Gadgetory

the home of the future it's been a dream for decades but can we build wood right here in Austin Texas the Virgin kirb have partnered to bring this dream of the home of the future to life I'm Grant Imahara and our goal is to construct a house that combines cutting edge technology with innovative design we want to see if some of the latest smart home systems and high efficiency design can create a more secure and convenient environment and actually improve our daily living how do we build this home of the future well it all begins in a factory in East Texas construction company evolution builds roughly 85% of its houses inside this 265 thousand square foot warehouse each year they complete about 50 homes these fully constructed modular units can be finished in one-third of the time it takes to build a house on-site the power of prefabs or prefabricated homes is that they can be mass-produced without compromising quality design and structural stability the assembly line construction begins with pouring the concrete floor and once the slabs have been laid down cranes and hoists pick them up and take them to the line but the scale of this assembly line is bigger than most instead of cars its houses how long does it take from when a slab comes in to the finish line we have 17 stations if we were doing one box a day you could have a complete box and anywhere from five to six days haha the house is assembled as it rolls down the line on a track the walls are installed on top then wiring and plumbing it goes from station to station just sheetrock the top is placed on until there you have it a complete unit technically luna house is a prefabricated home for me at least when I first heard about prefabricated homes I have this idea that they're cheap or low quality or do you think that that comes from I think a lot of it comes from certainly post-world War two ERA and the Association as well with prefab with modular housing which we also associate with the mobile home so you have that kind of connection in many people's minds even in so far as a lot of prefab construction is actually quite high-end this is Michelle Addington the Dean of the University of Texas at Austin school of architecture the opportunity to have much more precise control over manufacturing in particular is what enables the greater quality and so by going factory built you have an opportunity not only for higher quality control but the opportunity to use much higher end materials because they can be protected in the factory in a way that they're not going to be as protected on a home building site the downside is that you can't deviate from the design once you begin so you better be sure this is what you want our Luna house has three bedrooms and a sixty feet long and that's not changing and because the factory is a giant assembly line a problem with one house can delay all the other projects behind it in fact our original house was delayed so long that we needed to switch to a house further along the line but even if delays like these the total amount of time from blueprint approval to completion is around six months on average whereas a typical on-site construction could have taken up to a year Architects have actually been trying to accomplish some level of factory built housing for a hundred years and so it's gained some traction and some popularity in the last decade with the increasing popularity of design I think in a general level that happens with Apple that happens in the popular press and in everyday life in everyday life and so I think that that's kind of transmitted over to architecture as well architect Chris Craig ER is the founder ma modular and as the designer of the house we're building we're here at his home our business was founded with a primary goal of making modern that kind of architecture financially accessible the design we're building is called the Luna house floor plan made of three modular pieces modular design means these units can be configured in multiple arrangements they can even be stacked to create multiple floors you can think them like big Lego blocks that an architect can use to create the best design for the needs of the homeowner our house is composed of three main pieces one large module that includes one bedroom kitchen and living room and a smaller module that has two bedrooms connected by a bathroom and a third module for the entryway that acts as a connection for the other two we're working with a framework that is a Mina bowl to open floor plans lots of windows and so I think it is very modern friendly but you also get to choose all of your fixtures and finishes flooring there's definitely adequate room for customization with the finish in the house I got to say I knew that it was modular construction but it really didn't feel like it that is our goal with a design for it to feel not just like not a modular house but to feel like an architect design house if you were to drive on this block you'd say well I think an architect designed that so it automatically ups its cachet but there's still a lot of hurdles before you can really think of this kind of construction as being the future of homebuilding when you deal with something that's pre manufactured there's a tremendous amount of upfront costs in setting up that type of manufacturing particularly if you want to get the economies of scale of building large if we think about single-family homes there is very little upfront investment you can basically build in real time in terms of procurement of materials so the costs are incremental from that standpoint while we wait to see what the future will hold for factory built homes our home has already been placed on the ground right now though it's still just a shell over the next few months we'll work to finish off everything inside of the home create our own power generation and storage and fill it with the latest connected technology for comfort and convenience it'll be hard work but in the end we'll get a glimpse into what it means to actually live inside the home of the future thank you so much for watching now I'm sitting here in our home of the future but I'm curious to know what you think you need in your home in the future let us know in the comments below and we'll see you next week with a new episode