House comes almost ready-made

Published 2:00 pm Tuesday, June 11, 2002

Building a house from scratch – “stick-building” in the trade – is a messy, time-consuming process.

Beams and drywall are cut to fit, and the pieces left over are piled outside in an ever-growing heap of refuse. The site sits idle while the necessary subcontractor finishes another job. And the rain – inevitable during the nine-month period that is required to build a typical home – can turn the project into a morass.

Don Asher of Sweetwater Building is trying what he thinks may be a better way – having the home built in modules in a Canadian factory, then trucked to the site for assembly and finishing.

“This is cost-effective, environmentally more sustainable and more user-friendly,” said Asher of the home rapidly taking shape on a lot in the woods west of Fletcher Bay Road.

The two-story home, designed by realtor Leah Applewhite, Asher’s partner, arrived on site Friday. The four modules – front and back halves of each story – were put into place over a foundation that will house a walk-out basement.

By Monday, the interior was ready for finishing work to begin. The walls were painted, the kitchen cabinets were hung, the granite countertop was installed on the kitchen island, the crown molding was finished and the disposal had even been installed in the sink.

“It normally takes you six months to get to this stage,” Asher said.

While there is nothing new about factory-built modular homes, extending that approach to high-end, custom-designed, multi-story homes is new, at least in this part of the country.

Applewhite became interested in the process because she was listing some property around a bird refuge. Her client had heard about in-factory construction as a possible way to dramatically reduce the amount of time required for on-site work, lessening the amount of disturbance to the birds’ nesting patterns.

Applewhite thought the method might work for a house she plans to build for herself. And, she said, Asher heard about in-factory custom building at various trade shows.

“We wanted to try it,” she said. “It reduces waste on construction sites, which is grotesque, in my opinion. And you can control costs, time and schedule more precisely.”

The partners located the Britco factory near Vancouver in British Columbia, which had never made a high-end custom home, but was willing to make the attempt.

Applewhite sketched out the basic concept “on a napkin,” she said, then turned it over to an architect that works with the factory. After materials were ordered, the fabrication took about a month.

“This was the first time for them, and there was a learning curve,” Asher said. “The biggest thing right now was being able to communicate to them our level of expectation.”

Doing the construction in a factory creates its own efficiencies, Asher said.

“There is less labor by virtue of how the working area is set up,” he said. “They have laid the factory out to be more efficient, and they have big machines to help. With 60 people on a line, they can have eight or nine projects going at the same time.”

With the modules on site, Asher estimates that about another month’s work remains. The modules will be bolted and strapped together, and the seams covered with drywall. The plumbing and electrical connections will be made, the latter by simply plugging one part into another. A garage and porch will be built on site, and flooring will be installed.

The roof’s eaves are already there, hinged and lying on the main roof. They will be unfolded like a wing, braced onto support beams rising from the porch, and roofing material will be added.

The limiting factor, Applewhite said, is the width of the home, dictated by factory dimensions. The three-bedroom home with a family room, island kitchen and space for a small office is relatively small by island standards, with roughly 2,200 finished square feet and an unfinished daylight basement with potential for another 1,000 feet.

The projected sales price of just under $500,000 reflects the lot’s location fronting a five-acre pond, a remnant of the Johnson brothers’ sand excavations of bygone years.

While the transportation expense puts construction costs on a par with site-built homes, Asher said there are still measurable savings in effort and certainty.

“In a regular job, component prices go up, or labor costs change. Here, the price stays the price. And design decisions are all made up front.”

Asher expects the “stick-built-in-factory” approach to gain popularity in this area, saying that on the East Coast, some 75 percent of homes are done at least in part in factories. And while that means fewer construction jobs, those jobs are difficult to fill, he said.

“Finding skilled labor is the most difficult problem for home builders,” he said. “Kids don’t want to be plumbers or carpenters, they want to work for Microsoft.”