The big changes I've seen over my lifetime have been tooling and materials. I remember when framers did everything with a hammer, a circular saw, and a speed-square. Now we have nail guns and cordless impact drivers and miter saws. Fiberglass batt insulation is still a thing, but now there's also urethane spray foam. We have engineered beams and OSB sheathing pre-coated with a moisture barrier. There's a lot of things that all add up to better performance and less manual labor.
The Hudson River used to be a main manufacturing artery of the United States but has since become a relic. I still believe that region upstream of NYC could address the housing crisis plaguing the northeast of the United States. Imagine barges of housing components drifting down-river to be assembled in any coastal metro on the Atlantic coastline.
I live near a 3d printed neighborhood in Georgetown, TX. We would have bought one if they'd had more than 3 bedroom floorplans. They are concrete and stay cool in the summer, they also all have solar panels...
Everyone I've talked to says they are wierd looking like the movie set of Edward Scissorhands or something, but it's mainly because they didn't leave old growth trees so every tree is < 5 years old (maybe for the printer to have room to move around?) and they are very very similar. People also don't like the concrete factor.
I don't know if it counts as successful but if we'd had fewer kids I'd be in one right now!
I wonder how much of home construction efficiency improvements are held back by taste for traditional appearance vs. other cost/performance characteristics.
The difference in styles between residential and commercial construction is probably an example of this. Not many commercial buildings with tar paper shingled roofs.
They made a new office building a number of years ago that I had the pleasure of watching it go up. At first it was all grey concrete that they poured, but then, they hung, like giant paintings, a brick facade on the exterior and the columns. If you hadn't seen it go up, you'd think it was a brick building. I'm sure it cost extra, but looks don't have to go out the window in the name of efficiency.
> Not many commercial buildings with tar paper shingled roofs
I mean, this is kind of true and kind of untrue. There aren't a lot of commercial roofs with literal residential asphalt shingles, but many commercial roofs are things like mod bit which are practically the same concept, just a mod bit needs to handle an extremely low to flat pitch while residential shingles assume a decent pitch to the roof. Tons are also just single-ply membranes, which often don't even last as long as a good residential asphalt shingle install.
Its not like every commercial building has a metal roof. Just look at this random commercial/industrial office park:
The only reason I can think of that houses don’t usually have metal roofs is because they cost at least double, if not triple. I have seen homeowners use metal roofs, but it’s one of the first cost reductions because a good shingle roof is already good for 30+ years.
For a business, it can make more sense as it might be a more long term structure, plus it would contain more valuable items (or at least cause more loss if business is interrupted).
> The only reason I can think of that houses don’t usually have metal roofs is because they cost at least double, if not triple
Also noise, if you live somewhere with a lot of rain.
I wonder if the longevity argument really holds, too. Anecdotally, our local public housing project invested in metal roofs many years ago (less than 30, however) but a good fraction of them have been replaced since with contemporary asphalt shingles. I do not know why they failed, but the switch back to asphalt says something.
To me it says that someone in the housing authority fell for a sales pitch on metal roofs. "Buy it once and never have to pay for a roof again." That person is now probably long gone, as is the salesman and likely the roofing contractor who installed it. The roof is now leaking, and the current administration looked at what they could afford and asphalt it is.
> Construction is famously labor intensive: direct labor makes up close to 50% of the cost of constructing a new single-family home in the US, compared to around 6 to 8% of the cost of manufacturing a car.
Is this only calculating last mile labor, or all the labor along the way? Like, for a car, does it count the cost of steel as purely non-labor costs, or do they factor in the labor cost for mining the ore, etc?
Because I feel like at the end of the day, almost all costs are 'labor' costs, they are just paid by different people/companies earlier in the process. Housing just has a lot of the labor as the final step, assembling the house on site. Cars have more of their labor at earlier stages of the process, and the assembling is mostly automated.
They don't. They come in later and do their thing as normal.
MEP workers have huge regulatory moats and trade groups with war chests which is why their bit of the process isn't being discussed here. If the tech isn't at a point where it can beat the relatively "exposed to the free market" framers and brick layers then there's no way it can fight the MEPs who have the laws and rules and codes they can leverage.
Even more labor-intensive, actually. Needs significant babysitting for things like electrical fixtures and window opening, and the final wall is a maintenance nightmare if it isn't plastered smooth.
Only because we culturally expect recessed wiring and plumbing. if we went back to knob and stick wiring and external plumbing, 3d printed homes are much easier to make.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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
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
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?
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.
The Hudson River used to be a main manufacturing artery of the United States but has since become a relic. I still believe that region upstream of NYC could address the housing crisis plaguing the northeast of the United States. Imagine barges of housing components drifting down-river to be assembled in any coastal metro on the Atlantic coastline.
Everyone I've talked to says they are wierd looking like the movie set of Edward Scissorhands or something, but it's mainly because they didn't leave old growth trees so every tree is < 5 years old (maybe for the printer to have room to move around?) and they are very very similar. People also don't like the concrete factor.
I don't know if it counts as successful but if we'd had fewer kids I'd be in one right now!
The difference in styles between residential and commercial construction is probably an example of this. Not many commercial buildings with tar paper shingled roofs.
I mean, this is kind of true and kind of untrue. There aren't a lot of commercial roofs with literal residential asphalt shingles, but many commercial roofs are things like mod bit which are practically the same concept, just a mod bit needs to handle an extremely low to flat pitch while residential shingles assume a decent pitch to the roof. Tons are also just single-ply membranes, which often don't even last as long as a good residential asphalt shingle install.
Its not like every commercial building has a metal roof. Just look at this random commercial/industrial office park:
https://maps.app.goo.gl/7X1NUTwrTUdH21o1A
Take a look around. You see a lot of metal roofs, yes. You also see membrane roofs. You see mod bit. And you'll even see some old built-up roofs.
For a business, it can make more sense as it might be a more long term structure, plus it would contain more valuable items (or at least cause more loss if business is interrupted).
Also noise, if you live somewhere with a lot of rain.
I wonder if the longevity argument really holds, too. Anecdotally, our local public housing project invested in metal roofs many years ago (less than 30, however) but a good fraction of them have been replaced since with contemporary asphalt shingles. I do not know why they failed, but the switch back to asphalt says something.
Is this only calculating last mile labor, or all the labor along the way? Like, for a car, does it count the cost of steel as purely non-labor costs, or do they factor in the labor cost for mining the ore, etc?
Because I feel like at the end of the day, almost all costs are 'labor' costs, they are just paid by different people/companies earlier in the process. Housing just has a lot of the labor as the final step, assembling the house on site. Cars have more of their labor at earlier stages of the process, and the assembling is mostly automated.
MEP workers have huge regulatory moats and trade groups with war chests which is why their bit of the process isn't being discussed here. If the tech isn't at a point where it can beat the relatively "exposed to the free market" framers and brick layers then there's no way it can fight the MEPs who have the laws and rules and codes they can leverage.
It's a really expensive and laboruius way to increase the R value of your home basically.
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.
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 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.
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?
And houses are expected to last longer than cars.
I'm not saying you're wrong person se, but I disagree with the analogy