E61. The Benefits of Pre-fabricated Homes
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INTRO
Hello and welcome to the Building Design Primetime podcast, focused on providing valuable information for anyone looking to undertake a new build or extension project. We'll share our tips, tricks and stories from a building designers perspective.
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Amelia: Hello and welcome to the Building Design, Prime Time Podcast. I'm your host Amelia and once again we're joined by Frank Geskus.
Frank: Hi Amelia, how are you? Oh look, it's another Friday. Yeah, I missed last Friday.
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Amelia: You did, you'll have to listen back to the last episode with Bianca.
Frank: Yeah, Bianca filled in for me.
Amelia: Yeah, it was fantastic.
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Frank: I can't wait to listen to it.
Amelia: Well, we've got another exciting topic today. We're going to talk about modular homes.
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Frank: Prefabricated.
Amelia: Prefabricated homes.
Frank: Yes.
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Amelia: Okay.
Frank: So they're built in a factory and you take them to site. Now we've touched on this previously.
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Amelia: We have.
Frank: But more from the dodgy side of things. Buying something off Gumtree or Facebook, don't do it people.
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Amelia: But there's plenty of professionals out there that you can buy from.
Frank: Oh, very much so. Brilliant.
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Yes, so I say the word prefabricated because essentially they build it in a factory under controlled conditions. The whole thing's built in one piece and then it's like pulled apart, put it on the back of a truck and take it to site, get a crane and the foundations are normally prepared or the structure that it sits on is all prepared. And then they crane it onto position, if that's the type of construction it is, and bolt it all together, tie it all down, hook it all up and then patch it up and add decks, stairs, pergolas and plumbing and power and all the rest of it.
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Happy days.
Amelia: Yeah, it seems to me like it would be a fairly efficient way to do things.
Frank: It can be.
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In certain instances, it's magnificent. I've seen it in the bigger cities, Melbourne, Sydney, where basically construction to do a normal build on site is so restrictive. The tradies have nowhere to park their vehicles.
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They've got to catch a bus to get to the site from where they park their vehicle or they can't get a concrete truck or nothing fits down there. It's just horrible. And because of that, you're going to pay for it.
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So I've seen some articles where they actually prefabricate everything and built into modules and they prepare the foundations and pop her in, bang, bang. You know, they might have to drop power lines and all that. So it's only for a day, basically put the whole thing together.
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Amelia: So it's pretty good for tightly...
Frank: Tight sites. Yeah. Real tight sites, I think they're brilliant.
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There's a lot of good places for them. Granny Flats, you know, we spoke about Granny Flats. I reckon fantastic for that.
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So yeah, you need a bit more space. Didn't you have an inquiry about someone had a shed and a shouse or a shed with a house inside and they wanted to prefabricate it to join it all together?
Amelia: Yeah, something like that. Yeah.
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I suppose I'll get to go talk to them, won't I?
Amelia: Yeah, I reckon, yeah.
Frank: So yeah, and that's where it's ideal as well. Means you get a house pretty quick.
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Amelia: Yeah, timeframes is another thing.
Frank: At the end of the day, when it's in a factory, it potentially could be quicker, subject to a lot of things. But if they do a lot of them, it just gets in line like a, you know, manufacturing process, like ordering a car.
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Amelia: And is it, I mean, you said they're prefabricated, but can you do custom type designs?
Frank: Yeah, 100%, yeah, yeah.
Amelia: Oh, that's pretty cool.
Frank: I've seen some wicked prefabricated.
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And yeah, you can have cathedral ceilings, you can have all sorts of stuff. But also they're designed a little bit different, built a little bit different. In Tasmania, we have transport size limitations of what you can take on the highway and different rules with all that.
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So that will have limitations. They're also really good for remote areas as well. Tradies going back and forth where if you can put a lot of it together and then transport the building to site, put it on the foundations have been pre-prepared.
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Amelia: Makes a lot of sense.
Frank: Does, your plumbing should have, you know, a pipe already there, ready to connect to. Your electrical should have something already to connect to.
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Yeah, NBN, all that. So it can be a great way of doing it. You do need to go to a reputable manufacturer.
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And there's a heap of them in Tassie, but there's also a few rogues where they're just building stuff and putting them on or buying second-hand, buy an old one.
Amelia: Can you do that or is that a big no-no?
Frank: Oh, you can buy anything, but whether it's a smart idea, that's another matter. So let's put it this way.
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Let's be very clear. A prefabricated building is no different to any other type of building. So if you're building a house and it's prefabricated, it's still a house, right? So you go put one on a block of land, you'll get your planning permits, soil tests... Bushfire.
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Bushfire assessments, have to get it engineered. There's no difference in any of this. And you get your building and plumbing approval for that site.
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If you see someone selling one and you wish to then grab that and take it to another site...
Amelia: You need to go through the whole process again.
Frank: You need to go through the whole process. So don't do it, because that house or prefabricated building, which is a house, was for that site.
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Amelia: Yes.
Frank: And we've spoken about how things have changed over the last 30, 50 years because of the building code. And the building code now gets updated every three years.
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So that house would have been designed for the building code of that day. Let's say 10 years old. So it's 2024.
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So you go back to 2014 and you would have had the building code of 2014. But for you to then take that house to a new site and expecting the same thing won't happen because that house has to comply with 2024.
Amelia: Yeah, so it might be a bit disastrous, really.
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It could be really expensive.
Frank: I've had to burst some balloons, shatter people's dreams.
Amelia: Really?
Frank: So I bought this, you know, it's an old transportable.
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And I said, yeah, it is old. It's like from the 70s. And it says, I want to put it over to here.
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It says, well, yeah, you can take it, but it won't be a house. So we treat it as a class 10, like a shed or a studio.
Amelia: Yeah, OK.
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Frank: Can't live in it. They were a bit shattered. And I says, well, you shouldn't have bought it.
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They said I could. Who was they? The person selling it. Of course they're going to tell you that.
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It's like a dodgy car salesman. You know, they're going to tell you anything you want to hear.
Amelia: Yeah. Buyer beware!
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Frank: People do not buy a second-hand transportable building that's been prefabricated. Just don't do it. Buy a brand new one.
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There's plenty of companies that would do it. And then you go through all the processes of getting your permits and it will be correct.
Amelia: And I guess everything too has to line up.
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You know, all of your plumbing and all of that other work has to line up. And that, I guess, could be a problem if you're just buying a second-hand one.
Frank: Very much so.
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Just think of the glass, the insulation.
Amelia: Yeah, exactly.
Frank: The waterproofing in the bathroom.
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We were talking before about the Livablel Housing deemed to satisfy standards in the National Construction Code (NCC). I believe it's already in Victoria. It's coming to Tasmania in October.
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So that is a big bearing on how we design these buildings. And remember, it doesn't matter if it’s transportable or not, it's still a house.
Amelia: Yes.
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Frank: Don’t take your eye off that.
Amelia: So there's no difference other than the fact that it's made in a factory to be prefabricated.
Frank: To be able to move it to a site.
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Yes. So there's levels of efficiency in doing that and quality control.
Amelia: Do you think that given the way affordability is heading that this might be an option that more people might go down?
Frank: A hundred percent.
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Very much so. But there are limitations with it as, you know, with size, transport size. So I actually think they're a wonderful option.
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The other challenge will be if, okay, just think about it. They're not sitting on a concrete slab, are they?
Amelia: No.
Frank: They're sitting on, could be steel or timber.
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So that has to be considered because it's elevated out of the ground, depending on your block. You know, how's it going to work? So say if it's a dead flat block, it's sitting up out of the ground. The floor might be four or 500 mil above the ground.
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So as you come to the house, you've got to either go upstairs.
Amelia: Yes.
Frank: To enter it.
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Now, we just mentioned the liveable housing requirements for the construction code. Well, you may have to put a ramp in.
Amelia: Yeah, I think those, October they're coming in.
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Frank: Did Bianca talk about that?
Amelia: She did. She did, yes.
Frank: So that now has to be brought in.
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Now, if you've got a concrete slab, like a normal house on a concrete slab, where you can do it to relatively flat site, the house is barely going to be, you know, two to 300 mil above the ground, but you can play with the earth and ramp it up to the front door, to the main access. With a prefabricated building, it's always going to be sitting up out of the air.
Amelia: Yeah, okay.
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Frank: Bit of a challenge.
Amelia: But it sounds like there's a few workarounds.
Frank: Oh, there'll be workarounds, but I think everyone should look at these and consider, how can I use this?
Amelia: Oh, I think definitely.
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Frank: It's bang for your buck, I reckon. They're great. And do your research on the companies available out there to do this work.
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There's some guys, that's all they do. Do a great job of it. Yeah, and the styles, the rooves, I looked at one, I went to Agfest, and they had some there and had cathedral ceilings in it.
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Amelia: Oh, that's cool.
Frank: Yeah, not a flat ceiling, it's cathedral.
Amelia: Wow.
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Frank: I saw a picture of another one from the same company where it was raked with high-level windows. So you can do some pretty cool stuff with it.
Amelia: So what's the difference of doing, say, something like this, and then, say, doing something like a prefabricated shed house? Because they're both prefabricated, but they both have, I mean, they're both slightly different and they have different limitations.
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Frank: Okay, it's really interesting. You make a very good point there, because we spoke, we had Rebecca in and we talked about prefabricated.
Amelia: Yes.
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Frank: That type of prefabricated, that's all the steel is ready to be bolted together. Yes. Whereas this is, you've got a piece of a building that's all been put together.
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Amelia: Yes.
Frank: Sitting on something that a crane can put in place. You can have three, four, five pieces, slide it all together, screw and bolt it together, put the cladding and everything, bang, done, building.
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Plasters in, floors in, everything's done. Whereas the other one, you're still, it's like a kit.
Amelia: Yes, it's like Ikea.
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Frank: Yeah, it's like Ikea. And that's no different to where the term kit homes.
Amelia: Yes.
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Frank: They are literally piles of timber that have to be put back together. I've seen some of them, they call it a kit, and I'm going, yeah, seriously.
Amelia: It's a pretty complicated kit.
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Frank: Well, it is, we're considering a builder, you know, grabs a pile of timber, makes stud frames and makes everything up, and they're fast at it, but you've just got a so-called kit, and you've got to figure this out. And it's like, there's not a lot of difference. And a builder, a good chippy, smash out frames real fast.
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So, yeah, I suppose it's an interesting, I never thought of it that way, yeah.
Amelia: Yeah, something different.
Frank: Yeah, so one you have to assemble like Ikea, the other one turns up in pieces and they bolt it together.
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Amelia: So, essentially, in my head, it actually sounds easier than doing a shed house.
Frank: Of course.
Amelia: Because there's probably less pieces.
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Frank: Oh, there's definitely less pieces, isn't there?
Amelia: Yeah,
Frank: yeah, you've got bits of steel and everything lying around. Okay, put all this together, happy days. It's like Lego.
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Amelia: Lego house.
Frank: It's like a Lego house.
Amelia: That'll be the next thing.
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Frank: Oh, there's actually someone doing something like that. Yeah, anyway, there's always someone coming up with a new idea on how to build houses, like these 3D printed homes.
Amelia: I was actually about to mention that.
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Amelia: I wonder if that's going to be a route that's gonna go down in terms of prefabricated homes.
Frank: I don't know, I've yet to be convinced, because I can't figure it out. All the ones that I've seen haven't been for homes.
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They were like on the block, they had it, and it was for a cabana and a pool house, where it doesn't need insulation, it doesn't need that, it was just the walls squirted out of a nozzle. And yeah, okay, cool. For a house, it has to be insulated.
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So to print a building out, fine, but then you still gotta insulate it, you still gotta coat it.
Amelia: Yeah.
Frank: So I'm just like, where are the advantages of this? You still gotta put a roof on it, you still gotta put your plumbing in, you gotta still run electrical cables.
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Yeah. So I'm not quite figuring out why everyone's getting excited over this stuff.
Amelia: There's a lot of human components that are sort of still tied up in that process.
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Well, when you think about it, all the different trades you have to have in a home. So if you've got, let's forget it, you're trying to eliminate the chippy, right? You've just got electrical and... Yeah, you've got an electrician that's running his cables everywhere, putting your PowerPoints and lights, getting to all your data outlets, and connections to your ovens and fixed items.
Amelia: Internet.
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Frank: Yep, and you still gotta put your internet in and all that type of stuff. And then you've got the mechanical guy. So one is putting in, in Tassie, we love reverse cycle air conditioning, which we call heat pumps because we always have them on heating, not cooling.
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You might want to install a wood heater. That's pretty popular too. You could have floor heating, you could have radiant heating.
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Yeah, all sorts of weird and wonderful heating. So you've got someone to do that. So with 3D printing, you still have a roof on it.
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You can't print a roof.
Amelia: No.
Frank: Unless someone's gonna prove me wrong here.
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But how do you make it watertight?
Amelia: Yeah, that's a good point.
Frank: And a durable watertight.
Amelia: Yeah.
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Frank: I certainly hope someone thinks of it. I remember we worked on some precast concrete housing. So the walls were precast, the roof was fabricated on the ground, all sheeted, everything, lift up the crane, put it on top, and then fit it all out inside.
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Amelia: Cool.
Frank: It was no faster other than getting the structure up, but it's like doing a shouse. You put all the pieces together, you've got the shell there, but you still had to go put the frame in to put all the electrical, your water, just all those items you need to make a house function well and be very comfortable living.
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So what's this space on the 3D stuff?
Amelia: Yeah, it's an interesting concept.
Frank: Well, whether they can pull it off, we'll see. But there'll be other places in the world where they don't need what we need and a 3D printing will be awesome.
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Frank: Yeah, for other things. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Definitely.
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Frank: So we got a bit off topic there, didn't we?
Amelia: We did.
Frank: Well done.
Amelia: Oh, well, it's Friday.
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Frank: It's Friday, that's it. So what else about modular homes?
Amelia: Are they sustainable? I think that's an interesting topic.
Frank: I'll throw it back to you.
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Define sustainable.
Amelia: Well, that's a very controversial topic. And I know half the people here in the office would all have probably something different to say because there just seems to be so many different levels of sustainability and how you actually class it as sustainable.
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And yeah, it's a whole beast.
Frank: It's been so greenwashed. It's been disgraceful.
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It's just a bullshit word now. Because being fair dinkum with sustainability, they've just made it just marketing rubbish. They're not looking at it the right way.
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Maybe we need to not use that term and just use terms like recyclable.
Frank: Well, that's all disappeared as well.
Amelia: True, true.
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Frank: Hey, you were asking me before about, can we use recycling material in housing? Yeah. And I said, it could be quite difficult because a builder needs everything supplied and all of the right size and everything fits. That's the speed of the build.
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You order your timber frame, the timber is the right size. As well as the windows fit that building. They've ordered that.
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You can't recycle plaster real well.
Amelia: No.
Frank: But I'm sure, I'd love to see it recycled, but how we might do it, I don't know.
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What about prefabricating it with recycled material? Same thing though.
Amelia: Yeah, that's an interesting one.
Frank: But it all comes down to the labour.
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The cost of labour in Australia is huge. It keeps going up because we have a very high standard of living.
Amelia: Yes.
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Frank: And so everyone's got to be paid, fair and reasonable compared to everyone else. So now the builders are being paid at what I consider is pretty reasonable rate. The plumbers, sparkies, all the trades get paid well.
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Amelia: Yeah.
Frank: Some of these trades get paid more than someone with a uni graduate.
Amelia: Yeah, I believe that.
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Frank: Yeah. And that's fine. It's how it's turned out.
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Yeah, is it sustainable? Possibly, if we could find a way to reuse second-hand prefabricated buildings, possibly.
Amelia: That would be interesting, yeah.
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Frank: But would you want to go live in a second-hand building that's cold and horrible?
Amelia: You make it sound so awesome. Cold and horrible.
Frank: Well, isn't it some of the houses that you buy that are 70, 100 years old around Launceston, cold and horrible?
Amelia: True, you're 100% correct.
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Frank: My first house was 100 years old and it was cold and horrible.
Amelia: Yeah, right.
Frank: But it was a beautiful house.
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In that sense, it was horrible. Especially when we had our first child there. It was hopeless trying to heat this thing.
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It was just pouring money down the drain. So yeah, you can buy a house that's cold and horrible. One thing about prefabricated buildings is they have to be well planned.
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Amelia: Yes.
Frank: So the designs are done. Just think of it.
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If you got your house and you cut it up into pieces and if you could move it. Yes. What do you think's going to happen? It's going to fall to bits.
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Amelia: Oh, well, yeah, of course.
Frank: Sorry, I'm trying to say the obvious. It's going to fall to bits.
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So why doesn't a prefabricated building that's pulled apart doesn't fall to bits?
Amelia: Well, you put it back together.
Frank: Oh, yeah. But every time you see, you can put a building, part of a building on a truck.
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Go up on it.
Amelia: Transport it.
Frank: Transport it.
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Drop it, pick it. Well, not drop it. Pick it up, move it, move it.
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You know, all this type of stuff. And it still holds together.
Amelia: Yeah.
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Frank: But you can't do it with your home.
Amelia: No.
Frank: Other than it's brick.
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Amelia: No.
Frank: Forget about that. Why doesn't it fall to bits?
Amelia: Because it's reinforced.
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Frank: Well, yeah. You know, they are designed to be in pieces. So how they build them, and then the design as well, is we put bracing and other elements to hold the whole thing together.
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So when you put it together, pull out a couple of bits of bracing. Happy days.
Amelia: Yep.
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Frank: You pay a bit more for that, in a way. Even though I've moved a few houses in my time.
Amelia: Have you really?
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Frank: Oh, yeah. We've designed quite a few where we've just grabbed an old, you know, could be 70, 80 year old weatherboard home, chucked the chainsaw through the thing, put some beams in, drop the roof, pick it up, put it in the back of the truck, take it to the other site, pick it up from the crane, and put it on site, grab the other bits, squeeze it together, and put the roof back up again.
Amelia: Oh, wow. That's a good effort.
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Frank: Yeah. It's hilarious. You know, in some cases we had to drop power lines and things like that.
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I've done quite a few. Yeah. There's a whole technique to it.
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The classic is up in Queensland where they re-transport old Queensland homes.
Amelia: Yeah, that's really cool.
Frank: Yeah, but it's the same here because that older era building is perfect for moving.
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Yes. Because of the way they're built with the hardwood, the roofs are actually pitched, not trussed, so you can actually drop what we call drop the roof. So you actually fold it down onto the house structure as such.
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It's more complicated than that. Strap it all down, pick it up, and there again, they brace the whole thing up. The only problem when you've got the old larthen and plaster.
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Amelia: Oh, that would crumble.
Frank: She cracks, but be aware, you're moving the house and then you're going to have to patch it all up. Surprisingly, the windows handle it pretty well.
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But here again, what do you think we have to do if you move a house from one side to another? You're going to have to upgrade.
Amelia: Yeah, yeah.
Frank: But here's what I love about it.
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These old homes have great character to them.
Amelia: They do.
Frank: So just by kind of like your own prefabricated, because you're picking it up from somewhere else and take it to another suburb, and then you reinstall it onto site, you know, place it on the foundations, put it together, pop the roof up, and she looks like a 70 year old house.
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Amelia: Yeah, they do not a bad job these days.
Frank: It's very good. Yeah.
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So that's quite an extreme prefab, not quite prefab.
Amelia: Yeah, yeah. Actually, there's an interesting one where they've taken like an old weatherboard home and they've put it as a second story.
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Frank: As in they picked it up and put it on something else as a second story?
Amelia: No, so it looks like they're going to build something new underneath.
Frank: Yes.
Amelia: And then they're sticking the old house on the top, I think.
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Frank: It's quite doable.
Amelia: Yeah, in this particular location that I'm thinking, you might know the one I'm thinking of, no?
Frank: We're looking weird at each other, by the way. Yeah.
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Sorry, my memory's... Anyway,
Amelia: It doesn't matter. But yeah, I thought that was an interesting approach. I've never seen it before.
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Frank: The thing is, you've got to build it real fast or you've got to hang it up in the air, or you've got to move it to one side, build it, and then bring the cranes back and put it on top. Yeah, I think all they've done is they've done some sort of framing below that hadn't actually, I didn't see any sort of house underneath yet that had been built.
Frank: So basically pick it up, move it to one side.
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It's resting on some temporary foundations. Then you build this new building. Happy days, it's all secure.
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Brace it up a bit more, grab the old house, lift it up, put it on top.
Amelia: Yeah, exactly.
Frank: I did some of that out at King's Meadows.
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Amelia: Oh, did you?
Frank: Yeah, it was on a sloping block, and what we chose to do is put all the foundations, it blocked it all up, it's a concrete block, put new bearers, and we transported the house in and went over the top so that they had a garage and stuff underneath the house.
Amelia: Yeah, right.
Frank: Yeah, worked fine.
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Amelia: So what are some take home points for anyone wanting to look into getting a prefabricated home?
Frank: Well, if you are looking to do a granny flat or anything under 60 square metres and put it in the backyard, great way to earn a bit of extra income, to rent it out. Definitely. Look at a prefab building that can be craned in on site.
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Amelia: Yeah, makes sense.
Frank: Even if you're looking at a holiday shack.
Amelia: Yeah, I never thought of that.
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That could be a really, really good option.
Frank: Designed appropriately, I think it's a great option. I even believe for your house for yourself, it can be a really good option.
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Amelia: Yeah.
Frank: Depending on the size of house that you want, it could be really good. So do your research on the different providers, and I'm talking about wherever you are around Australia, you know, go online.
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There's plenty of guys that will build this stuff. And you'd be surprised what you can actually get built. And if you're a good quality, reputable business, there'll be plenty of testimonies, plenty of other buildings.
(23:28 - 23:37)
Go look at all, go check out previous builds and talk to the customers about the experience. But I'd say that if you're talking to any builder, I would do that. Yes.
(23:37 - 23:51)
You know, go talk to previous customers. And then you may find the house of your dreams, or the granny flat of your dreams, or the studio, or for some of us guys, a doghouse out the back of a man cave. Ooh, it would make a good man cave.
(23:53 - 23:59)
Amelia: Of course, your head goes there.
Frank: Why not? mates around, man cave, it's not a bad way of doing it.
Amelia: True, true, could be.
(23:59 - 24:04)
Connect it to your shed. Oh, put it inside the shed.
Amelia: Oh, now you're talking.
(24:05 - 24:15)
Doesn't matter, but you see the possibilities?
Amelia: Yeah, lots of options.
Frank: Then you go to the extreme of prefabricate. I've got to share this with the University of Tasmania, Launceston campus, the accommodation block.
(24:16 - 24:26)
The foundations are all concrete, built above the flood level. And then all the accommodation units were prefabricated in a shed down Invermay. They had an assembly line.
(24:27 - 24:32)
And they were smacking these things out. The whole thing's clipped together like Lego.
Amelia: That's awesome.
(24:33 - 24:36)
Frank: Oh yeah, it's brilliant.
Amelia: Very cool. So you can do it on quite a large scale.
(24:36 - 24:41)
Frank: Huge scale. I believe in Europe and Japan, it's not unusual to do that. We're way behind.
(24:42 - 24:49)
Amelia: Yeah, it makes sense.
Frank: That we're way behind?
Amelia: Yeah, that we're way behind and that they would do it.
Frank: But also you do it in big cities where they can modulise a lot of stuff.
(24:50 - 24:59)
In Europe, the prefabrication skills are amazing. And probably in America too, you know. But prefabricating can be a real game changer.
(25:00 - 25:05)
Amelia: All right, well, we might wrap it up there, folks. Thanks for listening to the Building Design, Prime Time Podcast.
Frank: Catch ya’s later.
(25:14 - 25:18)
OUTRO
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