Prefab home for the eco-conscious
David C has a neat series of photos on prefab green housing in Switzerland. The posting is a little short on background, but it looks like they go up pretty quickly, and have “a price tag 30% lower than a typical house.”
The swiss seem to do everything right: see Kids in the Hall for the definitive word on this topic: http://youtube.com/watch?v=i2XTuc6i1Uo
I’ve long been puzzled by the rarity of prefab houses in Canada: Ikea makes prefabs in Europe, Toyota makes them in Japan. They’re fast to put up, quality control is much easier (and better I suspet), waste is lower, worksite theft of materials is lower,
After watching the haphazard way new (infill) houses are built in my neighborhood over by rough looking guys with nailguns and chainsaws over periods of many months I’ve decided that if I ever get a house built it will be prefab.
I suspect that the preference for bespoke, site built houses in North America has more to do with ease of under-the-table payment for that construction method than quality or efficiency. This was made pretty clear recently (can’t find the article now) when the Economist mentioned a major downturn in new houses being built in the US with no associated drop in construction employment. Gosh, I wonder who was building those houses?