I don’t mean double-wides, I mean quality modular houses.
Modular would be more popular if it didn’t cost as much as standard construction. It’s bizarre how expensive it is.
Lots of processes need to be sorted out. Need steady demand. It’s an interesting business.
People have been trying to make modular housing work for awhile, with limited success. For various reasons, it’s a lot more challenging than it seems like it should be. One of the problems is that the US doesn’t really have a single national regulatory regime for building codes, they are mostly local and regional. You can’t really design a house that works everywhere so the economics are a lot different than selling something like a car or a washing machine.
I think a large part of it is consistent demand, and that must be regional because of the size and shipping of the final product. Hurricanes solve both to some extent.
There really oughta be a hurricane-proof trend, like dome houses, and for the coastline, domes on stilts.
The coast should be empty
Pensacola Beach, FL. It’s survived loads of hurricanes since the 60s.
https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/pensacola-futuro-house
OTOH, so have the single-story cinder block houses(the three in the middle and top left) from the 50s. Slap a new roof on and scrub it out, good to go. The stick houses are total losses. Apparently no one read The Three Little Pigs.
South Florida is full of these small cinder block houses because everything else gets wrecked and these survive. Sure, they might need some new roof sections, and maybe the drywall cut 4ft from the floor, but porcelain tiles on a concrete slab with cinder block walls is going to last until the rebar rots.
There’s a house that just went up I saw which meets the recent Florida keys codes, and it is a goddamned fortress. It’s on a lot that is raised 4 ft, the house is made of concrete and sits on 15+ ft concrete pilings, ceramic roof, and high impact windows all around. https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/374-Mahogany-Dr-Key-Largo-FL-33037/104218949_zpid/
How about don’t live where hurricanes keep happening? Crazy thought, I know.
You act like there are hurricanes every year and they don’t offer insurance anymore.
That excludes where half the US population lives.
And?
Let’s move 100,000,000 people, what could go wrong?
If it keeps getting hotter and the storms keep getting worse, we will find out. At the very least, property prices anywhere still liveable will likely become even more unaffordable.
I’m sure The Cherokee, Chocktaw, Chickasaw, Creek, and Seminole Peoples could give us some pointers!
/dh
I think they were onto something when they built the pyramids. Like, what’s wrong with making smaller home sized pyramids? The big ones sure as hell proved to stand the test of time.
The inhabitants of the pyramids all died, though.
Design flaw. They forgot to make the doors openable.
Usable space.
You are literally suggesting living in a tomb.
Whether the pyramids were particularly intended as tombs or not, why the hell do dead people get structures that can last thousands of years? While the living people get to live in structures that if we’re lucky, might tend to last a hundred years, and that’s assuming they don’t get blown apart in a hurricane or burned down or something.
Seems a bit back asswards if you ask me.
Because the requirements are different. Royalty inhabit places designed to last thousands of years (castles), and they are known to be dreadful to live in. Stone walkways and stairs wear and become uneven, shifting foundations create little gaps for drafts to flow in, modern conveniences are difficult to install, if possible at all.
It is better for living humans to inhabit spaces that can be replaced and updated over time. The dead need things to stay essentially the same, and they don’t wear down the areas they reside in.
The dead don’t need a damn thing though.
If you can make modulars out of concrete instead of balsa wood that would be great. Otherwise, bring on the shipping container houses…
Shipping container houses are terrible ideas. You want insulation, windows, plumbing, etc. They don’t work well in those small steel containers.
"It is possible to insulate the outside of a shipping container instead of the inside.
This method of insulation is known as “over-cladding” or “external insulation” and involves adding a layer of insulation to the outside of the container before covering it with cladding or other weather-resistant materials"
Seriously? It’s surface area to volume problem. You have this tiny box. And then you have problems with doors, Hvac, etc. Sorry but the whole idea is idiotic.
People just want affordable homes- a cornerstone feature of pretty much every modern generation before Millennials.
Obviously there are better ways to build a home, but those avenues seem closed.
Shipping container houses are not it. I’d call it a scam, but that typically requires something actually for sale. But if it helps: it’s a scam.
Modular or not, when there’s 10-12’ of storm surge and/or river flooding, it doesn’t matter. Houses built today generally handle cat 3 and even cat 4 storm winds without much problem. It’s the flooding that’s the killer.
I’m talking about reconstruction afterwards.
We are entering peak America. Disposable homes! Lol
All homes are disposable.
Now, castles…
I was hoping for a trend in less green house gases but this sounds like the next best idea.
Why? there isn’t much difference in cost possible as site built is mostly using pre cut materials as well.they go up faster but don’t save that much when you demand quality. They also are very limited in floorplans. Anyone actually in construction understands where the real problems are and they are not things modular can solve.
Buh? Site has a ton of on site construction: woodwork, running wires, pipes, fucking everything. Prebuilt in a factory can get way more efficiency.
All that is done in the factory too. Done in much the same way.
Site built just brings the factory to the site and gets semilar efficiencies.
Factory has the capacity to be far more efficient. Assembly line style.
People hate it when all houses are the same and that limits what eificience you can get.
Just like different car models you can have different house models if the market is big enough.
shipping a complete house is expensive. site construction is very efficient and well setup for quick building with minimal people. And because you don’t have to design for what can fit on roads ends up almost as cheap while being more flexible-
i’m not arguing that site built is just as cheap only that it isn’t much more expensive and the other benifits make it worth it.
Site construction is not efficient at all. Like at all. It’s horribly inefficient. It’s pretty much the worst industry I can think of. There’s a reason why factories exist. I don’t think we’re going to see eye to eye on that, so we don’t need to keep saying the same thing back and forth.
Yes shipping is an issue. That’s why regionality is important. If hurricanes keep hitting the same area, that will create regional demand.
*Also, it’s not shipping a complete[d] house (which yes can be done too), it’s a modular house. That’s the whole point of the post.
