The concepts in the article sound foreign to me - they are, since I live in the EU. In Central European countries, most houses are built to last 80-150+ years. People like to use bricks, aerated concrete or specially treated wood that will last for a very long time. There are other systems too, like walls filled with small clay pellets mixed with concrete. Houses built in such a way are quite expensive, usually €300k or more for a typical family home where I live. That leaves some room for prefab (Fertigteilhaus) to be cheaper, contrary to what OP wrote.<p>There are small model cities you can visit where several dozen prefabbers exhibit their current model homes, and if you stick to their plan, you will usually pay less than building on your own. Those are often built on wood frames, but are still quite sturdy and supposed to last at least 100 years. Others are built with bricks or aerated concrete just like individually built homes. Savings are probably achieved by bulk orders, prefab, and a well coordinated team who has built the exact same house ten times already.
Great essay. This is a much more sophisticated analysis of construction efficiency than you typically find; most of them basically imply that construction is inefficient because contractors are dumb.<p>One minor comment: balloon framing is not a synonym for light wood framing, it's a (mostly archaic) version of it. Balloon framing features long exterior wall studs that extend up multiple stories, as opposed to modern "platform framing", in which the studs stop at each floor.
I recently read Gates’ book <i>How To Avoid a Climate Disaster</i> which left me with the impression that the overriding factor in building costs is the energy required (and CO2 produced) for construction, heating, and cooling.<p>Unfortunately I didn’t see any mention of energy or carbon in this post.<p>Seems like the biggest breakthrough would be a pre-construction estimate of energy costs over, say, 30 years. Similar to the Energy Star sticker on appliances sold in the US which tell you the cost to run a given appliance with typical usage compared to the range for other models.<p>This would allow you justify spending more upfront for better insulation, HVAC, air sealing, etc. and recoup that over time. At scale this would allow our civilization to be more energy efficient and reduce the need to build more power plants.<p>This suggestion stood out:
”...move to resistance heating and thermoelectric cooling“<p>Unless I’m missing something, this would be a step backward. Modern heat pumps are 3-4x more efficient than resistance heating, since they aren’t creating heat but moving it from one place to another. For cooling, if the author is referring to Peltier type thermoelectric cooling, the same applies: heat pumps are many times more efficient.<p>The building revolution we need is one that cheaply produces extremely energy-efficient homes, IMO.
I don't understand the worldwide disdain for the concrete paneled construction the article briefly mentions: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khrushchyovka" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khrushchyovka</a><p>Most of the "badness" people associate with these, IMO, are due more to the fact that 1. in recent times they are inhabited by less well-off people 2. they usually need to be washed or painted, probably because they are inhabited by less well-off people who don't make it a priority 3. to the extent they are seen as crime/drug dens, that's because they have a stigma/are in disrepair so only poor people want to live there. It is possible for them to be nice, even moreso if they are new (and not poorly maintained, 60 years old). See <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zelenograd" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zelenograd</a> as an example of a city with this style (go to Google images for more pictures). The whole city is like a park.<p>From an urban planning perspective, they have a lot of benefits. People can actually end up with a lot of green space in between buildings. They make it easy to set up bus or train-based public transportation, with walking a viable way to navigate toward a hub. The density creates obvious economies of scale in other areas. From a cost perspective, they are inexpensive to construct because of the economies of scale. The article mentions them as one of the few building styles amenable to mass-production/assembly off-site.<p>Probably my main gripe is that they are not often 'mixed use' and could perhaps do with shops on the first floor, though this is partially an artifact of the economic regime under which they were mostly built.
If I'm reading this correctly, optimizing construction costs is a very difficult problem because a huge part of the costs is transportation, not the material itself or assembly thereof.<p>Transportation is by nature highly distributed among a wide range of actors, unlike industries like semiconductors where the costs are centralized in a factory where a single agent can optimize everything.<p>In other words, the majority of improving construction costs is actually a political problem, and engineers are unsuited to optimizing it. Transportation costs can be reduced, but only at a collective, national or state-wide level. Moving vast quantities of lumber, insulation, wiring, drywall, roofing and other housing materials across state lines is much more a political coordination problem than an engineering one. Sure, a team of engineers could design a more efficient, cost effective transportation method - but how would consensus ever be achieved to actually build the thing and align all the disparate interest groups to rally around it rather than opposing it?<p>My hot take is that in the current era (at least in the United States) "Smart" people have neglected political concerns in favor of technical concerns. But the risks aren't technical, they are political, so this is inefficient. The problem will not be solved simply by engineering, no matter how clever the engineers are, if they are limited to purely technical approaches.
Nuclear batteries removing the need for electrical wiring seems very pie in the sky to me but perhaps I'm just ignorant of the practical application of it.<p>Concrete seems far more common in residential construction outside of the U.S. I wonder if technologies such as aircrete (concrete with uniform foam produced air bubbles).<p>Also well There's Your Problem had an interesting article about the 5-1 construction that is used for a lot of new apartment buildings in the U.S. <a href="https://wtyppod.podbean.com/e/episode-46-five-over-ones/" rel="nofollow">https://wtyppod.podbean.com/e/episode-46-five-over-ones/</a>
I was onsite at a modular manufacturer today and I can tell you a lot of what is said here is just wrong. The cost estimate is not quality adjusted. If you look at cost per square foot and don't take into account the quality of work provided then you haven't calculated anything worth knowing. Also the article doesn't price out the value of speed. Modular can take half the time to move-in as stick build.<p>I agree there are plenty of points for improving efficiency. For example the builder I visited was not vertically integrated at all. They bought manufacturing time on a modular line for their box plans, worked with external designers and all kinds of subs they can't guarantee for onsite work. But having seen it up close I can tell you there is far more opportunity for process improvement on a assembly line (even if each build is custom) than there is in the field.<p>If you look to Japan, Toyota is getting into modular with steel framing that is way ahead of anything in the states. I look forward to that being available here.
The article does not even mention planning and permitting until the last sentence, but in my city that is virtually all of the cost. Fancy cabinet faces have <i>nothing</i> to do with the fact that a house costs $2 million.<p>When I look at what techies are trying to do I just shake my head. Factory_OS built an apartment building on Union Street in Oakland “in ten days “ but planning, permitting, site prep, finishing, and inspections added up to seven years. Believing that off-site fabrication helps this problem is right up there with believing that hyperloops can solve traffic jams, in the universe of nonsensical American beliefs.
I think we already have the future of housing: mobile homes.<p>With remote work gaining acceptance, location will lose its premium for many. Socially we have pared down our living arrangements to small nuclear families if that, which can fit in a mobile home.<p>Mobile homes offer better protection against deterioration of a real estate or job market, and also better opportunities for moving to a growing market. Mobility is in the name.<p>Trailer parks have a bad rap because of classism. But the less well-off are often trailblazers because they need to make things work with less.<p>The mobile homes of tomorrow need not be run-down single-wides. They could be more luxurious and larger if broken apart into components.<p>I think this is mostly a marketing and image problem which is only starting to change, mostly because of cost-of-land pressures.
I sent this article to my builder brother and here is his very frank feedback:<p>———
interesting. Certainly true that building materials are bulky and very costly to ship. Seems to be a reality that is hard to change. he has a poor understanding of framing and got terminology wrong: "balloon" was a bridge between post-and-beam and modern platform framing and is no longer used. Although commercial steel buildings are basically balloon. His constant reference to "balloon" framing is a joke to a professional. The fact is that all the processing of building can be and often are quite efficient. If a person wants to keep everything simple it can be much less expensive than it often is. I guess he alludes to that with mentioning "consumer tastes". for sure custom homes are expensive for a reason.<p>it's hard for someone with absolutely zero experience to judge home building, obviously. For example he thinks 4x8 sheathing panels don't have to be cut, when of course they do, just like boards do.
If anybody's interested in learning the nitty gritty details of the process of homebuilding, especially with an eye towards what drives costs, I highly recommend <i>Contracting Your Home</i>[1]. If you're a neophyte like me, it's pretty illuminating how much you don't know. All the steps involved, what are the tradeoffs between the major approaches, issues that you might not even consider, and the like.<p>[1]<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Complete-Guide-Contracting-Step-Step-dp-1440346011/dp/1440346011/ref=dp_ob_title_bk" rel="nofollow">https://www.amazon.com/Complete-Guide-Contracting-Step-Step-...</a>
If fancy manufacturing facilities with expensive equipment don't scale well because construction materials are manufactured in a lot of small factories rather than a few big ones, it seems like an obvious way to improve construction is to reduce the cost of that fancy equipment so that it's available even to small operations.<p>We see this with a lot of smaller-scale tools: 3D printers, CNCs, laser cutters, welders, pick-and-place machines for assembling circuit boards, etc.. are things that have become affordable to casual hobbyists.<p>I could see augmented reality being a big deal for construction. See exactly where everything is supposed to go as you install it.<p>Maybe eventually a mobile 3D-printing gantry that can be quickly deployed on site will be something that a small local business would own.
@dang The link preview for eth.link domains should be shown with the subdomain and probably without the TLD. So for this case instead of eth.link it should show austinvernon.eth.<p>For reference in case you're unfamiliar, .eth domains are ENS domains (Ethereum Name Service), a decentralized domain system, and are resolved for casual browsing by Cloudflare with the .link TLD for people not running an Ethereum node.
Anyone have any experience with SIPs (structural insulated panels)? The claim is that their use reduces waste and labor, but I'm not aware of any independent analysis to corroborate the claims.
The author has some interesting points, but with a labor price of $104.62 per sq. ft. it seems like there's a huge opportunity to reduce housing prices. That would be $157,000 of the price of a 1500 sq ft home. If factory-built homes could be assembled in a few days, instead of a few months, that would be a big savings.<p>Of course transportation is a big problem. Something like pre-assembled wall sections which can be more or less flat-packed with several other sections could get the transportation costs down. And if they could fit in shipping containers from China (or trucks from Mexico) the price could be even lower.<p>Consumer preference shouldn't be a show-stopper. Changing the color of the paint isn't any more difficult in a factory than it is on-site. Switching the model of window as well (though I can see how each change would eat a bit into the factory efficiency. There are only so many ways to lay-out a house, I seriously doubt each site-built home is such a custom design that it can't be a model number for a pre-fab factory. Regular home builders are already usually going off a small set of plans, not re-engineering home design on every outing.
Some relevant tidbits, apologies for not writing this up in more detail. (Especially since the article was so detailed and well thought out.)<p>Bucky Fuller had the idea to build houses in factories and deliver them by helicopter.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dymaxion_house" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dymaxion_house</a><p>Or build whole cities at once:<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Man_River%27s_City_project" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Man_River%27s_City_project</a><p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arcology" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arcology</a><p>Christopher Alexander thought that we should build our houses ourselves (using foamed concrete):<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Pattern_Language" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Pattern_Language</a><p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aircrete" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aircrete</a>
It was interesting to see architecture and engineering broken out as ~1.5% of the total cost of building a home, and it made me wonder: How much does better residential architecture actually cost?<p>If I were in the market to build a home, and the difference between building something that looks like your average suburban detached versus something modern and striking were, say, an extra 1.5% (doubling the cost of architecture and engineering), I wouldn't even consider skimping on architecture.<p>And yet, most architecturally-interesting homes are most certainly not 1.5% or even 15% more than average-looking homes, being generally restricted to luxury markets. Why is that?
> Transformational cost reduction would have to come from changing what we think a house is. Imagine you had a thin suit that provided heating, cooling, processed your urine and waste, and kept you clean. Then you could have a house without bathrooms, insulation, heating, cooling, plumbing, and have the electrical eliminated with nuclear batteries. No kitchen because robotic takeout is so cheap. The house could cost $20 per square foot (with low-end finishes) and be smaller. A new home would go up in weeks. The technology is in the bodysuit instead of the house. Bodysuits can be mass-produced and shipped long distances. Ripe for cost reduction. The volumetric value of a home would be even lower.<p>This sounds lovely, sign me up.<p>But seriously, I was excited about this article having misinterpreted the title, thinking it would be a critical analysis of the <i>operating</i> efficiency of a house, not the construction efficiency. Amortized over the lifetime of the house, I have to assume the up-front costs pale in comparison to the operating costs of a household. Especially as more work becomes remote-friendly, I would expect new construction to be required less often.<p>How about addressing the massive societal drain of doing dishes and laundry? Has anybody seriously tried to rethink those processes, not just in terms of roboticization, but in terms of house design and layout? How about heating/cooling? I guess what I’m curious about is more how an increase in capital expense could revolutionize operation, not the other way around. And certainly not involving a urine-processing body suit and relying on Uber eats indefinitely.
FTA: "Flexible technologies that work within the current system and simplify processes have had the most success. These technologies allow the high precision and efficiency of factories to make it to the building site. [Example:] Experienced carpenters use chisels to create post and beam members on site. -> 2x4s and nails are mass manufactured and assembled by semi-skilled workers on site."
>Vinyl flooring, vinyl siding, one-piece shower stalls, and laminate countertops are examples of innovations that reduce the cost and increase durability.<p>Vynil is one of the worst thing you could have in your house. And the production of it is horrible for the environment too.<p>Vynil chemical group is not toxic, but the "Polyvinyl chloride" people are referring to when they talk about "Vynil" is. It is extremely toxic because of the chemical additives it has like plasticizers that are breathable and never go away in your body.<p>It is also extremely toxic when burn as it generates dioxins, and flame retardants are added to it, also very toxic.<p>It is also extremely cheap so people use it so much over big surfaces.<p>It is great for plumbing and I would only use it for that use.<p>But don't use it on big surfaces because you and your family are going to breath its additives when it is exposed to sunlight.
It's just bizarre to me that people are focused on building homes more efficiently, when the overwhelming majority of the cost of housing in most areas is the cost of the land, <i>not</i> the actual cost of building the house. How do we know this is true? Well just look at the cost of building a new home in lower cost of living areas. You can still build quite large custom homes for under $300k in much of the country. So it's not the cost of labor, or the cost of raw materials. Sure there's some difference between LCOL areas and HCOL areas, but even generously assuming that it would be a 50% premium you still dont arrive at California level prices.<p>This is yet another conversation about housing that whistles right by the true cause: exclusionary, and racist zoning practices.
Semi-autonomous road convoys and electric trucks are technologies that are in development. That may completely alter the calculus of the article and unlock those economies of scale that are missing at the moment.
> Precast concrete panels are another small success story. Post-WWII, Eastern European countries built apartment buildings using this technology.<p>No. No and no. The precast concrete panel apartment buildings in Eastern Europe are so badly insulated that such a house will ruin any building savings with the heating/cooling costs. That is, if you don't get water infiltrations through the spaces between said concrete panels which are obviously filled with ... something else.<p>I guess you could do it properly, but then it won't be cheap.<p>Source: I live there. They're that bad.
If there was a way to never have electric cables or plumbing in walls, that would speed up construction and reduce the cost.<p>The savings for this don't just show up in the plumbing and electrical categories, but also in framing and finishing, as well as hidden inefficiencies - you have to pre-wire and plumb, and then late come back to finish wiring and plumbing.<p>Also, this article is about how to construct a house in an efficient manner, not how to construct a house that is efficient throughout it's life.
I think the solution to reduce housing costs is simple and three-fold.<p>First: most people can build a house. It's <i>really</i> not difficult. Today's homes are quite complex in terms of their layers of parts, and constantly varying building codes don't help. But if you can swing a hammer and push a saw, you can build a house.<p>Ikea has shown it's not only possible, but profitable, to sell virtually everything that goes in a home to consumers and have them put it together themselves. So why not the rest of the house too? We've done it before: Sears shipped people houses on the railroad along with instructions and (eventually) pre-fab parts. They sold them for 30 years. <a href="https://www.amusingplanet.com/2021/06/sears-mail-order-homes.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.amusingplanet.com/2021/06/sears-mail-order-homes...</a><p>A huge chunk of the cost of a home is the labor. So let the homeowner handle more of it! They can build in stages, offsetting costs and building at their own pace. And if somebody gets tired of doing it themselves, they can always hire a contractor.<p>Second: customers interest in having a unique home is a huge cost. So let's focus on building either the variable parts, or on making a "core home" that can be customized after the fact by customers. Most homes are just boxes. It should be possible for us to construct some basic designs that can then be modified or "spruced up" by the homeowner later. Most of the features that make a home look unique could be turned into add-ons, so that we could focus on efficiency of the bare home, and let customers take on additional cost when and if they choose.<p>Third: most people don't need huge houses! Due to the increasing cost of renting, most renters rent apartments that are absolutely tiny by comparison to the average new home. We can reduce housing costs further by simply making the building smaller, and gaining efficiencies by taking advantage of that smaller size. Want a bigger home? By having simpler designs by default with add-on exteriors, we can make it much easier to add extensions on to houses. Simply unbolt the exterior facade, build on your extension, and bolt the facades back on. This allows us to spend less money on materials and labor, while still allowing the consumer to add to the property over time.
Not related to the post content, but does anyone know how to actually register a .eth domain (eg subdomain under eth.link) ? On the following page it appears the instructions assume that one already has/owns a (sub)domain, and I don’t see anything talking about how to actually register one..<p><a href="https://eth.link/#how-to-access-ethdns" rel="nofollow">https://eth.link/#how-to-access-ethdns</a>
Good article. I wonder what improvements/efficiencies would be possible if consumer tastes could be shifted significantly (e.g. through marketing). I'm not thinking about small things like vinyl finishes, but larger shifts like building structures. Example: Could a company like Apple or Tesla make alternative structures like Quonset huts seem modern and fashionable.
The biggest forthcoming revolution in housing will be self driving EV RVs.<p>Your house takes you to your job, then takes you somewhere else on weekends or evenings. Ultracheap solar, which is still in it's main phase of cost improvement, same with batteries and drivetrain, will make EV RVs cheaper from TCO. And the guts of the RV will be efficiently centrally manufactured.
I wonder if earthbag technology could help to reduce building costs. Labor seems to be a big factor, but perhaps this could be reduced with the right equipment. Rural homes already need a big hole for septic; earthbags would then just make use of the dirt that's already sitting there, if not for the whole house then perhaps for some part of it.
About cost savings, point 1: If you’re putting insulation on the outside, why not <i>also</i> put it between the studs (you can blow it in pretty dang quickly), and perhaps even another 2” of foam insulation inside the studs? You’ll turn an R-20 into an R-40+ wall, reducing the long term cost of the house.<p>i.e. high efficiency houses.
* drywall taping and mudding makes plumbing and electrical inaccessible.<p>* moulding could be built into drywall panels or eliminated in favor of reinforced panels.<p>* houses are unmonitored, I should be able to see how much electricity or water every fixture uses. How hot, how humid is my house or the attic.
I was thinking about how many of the trades would still exist in 20 years due to automation. I find it hard to think of houses built with robotic electricians or bricklayers reducing the costs. Maybe if prefab wall panels came with wiring and wall sockets built in?
i think balloon framing fell out of favor because<p>1. the length of timber required for two story structures is not efficient; old growth stuff has been felled and straight, seasoned, 24 and 36 foot lengths of wood are tough to find<p>2. and fire; platform framing has far better fire control
The tiny house movement is interesting, but in the end, what matters is health and durability when faced with heat, cold, water, dust, mold.<p>I would certainly like to buy a quality tiny house or cheaper housing for residency if I could be taught how to maintain it.
I spent the last year watching This Old House videos. What I gather is that wooden houses are easier to remodel and maintain yourself than brick or cement houses (but also cement/brick houses don't require much maintenance.
Ctrl-f "SEER"<p>No results found<p>Since nobody has mentioned it yet, I recommend doing some dedicated research into the efficiency level and measurements of various types of air conditioners, mini split and otherwise. There is a great deal of variation.
I’d love to see someone make insulation displacement crimping work for wiring.<p>Maybe even build it into the wall box rather than the fixture, and just have the fixture plug into to wall box.
Framing is a plausible place to optimize, so how about steel? The factory cuts all the pieces to be assembled on site. It goes up real fast. This is what we want, right?
Can I suggest that smaller homes (700-1200 SF) are the “low hanging fruit” to reduce single family home construction costs?<p>Perhaps incentivize by basing property taxes on home size?
The article here contains absolutely brilliant ideas. I am especially amazed by the idea of a suit for each person that takes care of everything a house does.
The most efficient way to build houses is in bulk by building large buildings with condos/apartments, no one seems to want to hear or accept that though.
Great article.<p>It would be interesting to compare the US to Japan and Japan's tendency to favor new construction (plus the differences in features and styles).
Favelas tin-roof shanties would be cheaper too.<p>In the US, why not distribute value, transportation, and land sufficiently so people can have a better basic standard of living? Right now, I'm looking at 1000 homeless people and tents huddling under a highway, while my drunken idiot neighbors shout and dance with glee feet from them in a gentrifying, mixed-use development pool. The people who have just enough have no shame or consideration because their motto is "F U, I got mine."
> Almost every advancement in construction is small enough for someone to carry<p>> Each advancement fits within a simple construction system.<p>Powerful idea.
This kind of article depress me to the highest point.
I'm not a "consumer" with "expensive taste", nor someone who put a brake on innovation.<p>I want a house built to last, by a skilled professional, with wood, steel, stones, and slates. Less plastics and only locally sourced materials. If I'm going to live there for the next half century, it better be a place I love.<p>Please stop pushing your capitalism and your economy of scale in every corner of the world.