Factory-Built Housing

[lpetrich]

Many houses and buildings continue to be built by hand on the spot, when there are ways to automate their construction, like assembling them in factories or at least major parts of them. Ways that have often been used, I must note.

 Prefabrication and  Prefabricated building and  Modular building and  Panel building (made from prefab panels) and  Large panel system building Apartment buildings constructed in this way are often considered typical of Soviet-bloc countries, where  Khrushchevka[/wik] have often been nicknamed [url=https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/commie_block]commie block - Wiktionary, the free dictionary[/url] But many "Commie blocks" have been built outside of Communist countries, thus making them "Cappie blocks". Not just apartment buildings. [wiki]Prefabricated home and  Manufactured housing and  Mobile home - house trailers that were towed into place.

But there are some recent entrants into this business. Top Boxabl Alternatives, Competitors -- BOXABL and Veev is a home builder that is redefining each step of the construction process. and Plant Prefab and Module | Discover Smart Living and nHouse | Contemporary Modular Homes, UK and Hapi Homes and Crate Modular (suspicious link) and Blokable (suspicious link) and DVELE | Modern Prefab Net-Zero Modular Homes and Indie Dwell (currently "private site") and Prefab ADUs in California - Abodu

 

[lpetrich]

Has anyone actually received a Boxabl house? : r/TinyHouses -- Boxabl's houses are apparently vaporware.

TinyHouses: a place for people interested in small or tiny houses at Reddit

Was Veev just a scam or they just spent the money too freely? | Bay Area Riders Forum
With posts like

(Climber)

These people burned through a ton of money with almost nothing to show for it. I don't think the idea is bad, but I think it's a bunch of nerds trying to figure out how to do a blue collar industry and most of them probably have little knowledge of actual building. Now, that is speculation, but I don't think I'm far off the mark.

I also think that they probably rewarded themselves extensively, I've been involved in some start-ups where the CEO lived a wonderful life and burned up $$$$$$ doing so.

...
Proof of concept usually gets done on a smaller scale.

Perhaps with $600 Million (or $400 million last year) they skipped the proof of concept stage and went straight to production. Still, there are plenty of ways to scale up something like that. I would have expected them to build frames to efficiently manufacture wall sections, it's not rocket science, it's just building the sections in an environment where you can get it done in a faster, cheaper manner. The problem is that you'd still have to do finish work where the parts came together.

...
During the dotcom boom, the one characteristic of the majority of people who got the money was massive over-optimistic projections of profits and under estimates of the cost of building and operating the company. Some of the estimates that I heard were completely unachievable, but greed can be a compelling emotion to get people to put money down. Many of them didn't understand the technologies and/or industries, but the numbers they were presented gave them hard-ons.

 

[lpetrich]

Elon Musk Announces $6,999 Tesla Tiny House Launch in US. INSANE First Look. Details HERE! - YouTube - repeating a lot of EM's hype about this new product

Inside Local Company's Customizable Prefab Homes - YouTube - an interview with someone from Dvele, without any showing off of already-built houses. It showed off a lot of still pictures, and those ones look very boxy, so they *might* be more than vaporware.

Time Lapse Of New Modular Home Being Built - YouTube - part prefab, part on-site construction

Palm Harbor Modular Home Setup 2 Min Video - looks real, with big parts of the house arriving on truck trailers.

 

[lpetrich]

A very successful kind of prefab house?

Shipping container homes at Reddit

Made from shipping containers used on cargo ships.

Shipping Container Homes | HGTV and Shipping Container Homes - Pros, Cons & Costs and What's Wrong With Shipping Container Housing? One Architect Says "Everything."