Well, a home constructed in the standard fashion is just a good product. Brick is a fabulous material, for instance. It'd be difficult and rather pointless to make a prefab brick walled house.
This made me think of some discussions I've had with a fellow "doomer" friend regarding the prospect of a dark age a'coming. Something we've discussed is how the last dark age was marked by the loss of skills you wouldn't expect to be lost. For instance in Britain, wheel-made pottery disappeared. Nobody knew how to make it. It's easy to see why; wheeled pottery was factory made in Roman times. Good pottery is actually quite difficult to make from a standing start (what sort of clay, how do you use a wheel, how do you construct a kiln?). This made us consider building, which brings me to some of what you said.
I used to be a tradesman myself, by the way, an electrician. It struck me that builders of all kinds today are assemblers of presupplied parts. They buy bricks, buy bags of cement, buy some architrave or guttering. A modern builder wouldn't know how to construct a house from basic raw materials; he knows only how to assemble parts. Likewise DIYers. If there were a social collapse, we should expect only very primitive dwellings subsequently. Hardly anyone would know how to even make bricks let alone grout or screed or anything else. Without Jewsons and Wickes, we're lost.
Materials and risk have been the shaping of our buildings over the long centuries.
When towns(even London) were small, one fire could easily be put out and not confligrate half the city by spreading next door.
Medieval buildings were portable.
In Tudor times they had wooden framed buildings and houses that you could dismantle and move eleswhere with little fuss, given that they were held together with joints and dowelling rods etc.
The original Globe theatre, is supposed to have been moved from its original site, to the one south of the River, because the rent was to much.
But then came the Great fire of London, and bricks looked a safer bet all round.
Probably you will want to see this
http://www.physorg.com/news139161727.html
If this finally appears to be a viable technology, probably we will see a revolution in building.
I saw a show about building expensive houses in Japan. They were in truck sized slices. They were dropped in place on site. Several components unfolded so to speak on construction. They had several different designs. A crane had to lift the slices off the truck, over some power lines and in to place. I thought it was a great idea, but ended up being much more expensive for some reason.
First, when Heinlein wrote that, building a house was more complicated and required a lot of detail work, especially things like "toe-nailing". Now, we have metal brackets to do the job better/cheaper/faster.
Second, things like roof trusses ARE now delivered, factory-built, to the site.
Third, the biggest obstructions to having even more in the way of pre-fab housing is regulatory delay in the permitting process (here in the US; can't speak for your side of the pond) and labor-union resistance. Building codes prescribe specific materials and methods, and pre-fab is often in violation of the building codes.
Mobile homes are pre-fab and delivered to the site to be set-up in a couple of hours! A double-wide seemed to be quite convenient to live in. I have not had the pleasure, but once spent time in one setup as an office on a construction project site.
In addition to a little bit of social stigma (trailer trash) mobile homes are often believed to be tornado magnets!
I strongly suspect that prefab has a much higher penetration rate in commercial construction. The problem sets are better known and more repeatable. A gas station is very often similar to a thousand other gas stations.
I strongly suspect as we get short run manufacturing down, prefab homes will become more practical, perhaps on the model of chip foundries. Some large operators will invest in their own home factory but others will just rent out space to make their own runs.
RAB,
The original Globe theatre, is supposed to have been moved from its original site, to the one south of the River, because the rent was to much.
It wasn't called the Globe till after it was moved. There were two problems in 1597, not economic but official and unofficial authoritarianism: 1. Theatrical performances were banned by the City of London (they were often banned citing public health reasons, but this seems not to have been one of those occasions) . 2. the Burbage's Shoreditch landlord was a prominent puritan and so the company felt the chilling effect of "community standards" when the lease came up for renewal, and they weren't able to reopen.
Fortunately for English language and literature, a more liberal jurisdiction was not a mile away, and moving the building was possible for such a lucrative enertainment franchise.
There's another big reason why it is not happening - in Britain. Planning and building regulations. You need to make an individually tailored application to build on any site for the former (with external features conformant to a local plan and criteria - which is why the Straford-on-Avon MacDonalds, like every other shop in the town centre is obliged to have a hanging sign like a traditional pub). Prefabricated structures find it difficult to comply with the latter. All works are subject to highly prescriptive oversight by local authority inspectors.
I understand that in many parts of the States, and in Germany, the construction industries are not constrained in the same ways, and largely depend on prefab and production-line techniques for housing. They also use much more wood. As a result building is quicker and costs are substantially lower.
My 6 year old mobile home/trailer offers me 3 bedrooms (master w/walk-in closet), a full sized kitchen with island, 2 full bathrooms including big jet tub in the ensuite, a decent living room and a laundry room--plus I have a 40 ft by 12 ft deck, covered at both entrances. It works well and is very comfortable even at 40-50 below, which we get a lot around here. All at a price well below a normally built house with the same 1120 sq footage, at least around here. Plus, standardization makes repairs a snap.
In short: mobiles have come a long way over the years.
Is it palatial? Nooooo. Is it civilized? Sure.
Ron,
How long will it last though?
And I recall a couple of years ago in Florida there were a load of folks in manufactured housing having the land sold from under them.
In the US, at least, you can certainly buy mass-produced, factory-built homes.
This market area (referred to as 'manufactured homes') covers a range of products between homes that are essentially travel-trailers-without-wheels to some pretty fancy lodgings. They are typically pre-assembled in units large enough to travel down the interstate (8-10 feet wide, 8-10 feet high and up to 80' feet long) and then final-assembled on site. The manufactured modules will typically have all structural and partition walls built, all wiring, plumbing, appliances and services installed, and they require only to be tied together, connections made and the seams finished. Levels of on-site work and finish vary quite widely.
These homes typically
- are installed on slabs, block- or thickened-edge foundations only - they are typically not constructed to go over a basement
- are single-storey, ranch-style homes, sometimes with dormers
- have low roof pitches
- run in the $75-$100 per square foot finished cost range.
There can be a lot of regulatory issues with tjhings like building codes, claimte issues, earthquake security and so forth, but you'll see manufactured homes in pretty-much all locales - they tend to be more in the lower- and middle-income brackets.
By their nature, they are limited in design and layout and rather formulaic(although interior and finish options are essentially limitless) and so they are less-popular with higher-income folks who want larger, multi-storey custom homes with lots of unique design features. They also suffer form a certain social stigma as being a little too close to 'trailer' homes. But I've been in a number of 'manufactured' homes that are as nice as you could possibly wish for.
llater,
llamas
I see no reason it won't last longer than I will--it's 2x6 frame construction, very well insulated.
My home is in a largish, well-established park right now but I have the option of moving it to my own land if I wish, for a mortgage price on the land that would be roughly the same as what I pay for pad rental/lease.
Kit Homes are not unknown here in Oz, a number of companies produce them. Personally, I am kinda tempted to get something built in Queenslander style -
http://www.kithomes.com.au/classic_queenslanders.htm
On the other hand, we are about to see a revolution in building costs. 3D printing, on a large scale, is on its way -
http://www.countingcats.com/?p=753
Well that was dissapointing I must say, knowing you CC.
I thought I was going to get
Kit Home
A bloke with the biggest wanger in the west
But instead...
On Thread!
Thanks for the proper historical focus Guy, I had forgotten the religious aspect of it.
You are also right about the planning Regulations etc.
They want to solve problems but havent a clue have they?
Pre-fab residences are largely prohibited in the city of Chicago, because the construction unions don't like them. There are also bans on much PVC piping, because you don't have to be a trained plumber to install much of it. In many locals I think you'll find that reasons other than safety and esthetics prevent some innovations.
My current car was handbuilt by a number of artisans, in the old Tom Walkinshaw Racing factory, Bloxham, Oxfordshire :-).
Still, you're right, when it comes to houses. The first house I ever bought (as a place to live, having rented for a number of years while saving up for my deposit), was a 6-foot deep hole in the ground, when I put my deposit down on it, having had a tour of the site show house. Naturally, I went to site on most weekends, taking photos as the house went up, so I could be sure where pipes and cables were being run. The builders - especially Eddie, the site foreman - were personable and chatty guys, and they surprised me when they told me that the elapsed time between turning the first divot when digging the foundations, and owner occupation of a finished house, is typically 13 weeks.
This if for a full, traditional, brick-built "English Man's Castle" of a house.
Folk are now looking at polystyrene "oversized Lego" briks, which you build into the shell of a house and then pour (highly advanced) concrete into.
"Advances are afoot", shall we say :-).
Prefab homes are here to stay in the US ... only forbidden in extremely socialist jurisdictions.
Put a triple-wide on an acre in rural America, have competent help finish it up and landscape around it, stick a fork in it, and call it done.
Prefabs are not just trailer-park apparitions these days.
I remember reading that Heinlein bit too. His complaints were - I can't recall exact wording, so recreating quote here - that houses are dusty, dark, chopped up into little inefficient spaces, inefficient generally, took too long to build and were too expensive. He commented that F.L. Wright's houses LOOKED cool but were - I think he called them rat mazes? Along those lines.
Thanks for the perspective on the wasted support structures in true "pod" building; I hadn't thought at all about that. There's a hotel in San Antonio, along Riverwalk but predating all Riverwalk development IIRC, that was speed-built almost on a bet; I can't remember the details, but basically every room was a pod and the whole hotel was assembled in some unGodly short time, maybe in the '40s or so - please forgive my poor memory. Still standing, still looking good. I have not been inside.
Are there any pictures of Heinlein's California home out there? I'd love to see what he and Ginny opted for.
Heinlein also wrote "And He Built a Crooked House," about an excessively clever architect whose house folds into a four-dimensional maze during an earthquake. Good fun.
But we still cite Heinlein so often that we forget how long ago it was that he was writing; these are comments from someone who was guessing at the future - and the American future at that - sixty years ago! I don't think he did all that badly.
Nobody seems to be wondering whether building trends might have anything to do with what the customer actually wants, which is odd cosidering samizdata's usual preoccupations.
Although kit houses (ie most modern "scheme"-type ones) are superficially attractive - with provisos* - it's quite clear that the really big demand, as shown by high prices - is for traditional stone-built Victorian and Edwardian "villas". Preferably with land.
So stuff your factory rubbish, nobody wants it apart from those who have no choice.
* The proviso, of course, being the likely lifetime of such things. They are made with softwood frames - "it's treated, it'll never rot, it says so here on the tin", oh yeah! - and covered in building paper, no, of course there are no holes in the paper, our tradesmen are all completely careful and trustworthy, rats will never get into the insulation, oh no! Etc. I don't think any of these kit jobs will last 100 years and most of them are probably just about good enough for the time it'll take their owners to pay off the mortgage. Maybe that's a feature not a bug, I dunno.