On Mar 24, 4:51 pm, Rick Blaine wrote:
Tim Smith wrote:
With our Off-Site method, the walls are
assembled into sectional panels just like the On-Site method But the
difference is, with On-Site, the weather and site conditions vary
from day to day causing the walls to be out-of-square and exposed to
rain.

We have an outfit nearby that does something similar. They prebuild all the
frame walls in a large building, stage the entire building in an empty field
nextdoor and truck it out to the site. I would think actual site construction is
just a couple of days rather than a couple of weeks for typical framing.

That obviously means the framing plan needs to be good, but I suspect the
overall cost isn't that much more. Material delivery is about the same, labor is
the same or less. Quality can be better in a factory than on site.

They typically have a dozen or more buildings being staged, so buisness must be
good.

I have endured more than one sales pitch for panelized building. It
have seen other builders (usually commercial) using them, and one day
I'd like to try them. But I'm still a skeptic. Basically, what you
are saving yourself is the wall building, which as a percentage of
time spent on a project is very small. You still have to set trusses,
run subfascia, sheath the roof, etc. Although you can frame a
building somewhat faster, the cost savings are offset by needing to
have several days worth of crane time (big crane too, probably going
for 200 bucks an hour) and needing to truck the panels to the site
(you have to ship a lot of air with the panels, so a lumber pack which
would fit on one truck is going to take several). I don't believe the
malarky about them being more square and straight...the builders I
talk to who have used them have more swoops in their walls than
conventionally framed houses. When my crew frames a wall, it will be
within an 1/8th or usually less of square--I haven't checked prefab
panels, but it's hard to see the advantage in quality. Provided you
have decent carpenters, the quality of your walls is going to depend
on the quality of the lumber, and we're all in the same boat there.
I'll bet you the panellized outfits aren't going through and picking
the straight studs out of a unit. then you have the problem of
fitting the house to the foundation. Pretty common for the masons to
get things out of whack, especially when dealing with stepped footings
which are common where I live. If your foundation measures, say 36-1,
and the panels are 36, what do you do? Fix it, sure, but there goes
yet more of your labor savings.

There were a couple of projects going up next door to my projects last
summer, built of panels by a company who had earlier given me a hard
sell. That was quite entertaining to watch--took longer to frame
their projects than my conventionally framed houses. There is a very
good reason why sheathing should not be put on the rafters before
they are set! They gave the sawzall a workout more than once. Plus
the lumber pack was provided by the panel company, and guess what!
they were short of vital roof framing material! Some mornings you'd
show up and listen to the foreman bitch about waiting for a load of
panels. I suppose it's best not to judge every panel company by that
bunch of jokers, though. Panel building has been around for a long
time, and time will tell whether it's the way to go or not. But
framing a house is really a pretty small part of the whole process,
and although it sounds good in a sales pitch, a house is a hell of a
lot more than framing.