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An entire level of a home can be assembled in a few hours. Wall Panels are organized in placement order and cranes are used to assist in putting the walls in place. More efficient and safer than traditional on-site framing. COMPACT COTTAGES PHOTOS
Prefab for the Future New House Factory Aims to Help Affordable Housing, Environment BY KRISTEN ALFREY ith home values and interest rates on the rise, there is a desperate need to expand the inventory of affordable housing in our region and around the country. According to a recent housing report, the median home sale price in Asheville has increased 18 percent during the past year to $425,194. That is simply out of touch with the income levels of many of the people who live in our area. Creating more affordable and environmentally sustainable building models through intelligent design and conservative land use could very well be the approach needed to create a housing market that is more accessible to the median income household. Our company shifted to a pan-
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elized-wall method of construction in 2021 and is expanding beyond our current panel-building facility to a House Factory on Sweeten Creek Road in Asheville. The new House Factory will allow us to move toward more complete prefabricated house pieces and full ADUs (Accessory Dwelling Units). We plan to assemble fulllength home walls with windows and siding already installed, complete bathroom “pods” with fixtures, and turnkey prefabricated ADU “building blocks” that could function standalone or be connected for any size home. It’s an exciting time as it takes straight aim at our company mission to be a leader in affordable housing solutions. Compared to onsite framing, panel production is a method of building that lowers overhead ex-
penses by reducing material waste home design that best suits their and decreasing the time exlifestyle and budget, much like pended in the framing process. In putting together a Lego set. This is a House Factory, lumber can be paving the path towards a business cut in advance and pulled to order model that could factory build, for a specific panel design. By havtransport and assemble more afing a system of standardized panfordable, energy efficient, qualityels and using innovative building built homes on site — something methods, lumber is cut more effithat the Western North Carolina ciently, smaller pieces are used in community desperately needs. structural components, and fewer A recent survey of local hospicuts are made because the full tality workers conducted by the length of wood can be completely Asheville Independent Restaurant utilized. Association offered some interestThis move has increased effiing insights: ciency by 20 percent or more. Our 89.7 percent of respondents are team is seeing less than a cubic renters. yard of waste per home, com84.8 percent of these responpared with 15 to 20 cubic yards of dents said they needed to have waste per home with traditional roommates to afford rent in the framing. On a typical jobsite, these Asheville area. valuable pieces of lumber would 85.5 percent of them answered be heading for the landfill. With that they spend more than 30 perincreased costs of lumber and cent of their income on rent or waste disposal, this can add up to mortgage payments. a large sum of squandered re71 percent of the respondents sources, reducing the affordability indicated that they would like to of a home and increasing costs for purchase a home. the builder. This shows that the market for Panelizing also increases the affordable home ownership is quality of the homes being built, strong but we, as builders, may as the cuts are more accurate and the machine squares the walls at the factory, resulting in a higher quality product. A typical panelized wall can be framed in a House This Wall Panel equipment can frame a wall in Factory in less than just a few minutes. Wall panels are designed 15 minutes. A prelike puzzle pieces that can be assembled to built home is build many different house plans. stored on crates and delivered to need to adopt more creative sothe jobsite where the pieces are lutions to provide the inventory lifted into place by a crane or telerequired to close the gap in home scoping forklift, and attached by ownership accessibility. a crew onsite. Each eight-foot secWith all of the benefits that pretion of wall takes about four and a fabricated and panelized construchalf minutes to lift and set. Betion provides — from conserving ficause of the reduction of onsite nancial and material resources, work, less building time is lost due improving working conditions, creto inclement weather, providing ating more job stability, as well as more stable employment for staff reducing the amount of waste and more hospitable working conheading for the landfill — it is provditions with most of their time ing to be an important tool for the spent in a temperature-controlled future of building affordably and environment. The jobsite is also a sustainably. much safer place, with lower risk Kristen Alfrey is a long-time of falls and other injuries. Asheville resident and works for As far as the impact that panelCompact Cottages and Thirsty ization has on design and accessiMonk. She currently spends hours bility to quality affordable housing, a week sourcing electric panels the possibilities are expansive. and appliances, and all the With a standardized set of panels, other hard to find things in the a client should be able to particihome building supply chain. pate in more of the conceptual Connect with Kristen at process by offering the opportucompactcottages.com. nity for them to piece together a
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