Western Building Center (WBC) set up WBC Building Components to expand the local building industry into factory made panelized (building components) construction, serving the region’s builders with a high-quality, fast-to-set-up home and commercial buildings.
Popular around the country, this better building system is coming more than ever to Montana. Side by side building studies prove the point: efficient, fast building. This is a real plus, as it allows you to get more homes done faster per year: more money and less worry about the shorter building season in Montana. A builder can get to dry-in much faster with great quality, and, after getting heat to the house, can spend the wet fall and cold winter finishing the home to the homeowner’s requirements…even getting an earlier start in spring. It’s a real competitive advantage.
What are Panelized Homes?
However, when talking about these kinds of homes, it can get confusing: is a home a Modular, Panelized, Manufactured or Prefab home? Too often, people use these terms interchangeably. In reality, they all mean different things.
First, a panelized home, or one made of building components, in a controlled factory environment looks and behaves just like a site-built home—not what most folks would recognize as a “manufactured” home. Panelized homes are in many ways a better quality home than conventional stick framing, thanks to better airtightness, better lumber quality, and more. And if a builder looks at the full costs of a traditional stick frame home versus a panelized home out of building components, panelized homes are less expensive. See the study here.
Prefabricated housing has a gotten a bad name because of manufactured homes, which are often cheap boxes on wheels. “Prefab”, technically speaking, is any home that has sections of the structure built in a factory and then assembled onsite. Panelized homes (or Building Components), modular buildings, and manufactured homes fall under the term of prefab, but are still different. How?
Prefab Panelized Building
“Panelized” construction means that the walls and floor of the home (panels) are pre-made in the factory and set in place by crane. The main advantage is speed; your home can be dried-in (weatherproofed) in days, not weeks. Also, panelized construction builds houses that are just as strong, if not more so, as site-built or modular buildings, have as just as much design flexibility, and transport costs are way lower than modular buildings (see section below). Also, since the factory keeps the lumber conditions carefully controlled, can afford the best grades and cuts each piece for the most efficiency, you don’t have to worry about lumber defects and therefore don’t have to deal with eating up time returning poor lumber or else cutting corners. Residential and commercial prefabricated buildings, done this way, also allow for wide open spaces and high ceilings. Another plus is that panelized construction usually includes strong, light roof trusses that take far less time than rafters and save the cost of expensive 2x12s as well.
Prefab Modular Building
“Modular” building means the factory constructs the house in box-like sections which are transported to the worksite, placed by crane and secured together to make the home. Since each module must be shipped separately on a flat-bed truck, each section’s maximum size is limited to the size of the flat-bed trailer length by 16’ width. That means that it takes multiple truckloads delivered to the jobsite to build the house, while all parts of a panelized home can be delivered in one to three truckloads. Modular ceilings are also usually limited to the height of the section. Finally, a modular building often doesn’t include add-on structures like garages or porches built in the same factory, but panelized buildings can do this all including walls, roof and floor being fully customizable. See here for the detail on these building components.
Manufactured Housing
While this kind of home is factory-built like panelized and modular homes, no construction happens onsite. Manufactured (or “mobile”) homes are made on a wheeled steel frame, shipped on its own wheels, and then set on a crawl space or concrete slab. In most cases, the wheels (and the gap between the home and the ground) aren’t removed; they’re just covered with plastic skirting. Manufactured homes age poorly, need frequent maintenance, have bad insulation and airtightness (and higher heating and A/C costs) and are not intended to be a permanent home. Nevertheless, anything “prefab” is still often confused with them.
The Differences
Building Codes
Prefab houses of all kinds must follow state and federal building code requirements and be regularly inspected, just like site-built homes. This makes sure that panelized homes are as safe as site-built ones. However, more and more evidence indicates that they are even sturdier than similar site-built homes, because of:
- Controlled environment
- Quality inspection
- Structural integrity
See the Structural Building Components Association writeup here.
Manufactured homes, however, only have to follow HUD (Department of Housing and Urban Development) standards which has far more lax regulations.
Resale Value
Financial institutions, the government and others consider homes made from building components real estate. So, panelized homes keep up or increase value over time like a site-built home. By contrast, manufactured homes are considered personal property and so start losing value as soon as they’re taken off the lot, just like a car, and their value keeps decreasing over the home’s life. So, again, panelized homes are just like (or even better than) site-built homes for resale value, loans, quality (see “Building Codes” above and “Quality” below) and so on.
Building Limitations
Panelized homes are not limited to basic designs, but are just as easily customizable as site-built homes. That’s something your architect and engineer will like. On the other hand, manufactured homes design is still quite limited, and has few options. Most manufactured homes dealers will have the home pre-built and then sell from their stock on the lot, like car dealerships.
Appearance
Prefab homes are wood framed, allowing them the design flexibility to look great with both traditional and modern styles, work with more sustainable living design, and use custom architecture. Some manufactured homes still have the old “tin-can look” while some look almost like a standard home, but there is little or no room for non-rectangular floor plans, exterior changes (such as different sidings) or overall creativity.
Quality
Possibly the biggest difference between building component homes and manufactured homes is quality. Panelized homes are built with factory precision and use, on average, 25% more material than site-built homes, making a beefier home. According to FEMA, they stand up better in extreme weather (high winds and snow loads here in Montana), and they need little maintenance. Manufactured homes are also factory-made, but to lower standards and for cheaper housing.
In conclusion, “prefab” panelized homes simply aren’t the same as mobile or manufactured homes, and are, in fact, as good if not better than site-built homes.
Now that WBC, in the community for over 60 years, offers you a professional team plus the all the advantages of panelized homes, you have a winning combination. Want to know more? See the video:
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