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Comment by nsonha | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

Manufactured homes are a thing. You can literally buy one for 100k-300k

We call them prefabs i.e. prefabricated.

Has anyone made multi-story manufactured homes?

Most homes in my area have two (3 with basement), traditional single story ranch doesn’t make good use of the limited land. So if multiple floors aren’t available they’re not an option for a great many homes.

It’s kind of amazing we’ve perfected the subdivision. Building and rebuilding the same 3 floor plans a hundred times over by hand. It’s automated in a way and yet not automated at all.

It's done in Japan. There's a video of the process here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhDG__-UVaQ

There are but those companies often go out of business quickly because American manufactured home installers suck. In the US manufactured homes are sold by the installer. They do a bank contract with a customer. The escrow process releases funds to either the installer or the actual factory. The factories can definitely produce sections with multiple stories, etc.. but then the installer is then responsible to have crane support and expertise in more complex "marriage lines" than the typical "double or triple wide" single story home.

Once you get into this territory, at least in the US, it makes more economical sense to have a builder create a 2/3 story home.

Theres less efficiency here than would be thought. Building codes, technologies, materials, styles, needs etc vary a lot by location.

I think the Problem is transportation of larger Units, different buildung Codes from region to region and induvidual requestt

If you're interested in the topic, the author writes extensively on manufactured homes.

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.

The most obvious reason for that is transport. The main components of houses tend to be much bigger than what fits on the back of a lorry.

You could flat pack them like IKEA furniture to make them fit on the back of a lorry. Take the walls and floor and ceiling/roof apart, and slot them vertically, and then assemble them into a building on site.

Sears did this over a hundred years ago, except in a rail car instead of a truck trailer. You can buy kit homes and outbuildings from Menards and other places.

Ever try putting a brick wall on a truck?

Difficult with brick walls, but easy with concrete walls. The Soviet Union famously did that a lot. For the brick aesthetic, just add a brick facade on top. Or insulation foam boards and plaster for a more boring but functional look

They did this a bit in Britain post war.

It wasn't and isn't particularly popular. I don't know the precise reasons, but I suppose the fact it was tried, and didn't work says something.

At least in the UK, a lot new development is done like this. In London there's massive amounts of new housing in the New London Vernacular style that uses brick cladding panels, either real bricks or thin "brick slip" that are fabricated off site: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_London_Vernacular

sounds like a problem engineering can't solve? Stop using bricks is an idea.

> Stop using bricks is an idea

I would guess that happened a long time ago and the vast, vast majority of what looks like brick houses today are facades. Does anyone want a real brick house these days?

It doesn’t cost that much more to frame up a house in the field vs framing it in a warehouse.

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).

turns out that's not much cheaper and really limits design choices and sometimes house locations

Why is this ridiculous?

do you build a car from raw materials and casting every component in the same shop?

You could use the metaphor of sealed units in modern cars that can't be repaired.

And houses are expected to last longer than cars.

I'm not saying you're wrong person se, but I disagree with the analogy

Are there really many parallels between a car and a house? The car is considerably more complex with dramatically less variation between builds. It is not like homes are constructed from raw materials, either, lots of the pieces are built in a factory and then brought on site to be connected.

There are enough to make meaningful comparisons vs, say, manufacturing a laptop. They're both too big to carry, and expensive enough that most people aren't able to afford more than a handful in their lives, and may possibly even just only rent one. So cars and houses are more similar in size then cellphones or a meal at a restaurant.

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