Buying a home is not an easy business. There’s a great deal of your savings involved and a whole lot of decisions to make. Besides taking your needs (e.g. location, size, materials) and budget into account, there are two other important aspects the construction industry has been facing lately: environmental impact and efficiency.
Traditional on-site built homes don’t bode well for the industry’s future when these two are concerned. But not all hope is lost if you want to get a forever home that’s got a low impact on Mother Nature and can help you reduce your costs in the long run. The solution lies in modular construction. It’s certainly not that recent of a concept, yet some countries like Sweden are quicker to catch up with the prefab trend than others.
Prefab Housing in Australia
Even though Australia is still far from catching up with Scandinavian countries as the prefab constructions only amount to 5%, modular is a solution that’s becoming more and more acceptable in the Land Down Under the housing crisis it’s been facing. This is mainly due to the soaring prices and shortages in the rental sector. In fact, the lack of affordable housing is leaving many people homeless. Under these circumstances, there's a growing demand for modular homes.
Due to the mode of construction, on average such homes are about 10 to 25 percent cheaper. So, opting for modular allows homeowners to get the house of their dreams for less. As a result, you'll notice more fancy modular homes Adelaide-wide and around other areas where housing prices are currently hitting record highs.
Of course, the end price largely depends on certain factors, like where you choose to have them built, how difficult it is to transport the modules and materials to the spot, and how specific you are with the need for uniqueness in terms of materials and décor. But overall, it's still more affordable than the traditional methods.
Does this option offer additional benefits? Read up to find out.
Reduced Cost of Living
If you’ve been wondering how it’s possible to reduce your living costs and how prefab construction can help you make it happen, here goes. For a start, the fast construction in controlled environments like factories means materials aren’t damaged by weather or exposed to potential thieves.
As a result, you’d get fewer costs to begin with, and you won’t have to wait too long to move into your new house. In addition, this type of construction allows for the use of better materials. Apart from being green, this can significantly lower your cooling and heating expenses since such houses are more airtight than their traditionally built counterparts, thanks to features like double or triple-glazed windows and solid insulation.
The possibilities don’t end here because you can even build a carbon-neutral home if you’d like to take sustainability to another level by producing your own clean power and reusing water.
Positive Environmental Impact
There’s a reason why modular homes are thought of as green. As they differ from on-site buildings, with every construction process of the modules being done in factories with the use of machines, there’s an utmost level of precision.
This means there’s a significant reduction in the waste of materials, which is a huge advantage when compared with the traditional construction industry, which produces about 20 tons of waste annually. Along with the precision, there’s a higher use of repurposing and recycling of materials which are other steps to take to cut down on the waste.
In the cases of expansion, this is possible to achieve by building new modules with the use of recycled materials that come from other buildings or modules that have been removed, for instance. In addition to this, there’s another way modular homes can be of help: the reduction of waste of energy.
This is possible due to the fact the modular construction process can be finished in no time, just weeks, as opposed to on-site homes and buildings that take months if not years, to be complete. The outcome of this is reduced carbon emissions and lower costs. Not to mention, water usage is down 40% as opposed to when building on the site.
Furthermore, there’s more efficient transportation of the modules, the materials, and the equipment, and as a result, there’s an optimisation of labour as well.
Lastly, those worried about noise throughout the building process can rest assured that this housing solution offers noise reduction, too, since there’s no need for any welding and the need for the use of cranes. This specific aspect makes the ideal choice for hotels and offices when building up new rooms or expanding the space, as no guests or employees would have to suffer at the expense of new modules.
Many Design Options
Forget about the prefab homes of decades ago, the designs of modular homes. Australia Round offers a vast array of choices when it comes to materials and décor. If you’ve heard that all modular buildings look the same, it’s no longer true.
While standardised homes were the case of buildings years ago, there are endless possibilities now since you can find them ranging in various styles, from traditional to contemporary, colonial, and ranch. Not surprisingly, this flexibility has also made the prefab concept ideal for commercial buildings, from schools to hospitals and anything in between.
To make your dream home come true, it’s advisable to research a company that offers bespoke design to satisfy your particular lifestyle needs. Since there’s a bigger amount of flexibility, such a versatile concept offers many benefits, including living off-grid.
Due to the unique structure of modular homes, Adelaide and other metropolitan areas aren't the only places where such a project can be built. The use of strong and durable materials, reduced need for transportation to equipment and workforce on site, and ease of construction allow you to have a pod home or summer house built in climatic and geographical conditions where traditional construction would seem impossible.
Getting the necessary permits won’t be too much of a hassle as they can be added anywhere. Don’t worry if you don’t want to be bothered with this, as the company can take care of it for you. Taking all of this into account, it’s not so difficult to see why they happen to be the future of Australian housing, is it?
