The ‘puzzle’ of prefabricated homes

When Evelyn and Jess Pereira tell visitors to their Vancouver Island home that it is a modular one – a home that was pre-fabricated in a manufacturing plant – their guests are often surprised. The decade-old 5,000-sq.-ft. home boasts high ceilings, wood beams and stunning West-coast inspired architecture.

“We are now in the process of downsizing to a 1,200-sq.-ft. pre-fabricated rancher in Duncan,” says Evelyn. “This will be our third prefab home. Prefabs are built under the best conditions with machinery that performs precise cuts. You not only get a well-insulated home, but the speed in which you move into a home can be two weeks from floor joints to lock up.”

Pereira likens prefab homes to “a puzzle" or Lego.

"A truck delivers the pieces and they are then manually put together,” she says.

Over the last four decades, the couple has had 10 custom-built homes.

“We feel that prefab is the most superior way of building,” says Evelyn. “From designing our custom prefab homes on a napkin, to computer-generated blueprints, building takes about two to three months.”

Prefab is nothing new. Dating back centuries, pre-fabricated homes surged in popularity back in the early 1900s with Sears, Roebuck and Co. selling kit-homes from its catalogue. The company sold more than 100,000 homes between 1908 and 1940.

For those people who still buy into the stigma of the “trailer home”, they will be pleasantly surprised, says Aaron Spotts, marketing manager at Pacific Homes, an award-winning builder with six decades of construction experience.

Abbotsford-based Pacific Homes has been building pre-fabricated homes since 1981.

“There are many reasons pre-fabricated homes are getting more and more popular,” says Spotts. “Modular homes provide families with energy-savings, efficiently constructed, quality homes for many years.”

Other benefits include the ability of prospective buyers to custom design their home.

“Once we have a final design idea, we create a 3-D rendering,” says Spotts, adding they do offer hundreds of inspirational plans for customers to choose from. “People have these preconceived notions about what prefab homes look like, but, in truth, a prefab home is totally indistinguishable from a site-built house.”

Steve Whelan, co-owner of LWE Builders, is one of several construction companies across the province that assembles Pacific Homes’ factory-built components at on-site locations (LWE works solely in the East Kootenays).

“A few years ago, we moved to prefab homes because our climate can be difficult. The option of manufacturing walls and other components in a climate-controlled facility is incredibly efficient from both a waste and labour perspective,” says Whelan, adding LWE has built two of the Pereira’s three homes.

Modular homes are almost complete when they arrive at the site with siding, kitchen appliances, flooring, and so on. In areas where labour is very expensive, completing more of the work in a factory in a less costly labour area is a fiscal benefit to the owner.

“A computer model doesn’t care the size or type of cut it needs to do, it just does it,” says Whelan. “That is why the cuts are so much more precise than a stick-build.”

Finally, Whelan makes another point on the advantages of prefab homes.

“Think about it … we build almost everything on the planet in a factory, why not homes. Components are way more complicated today and the way they are precisely cut in a factory far exceeds anything that is built onsite.”