Unity, a brand of custom home company Bensonwood, is one of several companies in New England building homes in a factory. It’s a modern spin on the 1900s Sears Roebuck catalogue of mail-order houses, now with energy efficiency front of mind.
трипскан
Companies like Unity and Maine-based BrightBuilt Home offer several basic designs that owners can customize. At Unity, much of the design is done ahead of time, before the house’s walls, windows and doors are assembled inside the company’s Keene, New Hampshire, factory, then wrapped tightly in reusable plastic and put on a truck bed. Once it’s on site, a panelized house can be built in a matter of days.
It is a very different model from traditional “stick-built” home construction, where the structure is built “stick by stick” on site and can take months to finish, all the while leaving wood and materials exposed to rain, snow and wind.
https://tripscan.info
трипскан
“There’s a logic to building a structure in a climate-controlled environment. That really resonates with a lot of folks,” said Parlin Meyer, managing principal for BrightBuilt Home.
The number of factory-made homes still pales in comparison to traditional stick-built homes in the United States — just 3% of all single-family homes as of 2024, according to the National Association of Home Builders. The trend is much more popular in Europe; in Sweden, most new homes are built in factories.
“That’s been relatively flat for a number of years,” said Devin Perry, an assistant vice president at the National Association of Home Builders. “But anecdotally, there seems to be momentum behind that method of construction, and people looking for energy efficient options.”
Three New England companies specializing in factory-built and energy efficient homes told CNN they are seeing a rise in interest. Prefabricated homes used to be associated with cheap, poorly made housing, but that has changed. |