Credit: Modcell

Avert the eyes.  Yes, they are at it again.  Brits hold no modicum of decency when it comes to their efforts at mating sustainable products with modern building methods.  Hemp and straw are so pure and modest, while industry is so brutish and base.  Will it ever work?

Modcell is attempting, in their Flying Factory, to create the illusive commercially viable, modular, super-insulated, high-performance, low energy ‘passive’ buildings built using renewable, locally sourced, carbon sequestering materials.  I know, I know.  Crazy.  When will these money hungry, earth-lovers give up?

Seriously, will anyone ever figure out how to combine truly sustainable materials with commercially viable and modern construction techniques?   Yes.  Modcell has (and I am sure some others have too).  But price is always the kicker.  Earthen materials usually involve higher man hours and thus higher cost (as I have discussed in this blog before).  Straw bale gets around this better than say, cob.

Prefab, modular walls cut down on construction time onsite, which is usually another drawback to earthen homes.  But with Modcell, an average wall panel weighs well over a ton, requiring special equipment to assemble.  (No problem for Modcell, because they make more money putting everything together with their Flying Factory equipment on site.)  So how much does it all cost?

According to a Footprint blog, as quoted by Jetson Green’s write-up of Modcell’s BaleHaus at Bath, a 926 sq. ft. house would cost $214,000.  Once you add the expense of the land this creates a price tag that hardly seems affordable.  I can’t quite figure out why Modcell’s cost ends up this high, but apparently it does.  Ultimately, I still have to ask, “Why would anyone pay to build a Modcell house when it costs more than conventional building?”

If I am a granola I can build my own house with straw and hemp and mud, and spend much less.  If I am a yuppie I can hire a “green” contractor to get the job done for me without spending a whole lot more money, and the end product will be more personalized and unique.  While I still hold out hope that the Granola Ethic can be commercialized for general consumption, we haven’t arrived yet.  I commend Modcell for the grand experiment they are embracing.  Maybe they will pave the path toward eventual success in creating a new species of home, one everybody on earth can embrace without dooming future generations.

I think Buildblog puts it best in their recent post, “Pre-fab houses don’t work.”  They go on to list 10 reasons why pre-fabbers have gotten it wrong at a time when I believe that most things were in their advantage to get it right.  Like so many other huge changes that are taking place across the U.S. in the way that we think and live, this time of economic malaise could have been an opportunity for radical visionaries to rebuild American housing.  Instead we came up with a stupider and more convoluted way to build the same old, stupid and convoluted environs.  God bless America.

Pre-fab was born to be cheap and easy.  It was meant for rednecks and common schlebs.  Along comes the “green” revolution, and the discovery is made that pre-fab is a kissing cousin to efficiency as well.  Hallaluia.  Twixt the two together, and it’s a match made in heaven.  This newest reboot of pre-fab should have become a doubly (production and energy costs) cheap-ass home for cost-conscious redneck and granola alike.

Instead the Frankenstein fabbers, ablaze with style and form, created factory pre-fabbed studios and villas.  With fancy, green materials and high-tech jobbers, glamourous pre-fabs were built in pods, cores, units and cells.  Some can be put up and taken down in a few days (before you spend the next few months “finishing” them).  I simply can’t understand the point behind a $300 a sq. ft. pre-fabbed house, and I’ve tried, honest. (Other than possible eliminating those nasty construction jobs that only immigrants want, at a time when it is most convenient to blame all the stinking immigrants for our woes.  Oh damn, I said it!)

I realize that we have grown fond of comfortable predictability in things like Star Bucks coffee and McDonald’s hamburgers.  But, ultimately, people want originality and individuality in a home.  Pre-fab and original, while not mutually exclusive, will never be playmates.  They have gotten over their differences in the past with the help of one thing, cheap-ass Americans that want to live on their own land and call their own shots.  Pre-fab futurists should look to these people to find their way.  What do penny pinching individualists want in tomorrow’s home?  What are they willing to give up to keep the life they want to live?

Make it efficient.  Make it smart.  Make it fly the finger in the face of the establishment.  But for God’s sake, most importantly, make it cheap.

EcoUrban Home for sale in St. Louis

But… there are still several hurdles that are plaguing the pursuit.  The most obvious to me is property prices.  EcoUrban is working in St. Louis.  With urban lots going for under $10,000, keeping the overall cost below $150,000 becomes possible.  But what if you don’t want to live in Detroit or Cleveland?

Second, there is labor.  I am encouraged to see more and more contractors and builders increasing their repertoire of green products and processes.  But still, paying for skills in more sustainable building practices can be cost prohibitive.  Some apparent “silver bullets” of sustainable building run into trouble with labor costs as well.  I am a personal fan of earthen building because the basic materials are dirt.  I have some basic building skills and a job that doesn’t pay much (so my labor is cheep).  But for most, it just isn’t affordable to pay people for hundreds of hours of labor to ram earth or lay adobes.

Third, there are materials.  It is still more costly to build smart than to build the “Home Depot Special”. (Home Depot is getting better about its products, and I am impressed that they are partnering with LEED to develop “Affordable LEED” housing.)  Of course some of this is simple supply and demand.  Until new products take over a significant market share they will be more expensive to produce and harder to find.  But even prefabricated modular style homes falter, in my opinion, when it comes to material cost.  In most cases it makes no sense to me to pay $50,000 to $100,000 for a modular shell that has to be transported to the sight, and then have to spend another $100,000 to various contractors to finish on location.  Often I feel like the true cost of the materials is still not being represented in the final price tag.  Yet, there are some people working to use actual sustainable materials and lower the prefab costs far enough to make modular a possibility.

Lastly, we have to overcome indifference toward the poor.  Mostly, the “green” building industy is focusing on making money.  I understand this, and at a certain level, endorse it.  But, if we are going to make a real move toward sustainability it can’t be just for the rich.

Personally, I think the answer to the $100 a sq. ft. dilemma lies deeper in the cultural values we use to define home and our deeply guarded individualism.  Maybe if we valued community and relationship in slightly different ways we could find answers to our housing woes without killing the planet.