With Pre Fab, have a home, delivered home!

-by Vikram Afzulpurkar

They say that assembly line production really started with Henry Ford’s motor company. So effectively though arguably this pioneer invented the assembly line and suddenly cars, which in the 1890s to 1910 were affordable only by the mega rich, became available cheaply. Can the same happen with pre fabricated houses? There is a strong possibility yes. Pre fab houses are special dwelling types of prefabricated building, which are manufactured offsite.
 Here, sections of a house are already made and merely need to be fitted in. It of course is a cliché to say that the product is produced on an assembly line. So, while time is hugely saved, there is no doubt that the convenience for all layers of ‘players’ in “construction” is a lot. Currently, if you as a buyer view this so called “market of convenience” which will emerge soon, the obvious advantages are:

• Time saving
• Quality of product
  
• Reduction in cost for buyers because less of real human capital is expected to be used in laying out such housing.

Take the case of a certain Mr Adiga who earlier missed a ‘target’ in life, such as getting a farmhouse by his 50th birthday. He mentioned this to his architect when prospecting a new home to which the reply was, “Okay, you just finish your week’s business trip to the Atlantic. I will have a house ready for you.” True to his word, the architect had a flawless house ready on Adiga’s return, plus a twenty year guarantee on leaks.
To maintain a low budget, gypsum walls and roofing boards with window cut-outs were bought readymade from Cochin. Concrete filling made inside them ensured the house was burglary proof. Instead of spending about 20 lakhs on a steel and concrete construction, Adiga saved about 35 per cent!
Technology available today can help nullify fungus and make it the material water proof. To give you a sense of firsts, the first pre fab house in India was built in Coimbatore. So it’s a practical solution that someone even in a relatively small town like Coimbatore saw fit and not necessarily an experimental idea of modernist thought from mega cities like Bengaluru, Mumbai, Delhi and Chennai.
Therefore the pre fab home is a larger category of technology to finish a home, which consists of having readymade sections of a house. Progressively from supplying smaller components to larger components, these dwellings can claim to be pre fab:

• Buildings built in components i.e. panels,
• Modular homes (modules),
• Manufactured homes (transportable sections) come under the umbrella of a pre fab home.

While metros in India get ready for basic pre fab homes, remember that in western countries they are assuming lovely shapes and some are even getting ready in 3 to 5 days. In fact, just last month Amazon started home delivery of such tiny houses in the US.
Soon to come to India? We sure hope so! Get ready to welcome the future. Pre fab may stand for pre ‘fabulous!’

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