Cost of living9:07How fabulous is it prefabricated?
Terra Page’s new house was the talk of its Toronto neighborhood. That makes sense, since it was delivered in a truck.
“It was like seeing a really great Lego Giant box,” Page told Page Cost of living.
When Page found tree roots growing in the pipes of his 100 -year -old house, Page and his family decided that their best movement would be to demolish the house and build again. It was then that his contractor suggested a “prefabricated” house, one that would be built outside the site and then sent to the lot.
It was sold due to the fact that it would be less a discomfort for its neighbors, and it could be done much faster.
“It is generating a lot of locally buzzing. And I think many people like us had never heard of this before or never thought about that as an option,” Page said.
And the federal government is thinking of similar lines.
Prefabricated houses are one of the options that experts, according to experts, could help improve housing inventory in Canada. During the electoral campaign, Mark Carney and the Liberal Party now elected promised Around $ 25 billion in loans to the prefabricated housing industry.
And Canada needs many new houses. According to a 2022 report by the Housing and Household Corporation of the Canada Mortgage, the country needs 3.5 million additional homes built by 2030 to keep up with the house demand.
Toronto’s architect, Paul Dowsett, who suggested that Page begins from scratch and worked with them in the prefabricated house suggested by the contractor, says that despite the fact that the prepared houses are not a new concept, they could now be the answer.
“We need to build more homes faster and need to build it better,” he said. “Just building more garbage houses is not an answer.”
What are prefabricated houses?
A prefabricated house is a house or pieces of a house that is made in a factory, then put on a large truck and are sent to their desired destination.
Some are built from top to bottom, while others are integrated into separate parts, which are then sent to the location where they can be assembled.
In the company of Rick Weste, Triple H Housing in Lethbridge, Alta., They can work from 30 to 40 different houses at the same time from their factory. Weste says they finish three or four houses a day.
Excluding planning time, he says they can build a house in about eight days.
“Then, as the bases are being made, the basement is being done, we are building the house in Lethbridge,” Weste said. “Then the house is sent [and] Goes directly to the base. “
And these are not just single -level mobile houses. Weste works in houses that have up to 3,000 square feet. And they are not all the same house. Customers can work with the company and choose between design options that fit their needs.
While most Weste customers live in the rural area of Canada, where it is more difficult and expensive to attract traditional construction teams, it has also placed more than 300 homes in cities such as Saskatoon. He says that the whole process takes half of the time of a conventional house of “Palos Construction”, which is what they call building on the site.
And although he says that these houses can produce in mass, it is a bit more expensive. They save some in bulk purchase materials, but there are other costs.
“We were also able to send a house and make sure that it does not break or fall apart. Therefore, we really design them structurally to be able to travel,” said Weste, noting that some can move up to 1,000 kilometers. “And then there is the real cost of shipping.”
Ontario’s housing crisis has been a continuous problem for years, and some experts say that modular housing could play a crucial role to address the problem. The prefabricated buildings are built in factories and are assembled on the site. Ali Chiass of CBC has more.
Dowsett, Toronto’s architect, designs prefabricated and traditionally built houses, but there is no doubt what he prefers: he is a prefabricated fan.
“It’s just an intelligent way to build,” he said, adding that prefabricated houses can be much better because construction equipment that works in a factory does not have to deal with the elements.
“You can imagine the quality in a climate controlled factory compared to the quality that you will be late on Friday afternoon on a cold and rainy day in March on a three -story staircase on the ground,” Dowsett said.
Obstacles to change
Dowsett says there is a setback from the construction industry.
“The stereotypical image of the construction industry is Mike Holmes standing there with crossed arms, being severe for something and is not really open to change,” he said, pointing out that it is partly because the status quo is shown to work.
Innovation means that there is a risk that it can go wrong, and since there is already so much responsibility in construction, it says that many people doubt in changing.
“I am not suggesting that we be ridiculously reckless and … we innovate for the sake of innovation,” Dowsett said. “But I think we must seem critically, as I have done in prefab and say: ‘Yes, that does all the things we traditionally do through the structure built with sticks, it simply does better.'”
Then there is the support of the federal government. While Carney made campaign promises, the industry is still waiting to see how follow -up is seen.
Mike Moffatt, economist and housing expert at Western University, says that money could help companies invest in the necessary infrastructure to build these factories and overcome them in the market.
“So, if we can expand this industry, we can reduce those costs, but we can also produce faster,” he said.
Creating ‘an ecosystem’ of builders
Steven Beites, Professor of Architecture at Laurentian University in Sudbury, Ontario, hopes that they are not only large companies such as Triple M Housing who see the charm of prefabricated houses.
Resolving the housing crisis, he says, will also mean training local builders to enter prefabricated construction.
He says that smaller teams could build some parts of a house outside the site, then do the rest of the work in the lot. While production may not happen as fast as it would in a larger company, he says he could still make a difference.
“It is really having an ecosystem of local builders who are beginning to adopt prefabricated and see the benefits.”
