of everything, but private entrepreneurs somehow mastered the production of "difficult to make" bricks) a traditional 2 floor, 200 sq. meters (~2153 sq. feet) brick and mortar building with reinforced concrete belts (seismically active zone here), insulation, finishing & decoration will cost:
1. $80k if you don't want to take part. You give the money, the architect asks what you want and does the rest.
2. $40k if you hire workers for every stage of building yourself.
3. $20k if you can also make some work yourself, delegating only qualified work.
Is this technology going to be cheaper? Or is it like those California kennels for homeless $40k apiece?
This is a recurring theme with prefab system he analyzes, they scrape by employing labour arbitrage at a cheap production site, but do not unleash the productivity gains we associate with industrial production.
This becomes obvious when you look at the distribution of construction costs for a finished building: https://constructionphysics.substack.com/p/construction-cost...
The most a prefab can hope to achieve is attack maybe 30- 40% of the total costs in that pie chart. You cannot prefab electrics and plumbing, foundation, landscaping, permitting etc. So even if they crush it and get 100% improvement on their products compared to on site build, that's still a 20% at best overall cost improvement.
Bit with that comes the risk of a new and unproven system, costly coordination issues that are easy to rectify in the traditional method - but if the wrong prefabs are shipped across the country you are dead for a few weeks, since the next stage cannot start.
2 walls are soo thin, 2-3x too thin for European standards. Maybe they target hot climates?
1: https://vantem.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/VA_B03-TechPan...
I'm mulling over building a little office detached from my house so this stuff is super interesting to me.
Moisture, heat, sun, insects, and humans will deteriorate anything in 10 years.
Also, houses could easily be designed in a simpler fashion (a rectangle without any modulation, ductless HVAC, etc.) for an inexpensive build.
The irony is that in 100 years you’re more likely to come across a home built in 1920 than in 1980. And there’s a few reasons why.
Old homes were overbuilt. The engineering wasn’t good enough to really know what they could get away with.
Old homes are built with old growth wood. This can’t be had today. This wood is incredible and is naturally rot resistant. Taken care of it will last many hundreds of years.
Plastics. They really came into their own during WW2 and found their way into construction because they work for awhile and are dirt cheap. So we have cheap windows, cheap siding, flooring, etc. Gone are the days where great materials were necessary and abundant so adding a bit more craftsmanship was marginal.
Buy a pre-war home and invest in it. Keep the original windows and restore them.
That and most people don't have a clue what makes a good house, and look at the wrong thing. You see a large post and don't notice the hidden beams that are not strong enough. Modern houses are built to stand up to much strong wind forces than the houses of old, but all that quality is inside the walls where you can't see any difference. In many cases they difference is something you wouldn't even notice if you could compare the inside of the two walls side by side.
We saw a lot of this when people wanted new homes in the new suburbs starting in the late 1940's. The pre-war homes were sold to poorer people who couldn't afford or didn't understand they had to repair the homes. They were quality homes but many of them have been knocked down due to that.
And yes, there were also kit homes and other cheaper construction. Homes with dirt floors, no plumbing, etc. My grandmother grew up in a small 3 room home with outdoor plumbing and she had 7 siblings - no one can imagine living like that today. It would be considered inhumane. So yeah, that kind of stuff is gone too.
But even the highest quality construction today pales in many ways. For instance, top of the line windows from Marvin aren't as good as the windows that exist today in many pre-war homes. So long as they have been restored, weather stripped, storm windows added, etc. That 100 year window will continue to outlive the highest end windows from today's top brands, if it's maintained.
Except when they weren't. For example, brick foundations that preceded reinforced concrete haven't held up well. They generally all need to be replaced at great expense.
> Old homes are built with old growth wood. This can’t be had today. This wood is incredible and is naturally rot resistant.
As you say it can't be had today and there aren't enough old homes in places people want to live to make it matter.
> Taken care of it will last many hundreds of years.
But the whole point of old growth wood is that you don't need to take care of it as much since it is pretty resilient to getting wet.
It's newer wood and manufactured materials that often need more care since they are less resilient.
Also, prewar homes use huge amounts of energy for heating - which is a big reason the old growth wood lasted: it was being blasted with heat from the inside the whole winter, so condensation got dried out (the people too).
> Plastics. They really came into their own during WW2 and found their way into construction because they work for awhile and are dirt cheap. So we have cheap windows, cheap siding, flooring,
There are incredible fiberglass and UPVC windows being made today by companies like Marvin and Schuco. Yes, there has been a history of poor quality manufactured building materials, but some of the most reliable components today contain plastics.
> Buy a pre-war home and invest in it. Keep the original windows and restore them.
The reality is that people buy homes for location, and the period of the home is a usually a secondary consideration.
I have the highest end Marvin windows (Ultimate double hung sash windows) in the addition part of my home and they don't compare to the original windows IMO. They're great, but I expect in 100 years they will have been replaced and the original windows will still be hanging.
> But the whole point of old growth wood is that you don't need to take care of it as much since it is pretty resilient to getting wet.
I'm just saying, typical home maintenance. Replacing the roofing, keeping gutters clear, etc.
> The reality is that people buy homes for location, and the period of the home is a usually a secondary consideration.
Totally. There are a lot of areas that are a mix of old and new. I'm just saying, given the option and things being equal, I'd almost always select the old home.