Prefab houses are eco-friendly heros for universal housing in India
Prefabricated houses which are created off-site and of sight and put together on-site can be one point solution for urban slums. But is it all? The industry has actually evolved to meet the need of fancy but financially viable and environmentally friendly houses.
They can have multiple-rooms, cross-ventilation , double-glazing, high level of insulation and capacity for climate control.
There are these carbon positive houses which produce more energy on site than what is consumed by the building. The houses have thermal insulation and are capable of withstanding extreme weather situations like hurricanes and tornadoes. They are extremely sturdy structures. They were around since the 1980s and evolved with time into enormous elegance and modernity as there are open concept kitchens and multiple slider doors. These modular homes halve the waste production besides providing tax benefit. These days, they have garage, sporadic windows from floor to ceiling. All of the modular buildings are recyclable. And even the cost of construction is way more predictable than the traditional home construction. There are high standard prefabricated houses there in places like new south Wales, Melbourne and Victoria.
They have a success story in Hong Kong housing schemes for the densely populated urban cities. The most frequently used precast components were precast facade (51%), precast staircase (22%), semi-precast slab (9%) and semi-precast balcony (7%). Prefabrication is a common practice in Hong kong in public housing schemes for the last two decades and it has been successful too. The adoption of prefabricated homes reduces construction time by almost 20%. In the present times we are struggling with the industrial and factory waste which have been found to be reduced by 56 % in case of Hong Kong.The studies on Prefabricated homes in Hong Kong have revealed that they are extremely useful for housing schemes in densely populated cities where these factory- made houses are proving themselves to be economically and environmentally beneficial. In construction of prefab, there is lesser risk to the lives of workers as compared to when they work in high
Putting together the building may take 10 -12 weeks. And cost may go around 215–315 USD for the usual two two bed-room houses.
India is aspiring for universal housing scheme and most coastal areas in India are prone to cyclone and heavy rains. There are other areas which receive the most sunlight like Rajasthan. And there there are areas like metro cities where there is extensive sale of air conditioners. Also, there are a new category of migrants called the climate refugees. The modular homes which can control the climate are one point solution to these issues. Air conditioners themselves reinforce the worsening of climate. So the very condition which was supposed to be escaped is reinforced by Air conditioners.
Moreover, cutting rocks for building houses is not sustainable in a country of size like India. A sustainable shelter scheme is required to assure universal housing. Moreover, with carbon positive houses, we can overcome household energy needs. These houses are easily displace-able. So if the houses are required to be shifted for construction of Dams or other big government project, that can be done without destroying the house and disrupting the families. The problem of dust and on-site noise pollution is gone . A major benefit of using prefabrication techniques when compared to conventional construction is the high quality of precast components due to better quality control achieved at the factory. Precast facades and lost form panels have a high quality of finished work enhancing durability.
Prefabricated telephone booths are such a common site and even prefab compartments for the construction workers involved in building bridges are so common.
Prefabricated toilets are usually seen near metro stations in Delhi like near Delhi University metro station. Such prefabricated toilets can be easily installed in government schools where girls have had time in going to school because of lack of toilets.
There can be prefabricated make-shifts for mobile migrants for whom permanent housing will be a waste of time and resources. There are two million homeless people in India right now. Many of them migrants from poor states who aspired to earn a living as a daily wage laborer but failed to find a job and ended up on streets for the rest of their lives. Of course they need other incentives too besides housing but it doesn’t mean that we can do away with housing.
In case studies in Building projects in Auckland it came out that This study has quantified the prefab building system as beneficial in terms of cost, time and productivity improvements over the traditional building system (TBS). The cost saving delivered by the prefab system over the TBS was 19% to 24% in community building projects. The time saving achieved was 34%, with the highest time saving of 50%. The productivity improvement was 7%, the highest productivity gain of 11%. This result might suggest that prefab could provide the most effective approach to delivering the 400,000 houses planned to be built under the Auckland Housing Strategy over the next three years.
Influences of other fixed factors such as location, project size/complexity, procurement and contract strategies, type of prefabrication and the degree of standardization or replication are yet a matter of further discussion. Like the location of the project can affect pace of it and the cost of transportation if it happens to be in tougher and farther terrains.
It is understandable that there will be more skilled jobs and most manual work would be replaced by automation so there is risk that people will not get jobs in construction work. But, India is a big country, why do people need a construction job when we are short of labor in many other sectors. They may be shifted to other sectors with the well-planned people friendly government policies.
The adoption of prefabrication compared with traditional construction demonstrated significant advantages, such as improved quality control, reduction of construction time (20%), construction waste (56%), dust and noise on-site, and labor requirement on-site (9.5%). In addition, the Gross Floor Area exemptions under the incentives schemes of the Joint Practice Notes contributed to significant cost benefits for developers
There is reduction in water consumption by 41%, construction time by 20% and labor requirement by 9.5%. However, there was an increase in energy consumption by 12%, and in construction cost by less than 1% . The prefabrication contributed to a cleaner and safer working environment on-site. The use of prefabricated components in the building industry would contribute to higher productivity and easier management in quality issues and project control link.
The impediments of adopting prefabrication were generally the limitation in element dimension due problems with transportation and lifting equipment, small site dimensions in dense urban areas, and the lack of on-site storage area for precast components. Prefabrication also required advanced coordination between professionals and as elements are manufactured before the commencement of the construction on-site, early planning and design decisions are essential. This also provided less flexibility in late design modifications during the construction phase. Building Information Modelling (BIM) serves as a useful tool in facilitating the on-site assembly services (OAS) of prefabricated construction for its benefits of powerful management of physical and functional digital presentations..
Building information modeling is a process involving the generation and management of digital representations of physical and functional characteristics of places. Building information models are files which can be extracted, exchanged or networked to support decision-making regarding a building or other built asset.
