Looks about right. Most new houses in Norway are picked out from a catalogue. There are two or three main companies. My aunt and uncle had contractors build their former house from a standard catalogue blueprint, but the builders got the roof measures wrong and it ended up losing them about 50 cm of height in the second floor ceiling and a lot of floor space. I think they regretted attempting to save money by bypassing the house designers.
It’s a wood frame. 90% of the walls is insulation. It’s important to seal the joints/cracks properly to prevent drafts, though.
EDIT - CORRECTION
From the “details” PDF on the M.A.DI. website:
STRUCTURAL SYSTEM:The structure is made with profiles and tubes in hot galvanized steel, suitably dimensioned. The opening and closing movement, protected by a International patent, is guaranteed by special steel hinges. The slabs and pitched walls are made of 87mm Xlam panels. A sandwich panel made of 100mm trapezoidal sheet and polyurethane foam ensures the waterproofing of the building. It contributes to the thermal insulation of the casing necessary for the achievement of a proper energy class.1)
FRONT WALLS: A chassis frame insulated1) with high-density rock wool composes the front walls, and externally covered with customizable planking in larch. On the wall windows in Pvc or aluminium can be installed, the quantity may vary in according to the customer’s needs.
1) This house was designed by Italian architects and civil engineers to Italian standards. Building codes across the EU are pretty standardized by now. (The phrase “energy class” is a dead giveaway.) So I’m positive that there is additional insulation in the roof frame, similar to those in the walls. There is no way you can comply with current codes otherwise.
More than six people, plus a boom truck. That’s not including the foundation, which was already in place when they started. And it clearly takes them more than two days in the video, judging by the sunrise/sunset cycle, and the fact that at the end of day two they’re not finished and it jump-cuts to the finished house.
None of that is an indictment of the house, though. It looks great, and building a complete, quality house in a week is remarkable in and of itself. Not sure why it’s necessary to then exaggerate the claim to six hours.
The house appears to be more structurally sound than most stick-built American houses. We spent the entire 20th century learning how to build the bare minimum of a house with the cheapest materials possible. What we build now is probably uninhabitable by European standards.
Anything involving digging, definitely not; but there are some interesting possibilities within the house: power and data wiring aren’t rigid; and water lines don’t need to be (if you go polymer, as seems to be more popular these days, not sure if that’s just a cost thing or if it has other advantages); so, since you know all the distances and positions involved in the final structure you could presumably construct the wiring and piping all in a single(or small number, if it makes threading them easier) of pre-constructed harnesses that snap into place about as quickly as the rest of the building.
Yup - and their houses sip energy compared to houses in the US, typically with twice the insulation, and super air-tight with comfy radiant heated floors. Basically their houses kick our houses asses in every way that matters.
I posted this same video on the r/Construction sub-reddit and the moderators banned me. You can see where our heads are at in the US when it comes to advancing innovation in construction.
We barely have a prefab housing industry. We are just starting to see the adoption of off-site techniques, mostly by boutique energy efficient focused small builders, and by large VC funded fabricators or land developers. In Sweden where that vide was shot you have closer to 90% of houses and a growing amount of multi-family built with some off-site building technique.
So when I say we are behind, I mean we are 20-30years behind.
What do you consider “barely”?
22 million people in the U.S. live in prefab homes
9% new single family home starts are prefab
121 prefab manufacturing plants in the U.S.
34 U.S. prefab corporations in the U.S.
$3 billion/year industry in U.S.
40,000 americans are employed making prefab homes.
In the US, if you say ‘pre-fab’ to someone, 80% of the time their mind will jump to trailer parks, which is not exactly an endorsement. Good quality pre-fab houses are available in many places, and a lot of components (like roof trusses) for traditional construction are fabricated off-site anyhow, so hopefully the stigma will go away over time. We looked at one several years ago, and liked the construction values, but the distributor/installer for our area folded.
@Fuzzyfungus, PEX is very popular these days for inside plumbing; it still has some issues with exposure to UV which means at least for the moment it shouldn’t be used outside. It is however extremely flexible, which means runs of pipes can be installed without joins at corners, reducing failure points and places where turbulence might mess with water flow. It also gets heavy use in the underfloor radiant heating biz.
What is the point of that? The point was the actual construction. Like in a cooking show do you factor in how long it took to grow the cow and wheat and make the cheese? How long the tree took to grow to make something out of it? How long it took to make the screws or curcuit board when making some Raspberry Pi gizmo?
I’m still not sure what you mean. If Sweden has a 90% prefab rate and given that their housing starts per quarter are currently at 12000, they do about 10800 prefab homes per quarter.
Given that the U.S. has about a 9% prefab rate and has 1290000 starts per month, then the U.S. produces 348,300 prefab homes per quarter. So it looks to me like we aren’t doing 10x Sweden, we are doing 32x what Sweden does. Which still leaves me wondering how someone would say
Because your assumption that prefab in USA = prefab in Sweden is erroneous.
For most off site work done in the US constitutes building components - roof trusses, and framed wall panels, which require extensive on site work to complete the house. Where as off site work in Sweden and Scandinavia is done in the form of “closed” wall panel, meaning finished inside and out, insulated, wired, and windows and doors installed.
So USAs prefab numbers don’t reflect that their offsite work only represents maybe 5-10% of construction completeness, while Swedens is closer to 50-75%. So numbers alone looked up on the internet do not tell the whole story.
Modular building in the US is the only technique used here which approaches the completeness of nordic component approach and modular represents as little as 3% of housing - no the 9% you quoted elsewhere which encompasses unfinished component building as well.
