13 ms·

Vantem builds modular homes out of energy-efficient panels

74 points by cheinyeanlim 4y ago

nabla9 4y ago
>As you might have heard, we’re in the midst of a housing crisis ... That has relatively little to do with building homes. More to do with zoning and nimbyism. You can get a home in area where there are no jobs or the commute distances are too long.
- giantg2 4y ago
  It would be nice if we didn't have such a herd mentality and some companies decided to revitalize some of the old rust belt cities by creating jobs there. There's some tech presence in Pittsburgh. Some of the smaller cities could benefit too though.
  - giantrobot 4y ago
    I don't think the problem is herd mentality. If you open an office in Silicon Valley you've got local talent for all types of positions, proximity to funding, and in general somewhere executives and upper management (likely) want to live. Rust Belt cities don't really offer the same advantages. They might have cheaper rent but that doesn't help if no one wants to relocate to there. No company wants to be on the hook for revitalizing a city.
    - giantg2 4y ago
      That's basically the herd mentality I'm talking about - people wanting to live in the same areas. People don't want to live there because nobody is moving there and making improvements. It's easier to just move where everyone else is moving.
      - danans 4y ago
        > That's basically the herd mentality I'm talking about - people wanting to live in the same areas. Call it what you will, but people generally want to live around other people - preferably people they care about but at least people who are not dangerous to them or impose much social or financial cost on them. > People don't want to live there because nobody is moving there and making improvements. Actually many previously declining places have reached critical mass and people are making improvements and attracting more people. But those places (i.e. Pittsburgh, Cincinnati), are sucking up most of the interest and creating their own gravity, leaving little left for Youngstown and Flint. > It's easier to just move where everyone else is moving. Of course it's easier - it's simple economies of scale. People seek access to physical and social resources. Raw land or emptied cities and towns with crumbling infrastructure don't provide that.
    - bluGill 4y ago
      There are a lot of people who want to live there. Sure more people want to live in the Valley, but there are still a lot of smart people who don't. And also a few people who moved to the Valley who want to get out. Most of this is about family - it is very hard to move to a new city as your family support network is gone. Those who had a bad family life growing up don't care, but those who had a good family life will accept a lot of pain to stick with family. (I live 300 miles from my family, I'm jealous of my siblings who call grandma for an emergency babysitter at the last minute) With remote work there is no reason you can't hire people who want to live in whatever rust belt city, and there are a lot of them. Just giving good salary to people in rust belt areas would go a long way to helping those cities.
      - giantrobot 4y ago
        There are smart people that live in rust belt cities, there's just fewer of them in any given city than in all of the Bay Area. For a company it'll be harder to keep that rust belt city staffed. It's also unattractive for employees to move there since there's fewer tech employers. In the Bay Area someone can walk out of Google and find a job pretty quickly with the same length commute. If someone relocated to Cleveland they can't necessarily do the same thing and face a prospect of relocating again. Remote work is one way rust belt cities can revitalize themselves. There's a lot those cities can do to attract remote workers even if they're not attracting the companies themselves. Their states need to help by harmonizing some employment and tax laws with the states where tech companies are based. No one is moving to Cleveland if a "no working for competition" clause in an employment contract is legal in Ohio. Side note: I don't mean to pick on Cleveland but it's sort of the rust belt poster child.
  - nabla9 4y ago
    It's not mentality, it's basics of urban economics called Economies of agglomeration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economies_of_agglomeration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economies_of_agglomeration Productivity increases in urban centers. Bigger, the better. At some point negative externalizes and bottlenecks that limit growth but if those would be solved, the potential upside could be even greater. For human capital the benefits from labour pooling and matching and knowledge spillovers are enormous.
- themitigating 4y ago
  What? You're first comment is a pointless argument to the statement "As you might have heard, we’re in the midst of a housing crisis" which is simply stating a fact not the reason behind it. You then switch to a sarcastic comment making light of what could be a horrible situation if you can't find a job because of where you live. The Gates Foundation is doing something, who did your comment help?
  - giantg2 4y ago
    "The Gates Foundation is doing something, who did your comment help?" I think they're comment is valid conversation. The Gates Foundation is likely more interested in the company's impact in South America, or in being climate friendly. I don't see anything in article that actually makes the case for why these would help alleviate the housing shortage. Maybe the could, but the info on that isn't in the article.
    - themitigating 4y ago
      I don't see anything in the article that implies either of those motives
      - giantg2 4y ago
        If you have any background on the Gates Foundation it should be easily implied. If not, here's a quote. Also, the article talks about low cost housing in South America. Housing is another topic the gates foundation typically focuses on. "Breakthrough was founded by Bill Gates in 2015 to invest in sustainable energy and emissions-reduction technologies"
        themitigating 4y ago
        That's an unrelated organization founded by bill gates in 2015. The gates foundation was founded in 2000.
        4y ago
- Tade0 4y ago
  Costs of materials follow real estate prices therefore it's always beneficial to seek ways to build homes cheaper. Zoning and nimbyism, while contributing factors, are not the root cause. It's the idea that real estate should be seen as an investment - it gained popularity in China in recent years, causing a lot of unnecessary construction and spilling over to the rest of the world. Fortunately(for us at leat) there are early signs that this scheme is collapsing: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2022-08-03/china-real-estate-market-crisis-protests-may-spur-multi-billion-dollar-rescue https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2022-08-03/china-rea... Funnily enough in my neighbourhood (Eastern EU) there's already a: - Block of so-called "microapartments" - units too small to be legally considered housing. This one was started before the respective law was changed due to an explosion in such projects. - A project which took people's money in 2019 and then... never did anything. It's not even a hole in the ground - it's the previous building still scheduled to be demolished. Apparently the madness also spilled over outside of China.
giantg2 4y ago
Why build factories in the Dakotas? Wouldn't it be better to build them somewhere more accessible to the east coast when shipping something so big and heavy? Also, Vantem's website seems to be having issues. It would have been interesting to see what these houses can look like other than the "modern" gray thing in the picture, as well as get more technical info.
- watchdogtimer 4y ago
  My guess is for the animal confinement sector. EPS panels are widely used in these buildings already.
  - giantg2 4y ago
    That makes sense. But then still, why not have something in say KY or WV? Plenty of chicken houses and stuff along the east coast, and they tend to be temperature sensitive. And there's still the human housing market there too.
    - watchdogtimer 4y ago
      Iowa is #1 by far in the US in laying hens and hogs (23M each). Minnesota is #1 for turkeys (48M). KY and WV aren't anywhere close to these numbers. Judging by the photos, my guess is these buildings wouldn't appeal to homeowners. The architectural style is too different.
      - giantg2 4y ago
        I thought there are quite a few in NC, VA, and others in the area.
- rhacker 4y ago
  shipping them to the west or east coast made easier
- adamrezich 4y ago
  I-90 is a pretty great way to access both coasts from SD
kwhitefoot 4y ago
The technology required to build energy efficient housing has been available for many decades at least. What is missing is the political will to require energy efficiency.
- bluGill 4y ago
  Longer than that. It was already becoming the in thing in the 1970s. Sure there have been advances since then, but "super insulated" houses built in 1978 would still do well against todays code. (they wouldn't meet them, but they wouldn't be much worse)
lbriner 4y ago
This sounds like trying to make a big deal out of something that Europe has been doing for years. Sure, these are "cement like" instead of wooden but otherwise nothing that interesting here. It is common to overskin these pre-made houses with render or bricks if needed for more protection but most wooden framed houses don't get blown down by high winds in Europe, mostly roofs getting blown off from buildings where they weren't tied down properly.
- giantg2 4y ago
  Yeah, I'm interested in what "cement like" actually means. It's possible it might not support venere or siding depending on its properties. Hard to say though since their site is down, so I can't get more info.
  - peteradio 4y ago
    I'd bet they have a layer of plastic to screw into.
  - jqpabc123 4y ago
    Based on their construction video, it appears to be styrofoam with a layer of stucco. The problem I have with the video is the fact that they're installing these panels on short, thin little stub walls made of concrete. These have almost zero insulation factor. They basically have a large thermal gap under each wall.
    - kolanos 4y ago
      I don't know how similar this is to Insulating Concrete Forms (ICFs), but I've owned a house constructed that way and it had considerably better insulation than any stick built I've owned.
      - giantg2 4y ago
        It seems this is the inverse of ICF. ICF has the insulation on both sides of the reinforced concrete. This has a thin layer of fiber reinforced concrete on each side of a core of insulation.
skc 4y ago
Sadly, I get a CPanel error page visiting the website of the profiled company. I'm mulling over building a little office detached from my house so this stuff is super interesting to me.
rich_sasha 4y ago
Interesting. I'd be all up for a low-cost, IKEA style house (in my locale the cost of the building is a small fraction of total cost of property in a city anyway). If nothing else, construction work is such a gamble, the variance of outcome of quality is enormous. The thing that hampers it, as far as I know, is generally quality constraints. Pre-fab houses just tend to be low quality. This is in part self-selecting, there is a stigma to a "pre-fab" or "portable" home, but in part also that somehow building prefab houses to a good standard is hard. I don't just mean colour and feel, but just basics like "not leaking". The staple of Eastern European bleak suburbs, the high-rise apartment buildings, were all built out of prefab components. These were built in central locations ("home factories"), transported and only assembled on site. These were certainly not created equal, and customer satisfaction wasn't high on the requirements list, but they generally suffered from this kind of problems (leaks, poor quality plumbing / gas connections etc.). I wonder how this company would tackle these problems.
- dahfizz 4y ago
  The issue is that pre-fab housing is fundamentally about low cost. There's nothing preventing a master craftsman from building the perfect pre-fab, but it will be so expensive that anyone who could afford it would rather buy a "real home".
  - cjrp 4y ago
    There's other advantages to pre-fab though. Known costs (building a house from scratch can cost 2x or 3x the original estimate) Assembly time (could be the difference between living on-site in a caravan for 1 month vs. 2-3 years).
    - bluGill 4y ago
      When a builder makes a spec house they will estimate the costs to within a very small error every time. When someone hires the same builder to make the same house the price often will be 2x or more of the estimate, but that is because it isn't the same house. It starts with the same plan, but instead of putting the $10 lights in they put in the $300 ceiling fan. Instead of putting in the cheap toilet they put in the upgraded one. They put in the more expensive doors and trim. they choose the more expensive counter tops. they get the more expensive stove. And on and on with many little upgrades, each alone isn't very much money, but the end total is doubling the cost. If you are willing to stick with the same cheap choices the builder would choose you can build a house for the estimate. It is safe to bet money that you wouldn't.
jokoon 4y ago
I'm curious about the durability of such homes. Moisture, heat, sun, insects, and humans will deteriorate anything in 10 years.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
pcdoodle 4y ago
Gates Box will rule the market and absorb or destroy other Boxen.
- bryanrasmussen 4y ago
  Well first off the strategy will be to embrace the LEGO like assembly method but to extend it with a few other useful connectors that people will find really useful, and in a decade should be able to extinguish the old fashioned Boxen.
jtdev 4y ago
kvetching 4y ago
I can recall when architecture made to last was something to be proud of. Nightmare waiting to happen if you live in a Tornado, Earthquake, Hurricane etc zone
- traverseda 4y ago
  You don't think cement and foam insulation will last long enough, or be sturdy enough?
- nemo44x 4y ago
  We haven’t built residential structures for longevity since WW2. Nearly every home built after 1945 is garbage compared to pre-war homes that have been taken care of. The irony is that in 100 years you’re more likely to come across a home built in 1920 than in 1980. And there’s a few reasons why. Old homes were overbuilt. The engineering wasn’t good enough to really know what they could get away with. Old homes are built with old growth wood. This can’t be had today. This wood is incredible and is naturally rot resistant. Taken care of it will last many hundreds of years. Plastics. They really came into their own during WW2 and found their way into construction because they work for awhile and are dirt cheap. So we have cheap windows, cheap siding, flooring, etc. Gone are the days where great materials were necessary and abundant so adding a bit more craftsmanship was marginal. Buy a pre-war home and invest in it. Keep the original windows and restore them.
  - bluGill 4y ago
    Survivership basis. There were a lot of bad houses made before WWII, but they have mostly been torn down. The better quality houses are still around. That and most people don't have a clue what makes a good house, and look at the wrong thing. You see a large post and don't notice the hidden beams that are not strong enough. Modern houses are built to stand up to much strong wind forces than the houses of old, but all that quality is inside the walls where you can't see any difference. In many cases they difference is something you wouldn't even notice if you could compare the inside of the two walls side by side.
    - 4y ago
agomez314 4y ago
If we are so technologically advanced, why does it cost so much to build a home on-site?
- bluGill 4y ago
  It doesn't cost that much. The land costs a lot, and permits can cost a lot. The labor isn't that much, and materials are cheaper than ever (though most houses in the past were built with free labor with material prepared on site and so you don't realize how much it costs as nobody was getting paid)
  - TrueSlacker0 4y ago
    The labor is low because it's minimum wage based for hard work (where I am at in Texas, it's basically all foreign labor, legal and not). Paid a respectable wage, this labor would be expensive. But it's exploited.
- turtlebits 4y ago
  Building a stick frame house on site is the cheapest out of all the methods. The expensive parts are the finishes and appliances. Also, houses could easily be designed in a simpler fashion (a rectangle without any modulation, ductless HVAC, etc.) for an inexpensive build.
cabirum 4y ago
I'd rather look into innovative formwork construction and cast-in- place concrete (pr slap labels here: concrete-like, energy-efficient green, zero-emission, insulated).
joebidun 4y ago
Its solar city all over again
euroderf 4y ago
I'll wait to see what Construction Physics[1] says about it. He has covered the prefab space in detail. [1] https://constructionphysics.substack.com/ https://constructionphysics.substack.com/
- manholio 4y ago
  As an avid reader, I anticipate the feedback as "unlikely to scale, since the centralized productivity gains don't outweigh the diminished flexibility and substantial transport costs". This is a recurring theme with prefab system he analyzes, they scrape by employing labour arbitrage at a cheap production site, but do not unleash the productivity gains we associate with industrial production. This becomes obvious when you look at the distribution of construction costs for a finished building: https://constructionphysics.substack.com/p/construction-cost-breakdown-and-partial https://constructionphysics.substack.com/p/construction-cost... The most a prefab can hope to achieve is attack maybe 30- 40% of the total costs in that pie chart. You cannot prefab electrics and plumbing, foundation, landscaping, permitting etc. So even if they crush it and get 100% improvement on their products compared to on site build, that's still a 20% at best overall cost improvement. Bit with that comes the risk of a new and unproven system, costly coordination issues that are easy to rectify in the traditional method - but if the wrong prefabs are shipped across the country you are dead for a few weeks, since the next stage cannot start.
rasz 4y ago
1 the I cant believe is not cement sure looks like cement on a 360p video they provide. Guess BGates ventures cant afford a good camera. 2 walls are soo thin, 2-3x too thin for European standards. Maybe they target hot climates?
- pistoriusp 4y ago
  Thick walls are required in hot climates too.
- aidenn0 4y ago
  The limited tech-info they have[1] says they can go up to 300mm thick depending on insulation needs. 1: https://vantem.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/VA_B03-TechPanelEN_Lt-RGB.pdf https://vantem.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/VA_B03-TechPan...
intrasight 4y ago
There was a post on HN recently about "open source" house design but I can't find it now. Anyone have that link?
leftoids 4y ago
> The panels were designed as a replacement for brick and cement, which are expensive, difficult to make How much is it? At our place (developing country, heavily depends on imports of everything, but private entrepreneurs somehow mastered the production of "difficult to make" bricks) a traditional 2 floor, 200 sq. meters (~2153 sq. feet) brick and mortar building with reinforced concrete belts (seismically active zone here), insulation, finishing & decoration will cost: 1. $80k if you don't want to take part. You give the money, the architect asks what you want and does the rest. 2. $40k if you hire workers for every stage of building yourself. 3. $20k if you can also make some work yourself, delegating only qualified work. Is this technology going to be cheaper? Or is it like those California kennels for homeless $40k apiece?
aidenn0 4y ago
Couldn't find anything on Vantem's site describing how plumbing and electrical go in; it was not possible to see on timelapse either. They had an elevated floor, so maybe the utilities went in there? But it's also used for multi-story, so it can't just be that... With concrete blocks you would cut a chase in the wall, but the primary rigidity seems to come from the panels on either side, so that seems like it might be a bad idea...
- turtlebits 4y ago
  For traditional SIPs the manufacturer can run chases for electrical and plumbing. I would assume the same for these.
ZeroGravitas 4y ago
The first world housing issues are more about land and zoning than construction, but for energy efficiency and climate change and just cheapness, mass produced factory built homes are a great solution. McDonalds, Starbucks etc. seem to have moved to this model, new standalone premises go together like Lego.
- fasthands9 4y ago
  I mostly agree with you on land - but my understanding is that there are laws put in place that make modular construction de facto forbidden in most jurisdictions. Perhaps this falls into your definition of zoning or perhaps it doesn't. But I imagine if these were lifted systematically you'd get bigger investment. >One notorious regulation that could go up for review is a longstanding rule that manufactured homes must be delivered with a chassis still attached, even if the homes are built in place permanently. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-05-20/mobile-homes-might-make-biden-s-housing-plan-work https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-05-20/mobile-ho...
- pydry 4y ago
  Unfortunately, as the largest owner of agricultural farmland in the US, Bill Gates is unlikely to try and tackle the underlying tax policy that rewards land hoarding/discourages building. A land value tax would hit his portfolio pretty hard.
  - kjeetgill 4y ago
    All that may be true, but in terms of housing costs the zoning and development issues aren't in agricultural land, they're in cities and suburbs. If lead is suitable for feeding people, presumably we'd like to keep doing that.
    - pydry 4y ago
      The zoning/nimby issues are derived from cost/sale price of land being driven ever further up. This is partly due to a spillover from historic levels of wealth inequality but its also due to land untaxing (e.g. prop 13). Were land made into more of a liability the lobbying to inhibit development to keep land values up (zoning/nimbyism) would end up being pointless and would probably dry up. Those SF homeowners who want to keep their area "single family homes only to preserve the feel of the area" are simply trying to inhibit development to keep the value of their leveraged investment stable. Flip the switch to turn land into a financial liability and all that ends along with the land hoarding that has inhibited property development for decades. It would have to be done nationally, though - and that would mean, among other things, deliberately crashing Bill Gates' agricultural land investments.
Glyptodon 4y ago
Prefab wall panels are a thing, but I'm not sure I've seen ICF-form style ones. I have to imagine this should be able to do pretty much what ICF construction does but faster. On the other hand, I imagine transporting the forms is cheaper than transporting actual panels.
turtlebits 4y ago
These look like cement board SIPs, I'd like to see how much better these are than the standard plywood panels.
IronWolve 4y ago
Theres a tinyhome builder making using ESP 8x16 tinyhomes for 20k. They call them The Incred-i-box. They justed started to offer solar setup in the tongue box as an option to make it offgrid worthy. https://www.incredibletinyhomes.com/ith-incred-i-box-style-esp-tiny-home/ https://www.incredibletinyhomes.com/ith-incred-i-box-style-e... They built a large assembly line building so they could start creating many homes per week. Been fun to watch them get their factory built, and each assembly section going, floor, electrical, plumbing, walls, roof, etc. The youtube channel has been pretty good on showing the progress. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5lGuApI4fYw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5lGuApI4fYw

74 points by cheinyeanlim 4y ago

>As you might have heard, we’re in the midst of a housing crisis ... That has relatively little to do with building homes. More to do with zoning and nimbyism. You can get a home in area where there are no jobs or the commute distances are too long.

giantg2 4y ago
It would be nice if we didn't have such a herd mentality and some companies decided to revitalize some of the old rust belt cities by creating jobs there. There's some tech presence in Pittsburgh. Some of the smaller cities could benefit too though.
- giantrobot 4y ago
  I don't think the problem is herd mentality. If you open an office in Silicon Valley you've got local talent for all types of positions, proximity to funding, and in general somewhere executives and upper management (likely) want to live. Rust Belt cities don't really offer the same advantages. They might have cheaper rent but that doesn't help if no one wants to relocate to there. No company wants to be on the hook for revitalizing a city.
  - giantg2 4y ago
    That's basically the herd mentality I'm talking about - people wanting to live in the same areas. People don't want to live there because nobody is moving there and making improvements. It's easier to just move where everyone else is moving.
    - danans 4y ago
      > That's basically the herd mentality I'm talking about - people wanting to live in the same areas. Call it what you will, but people generally want to live around other people - preferably people they care about but at least people who are not dangerous to them or impose much social or financial cost on them. > People don't want to live there because nobody is moving there and making improvements. Actually many previously declining places have reached critical mass and people are making improvements and attracting more people. But those places (i.e. Pittsburgh, Cincinnati), are sucking up most of the interest and creating their own gravity, leaving little left for Youngstown and Flint. > It's easier to just move where everyone else is moving. Of course it's easier - it's simple economies of scale. People seek access to physical and social resources. Raw land or emptied cities and towns with crumbling infrastructure don't provide that.
  - bluGill 4y ago
    There are a lot of people who want to live there. Sure more people want to live in the Valley, but there are still a lot of smart people who don't. And also a few people who moved to the Valley who want to get out. Most of this is about family - it is very hard to move to a new city as your family support network is gone. Those who had a bad family life growing up don't care, but those who had a good family life will accept a lot of pain to stick with family. (I live 300 miles from my family, I'm jealous of my siblings who call grandma for an emergency babysitter at the last minute) With remote work there is no reason you can't hire people who want to live in whatever rust belt city, and there are a lot of them. Just giving good salary to people in rust belt areas would go a long way to helping those cities.
    - giantrobot 4y ago
      There are smart people that live in rust belt cities, there's just fewer of them in any given city than in all of the Bay Area. For a company it'll be harder to keep that rust belt city staffed. It's also unattractive for employees to move there since there's fewer tech employers. In the Bay Area someone can walk out of Google and find a job pretty quickly with the same length commute. If someone relocated to Cleveland they can't necessarily do the same thing and face a prospect of relocating again. Remote work is one way rust belt cities can revitalize themselves. There's a lot those cities can do to attract remote workers even if they're not attracting the companies themselves. Their states need to help by harmonizing some employment and tax laws with the states where tech companies are based. No one is moving to Cleveland if a "no working for competition" clause in an employment contract is legal in Ohio. Side note: I don't mean to pick on Cleveland but it's sort of the rust belt poster child.
- nabla9 4y ago
  It's not mentality, it's basics of urban economics called Economies of agglomeration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economies_of_agglomeration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economies_of_agglomeration Productivity increases in urban centers. Bigger, the better. At some point negative externalizes and bottlenecks that limit growth but if those would be solved, the potential upside could be even greater. For human capital the benefits from labour pooling and matching and knowledge spillovers are enormous.
themitigating 4y ago
What? You're first comment is a pointless argument to the statement "As you might have heard, we’re in the midst of a housing crisis" which is simply stating a fact not the reason behind it. You then switch to a sarcastic comment making light of what could be a horrible situation if you can't find a job because of where you live. The Gates Foundation is doing something, who did your comment help?
- giantg2 4y ago
  "The Gates Foundation is doing something, who did your comment help?" I think they're comment is valid conversation. The Gates Foundation is likely more interested in the company's impact in South America, or in being climate friendly. I don't see anything in article that actually makes the case for why these would help alleviate the housing shortage. Maybe the could, but the info on that isn't in the article.
  - themitigating 4y ago
    I don't see anything in the article that implies either of those motives
    - giantg2 4y ago
      If you have any background on the Gates Foundation it should be easily implied. If not, here's a quote. Also, the article talks about low cost housing in South America. Housing is another topic the gates foundation typically focuses on. "Breakthrough was founded by Bill Gates in 2015 to invest in sustainable energy and emissions-reduction technologies"
      - themitigating 4y ago
        That's an unrelated organization founded by bill gates in 2015. The gates foundation was founded in 2000.
        4y ago
Tade0 4y ago
Costs of materials follow real estate prices therefore it's always beneficial to seek ways to build homes cheaper. Zoning and nimbyism, while contributing factors, are not the root cause. It's the idea that real estate should be seen as an investment - it gained popularity in China in recent years, causing a lot of unnecessary construction and spilling over to the rest of the world. Fortunately(for us at leat) there are early signs that this scheme is collapsing: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2022-08-03/china-real-estate-market-crisis-protests-may-spur-multi-billion-dollar-rescue https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2022-08-03/china-rea... Funnily enough in my neighbourhood (Eastern EU) there's already a: - Block of so-called "microapartments" - units too small to be legally considered housing. This one was started before the respective law was changed due to an explosion in such projects. - A project which took people's money in 2019 and then... never did anything. It's not even a hole in the ground - it's the previous building still scheduled to be demolished. Apparently the madness also spilled over outside of China.

giantg2 4y ago

Why build factories in the Dakotas? Wouldn't it be better to build them somewhere more accessible to the east coast when shipping something so big and heavy? Also, Vantem's website seems to be having issues. It would have been interesting to see what these houses can look like other than the "modern" gray thing in the picture, as well as get more technical info.

watchdogtimer 4y ago
My guess is for the animal confinement sector. EPS panels are widely used in these buildings already.
- giantg2 4y ago
  That makes sense. But then still, why not have something in say KY or WV? Plenty of chicken houses and stuff along the east coast, and they tend to be temperature sensitive. And there's still the human housing market there too.
  - watchdogtimer 4y ago
    Iowa is #1 by far in the US in laying hens and hogs (23M each). Minnesota is #1 for turkeys (48M). KY and WV aren't anywhere close to these numbers. Judging by the photos, my guess is these buildings wouldn't appeal to homeowners. The architectural style is too different.
    - giantg2 4y ago
      I thought there are quite a few in NC, VA, and others in the area.
rhacker 4y ago
shipping them to the west or east coast made easier
adamrezich 4y ago
I-90 is a pretty great way to access both coasts from SD

kwhitefoot 4y ago

The technology required to build energy efficient housing has been available for many decades at least. What is missing is the political will to require energy efficiency.

bluGill 4y ago
Longer than that. It was already becoming the in thing in the 1970s. Sure there have been advances since then, but "super insulated" houses built in 1978 would still do well against todays code. (they wouldn't meet them, but they wouldn't be much worse)

lbriner 4y ago

This sounds like trying to make a big deal out of something that Europe has been doing for years. Sure, these are "cement like" instead of wooden but otherwise nothing that interesting here. It is common to overskin these pre-made houses with render or bricks if needed for more protection but most wooden framed houses don't get blown down by high winds in Europe, mostly roofs getting blown off from buildings where they weren't tied down properly.

giantg2 4y ago
Yeah, I'm interested in what "cement like" actually means. It's possible it might not support venere or siding depending on its properties. Hard to say though since their site is down, so I can't get more info.
- peteradio 4y ago
  I'd bet they have a layer of plastic to screw into.
- jqpabc123 4y ago
  Based on their construction video, it appears to be styrofoam with a layer of stucco. The problem I have with the video is the fact that they're installing these panels on short, thin little stub walls made of concrete. These have almost zero insulation factor. They basically have a large thermal gap under each wall.
  - kolanos 4y ago
    I don't know how similar this is to Insulating Concrete Forms (ICFs), but I've owned a house constructed that way and it had considerably better insulation than any stick built I've owned.
    - giantg2 4y ago
      It seems this is the inverse of ICF. ICF has the insulation on both sides of the reinforced concrete. This has a thin layer of fiber reinforced concrete on each side of a core of insulation.

skc 4y ago

Sadly, I get a CPanel error page visiting the website of the profiled company. I'm mulling over building a little office detached from my house so this stuff is super interesting to me.

rich_sasha 4y ago

Interesting. I'd be all up for a low-cost, IKEA style house (in my locale the cost of the building is a small fraction of total cost of property in a city anyway). If nothing else, construction work is such a gamble, the variance of outcome of quality is enormous. The thing that hampers it, as far as I know, is generally quality constraints. Pre-fab houses just tend to be low quality. This is in part self-selecting, there is a stigma to a "pre-fab" or "portable" home, but in part also that somehow building prefab houses to a good standard is hard. I don't just mean colour and feel, but just basics like "not leaking". The staple of Eastern European bleak suburbs, the high-rise apartment buildings, were all built out of prefab components. These were built in central locations ("home factories"), transported and only assembled on site. These were certainly not created equal, and customer satisfaction wasn't high on the requirements list, but they generally suffered from this kind of problems (leaks, poor quality plumbing / gas connections etc.). I wonder how this company would tackle these problems.

dahfizz 4y ago
The issue is that pre-fab housing is fundamentally about low cost. There's nothing preventing a master craftsman from building the perfect pre-fab, but it will be so expensive that anyone who could afford it would rather buy a "real home".
- cjrp 4y ago
  There's other advantages to pre-fab though. Known costs (building a house from scratch can cost 2x or 3x the original estimate) Assembly time (could be the difference between living on-site in a caravan for 1 month vs. 2-3 years).
  - bluGill 4y ago
    When a builder makes a spec house they will estimate the costs to within a very small error every time. When someone hires the same builder to make the same house the price often will be 2x or more of the estimate, but that is because it isn't the same house. It starts with the same plan, but instead of putting the $10 lights in they put in the $300 ceiling fan. Instead of putting in the cheap toilet they put in the upgraded one. They put in the more expensive doors and trim. they choose the more expensive counter tops. they get the more expensive stove. And on and on with many little upgrades, each alone isn't very much money, but the end total is doubling the cost. If you are willing to stick with the same cheap choices the builder would choose you can build a house for the estimate. It is safe to bet money that you wouldn't.

jokoon 4y ago

I'm curious about the durability of such homes. Moisture, heat, sun, insects, and humans will deteriorate anything in 10 years.

deleted 4y ago

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pcdoodle 4y ago

Gates Box will rule the market and absorb or destroy other Boxen.

bryanrasmussen 4y ago
Well first off the strategy will be to embrace the LEGO like assembly method but to extend it with a few other useful connectors that people will find really useful, and in a decade should be able to extinguish the old fashioned Boxen.

jtdev 4y ago

kvetching 4y ago

I can recall when architecture made to last was something to be proud of. Nightmare waiting to happen if you live in a Tornado, Earthquake, Hurricane etc zone

traverseda 4y ago
You don't think cement and foam insulation will last long enough, or be sturdy enough?
nemo44x 4y ago
We haven’t built residential structures for longevity since WW2. Nearly every home built after 1945 is garbage compared to pre-war homes that have been taken care of. The irony is that in 100 years you’re more likely to come across a home built in 1920 than in 1980. And there’s a few reasons why. Old homes were overbuilt. The engineering wasn’t good enough to really know what they could get away with. Old homes are built with old growth wood. This can’t be had today. This wood is incredible and is naturally rot resistant. Taken care of it will last many hundreds of years. Plastics. They really came into their own during WW2 and found their way into construction because they work for awhile and are dirt cheap. So we have cheap windows, cheap siding, flooring, etc. Gone are the days where great materials were necessary and abundant so adding a bit more craftsmanship was marginal. Buy a pre-war home and invest in it. Keep the original windows and restore them.
- bluGill 4y ago
  Survivership basis. There were a lot of bad houses made before WWII, but they have mostly been torn down. The better quality houses are still around. That and most people don't have a clue what makes a good house, and look at the wrong thing. You see a large post and don't notice the hidden beams that are not strong enough. Modern houses are built to stand up to much strong wind forces than the houses of old, but all that quality is inside the walls where you can't see any difference. In many cases they difference is something you wouldn't even notice if you could compare the inside of the two walls side by side.
  - 4y ago

agomez314 4y ago

If we are so technologically advanced, why does it cost so much to build a home on-site?

bluGill 4y ago
It doesn't cost that much. The land costs a lot, and permits can cost a lot. The labor isn't that much, and materials are cheaper than ever (though most houses in the past were built with free labor with material prepared on site and so you don't realize how much it costs as nobody was getting paid)
- TrueSlacker0 4y ago
  The labor is low because it's minimum wage based for hard work (where I am at in Texas, it's basically all foreign labor, legal and not). Paid a respectable wage, this labor would be expensive. But it's exploited.
turtlebits 4y ago
Building a stick frame house on site is the cheapest out of all the methods. The expensive parts are the finishes and appliances. Also, houses could easily be designed in a simpler fashion (a rectangle without any modulation, ductless HVAC, etc.) for an inexpensive build.

cabirum 4y ago

I'd rather look into innovative formwork construction and cast-in- place concrete (pr slap labels here: concrete-like, energy-efficient green, zero-emission, insulated).

joebidun 4y ago

Its solar city all over again

euroderf 4y ago

I'll wait to see what Construction Physics[1] says about it. He has covered the prefab space in detail. [1] https://constructionphysics.substack.com/ https://constructionphysics.substack.com/

manholio 4y ago
As an avid reader, I anticipate the feedback as "unlikely to scale, since the centralized productivity gains don't outweigh the diminished flexibility and substantial transport costs". This is a recurring theme with prefab system he analyzes, they scrape by employing labour arbitrage at a cheap production site, but do not unleash the productivity gains we associate with industrial production. This becomes obvious when you look at the distribution of construction costs for a finished building: https://constructionphysics.substack.com/p/construction-cost-breakdown-and-partial https://constructionphysics.substack.com/p/construction-cost... The most a prefab can hope to achieve is attack maybe 30- 40% of the total costs in that pie chart. You cannot prefab electrics and plumbing, foundation, landscaping, permitting etc. So even if they crush it and get 100% improvement on their products compared to on site build, that's still a 20% at best overall cost improvement. Bit with that comes the risk of a new and unproven system, costly coordination issues that are easy to rectify in the traditional method - but if the wrong prefabs are shipped across the country you are dead for a few weeks, since the next stage cannot start.

rasz 4y ago

1 the I cant believe is not cement sure looks like cement on a 360p video they provide. Guess BGates ventures cant afford a good camera. 2 walls are soo thin, 2-3x too thin for European standards. Maybe they target hot climates?

pistoriusp 4y ago
Thick walls are required in hot climates too.
aidenn0 4y ago
The limited tech-info they have[1] says they can go up to 300mm thick depending on insulation needs. 1: https://vantem.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/VA_B03-TechPanelEN_Lt-RGB.pdf https://vantem.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/VA_B03-TechPan...

intrasight 4y ago

There was a post on HN recently about "open source" house design but I can't find it now. Anyone have that link?

leftoids 4y ago

> The panels were designed as a replacement for brick and cement, which are expensive, difficult to make How much is it? At our place (developing country, heavily depends on imports of everything, but private entrepreneurs somehow mastered the production of "difficult to make" bricks) a traditional 2 floor, 200 sq. meters (~2153 sq. feet) brick and mortar building with reinforced concrete belts (seismically active zone here), insulation, finishing & decoration will cost: 1. $80k if you don't want to take part. You give the money, the architect asks what you want and does the rest. 2. $40k if you hire workers for every stage of building yourself. 3. $20k if you can also make some work yourself, delegating only qualified work. Is this technology going to be cheaper? Or is it like those California kennels for homeless $40k apiece?

aidenn0 4y ago

Couldn't find anything on Vantem's site describing how plumbing and electrical go in; it was not possible to see on timelapse either. They had an elevated floor, so maybe the utilities went in there? But it's also used for multi-story, so it can't just be that... With concrete blocks you would cut a chase in the wall, but the primary rigidity seems to come from the panels on either side, so that seems like it might be a bad idea...

turtlebits 4y ago
For traditional SIPs the manufacturer can run chases for electrical and plumbing. I would assume the same for these.

ZeroGravitas 4y ago

The first world housing issues are more about land and zoning than construction, but for energy efficiency and climate change and just cheapness, mass produced factory built homes are a great solution. McDonalds, Starbucks etc. seem to have moved to this model, new standalone premises go together like Lego.

fasthands9 4y ago
I mostly agree with you on land - but my understanding is that there are laws put in place that make modular construction de facto forbidden in most jurisdictions. Perhaps this falls into your definition of zoning or perhaps it doesn't. But I imagine if these were lifted systematically you'd get bigger investment. >One notorious regulation that could go up for review is a longstanding rule that manufactured homes must be delivered with a chassis still attached, even if the homes are built in place permanently. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-05-20/mobile-homes-might-make-biden-s-housing-plan-work https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-05-20/mobile-ho...
pydry 4y ago
Unfortunately, as the largest owner of agricultural farmland in the US, Bill Gates is unlikely to try and tackle the underlying tax policy that rewards land hoarding/discourages building. A land value tax would hit his portfolio pretty hard.
- kjeetgill 4y ago
  All that may be true, but in terms of housing costs the zoning and development issues aren't in agricultural land, they're in cities and suburbs. If lead is suitable for feeding people, presumably we'd like to keep doing that.
  - pydry 4y ago
    The zoning/nimby issues are derived from cost/sale price of land being driven ever further up. This is partly due to a spillover from historic levels of wealth inequality but its also due to land untaxing (e.g. prop 13). Were land made into more of a liability the lobbying to inhibit development to keep land values up (zoning/nimbyism) would end up being pointless and would probably dry up. Those SF homeowners who want to keep their area "single family homes only to preserve the feel of the area" are simply trying to inhibit development to keep the value of their leveraged investment stable. Flip the switch to turn land into a financial liability and all that ends along with the land hoarding that has inhibited property development for decades. It would have to be done nationally, though - and that would mean, among other things, deliberately crashing Bill Gates' agricultural land investments.

Glyptodon 4y ago

Prefab wall panels are a thing, but I'm not sure I've seen ICF-form style ones. I have to imagine this should be able to do pretty much what ICF construction does but faster. On the other hand, I imagine transporting the forms is cheaper than transporting actual panels.

turtlebits 4y ago

These look like cement board SIPs, I'd like to see how much better these are than the standard plywood panels.

IronWolve 4y ago

Theres a tinyhome builder making using ESP 8x16 tinyhomes for 20k. They call them The Incred-i-box. They justed started to offer solar setup in the tongue box as an option to make it offgrid worthy. https://www.incredibletinyhomes.com/ith-incred-i-box-style-esp-tiny-home/ https://www.incredibletinyhomes.com/ith-incred-i-box-style-e... They built a large assembly line building so they could start creating many homes per week. Been fun to watch them get their factory built, and each assembly section going, floor, electrical, plumbing, walls, roof, etc. The youtube channel has been pretty good on showing the progress. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5lGuApI4fYw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5lGuApI4fYw