Prefabricated houses reduce construction costs and time

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The São Paulo City Hall announced the availability of modular houses for temporary housing for homeless people. The type of housing, however, goes far beyond the provisional. Brazilian companies are betting on the European culture of prefabricated and modular homes for retail.

Tenda launched the startup Alea to dedicate itself to the construction of houses in closed condominiums for popular housing in cities in the interior of São Paulo.

“Houses represent around 70% of the potential demand in the real estate market in Brazil and virtually no developer is focused on homes. Our strategy is to solve this paradox through the industrialization of civil construction”, says Luiz Maurício Garcia, CFO and director of Tenda’s IR.

The model used by Alea is off-site construction with wood frame technology. In this type, the house is built with wooden boards in a factory and transported to the construction site only for assembly and finishing.

“With this technology, we are able to offer products for entry-level families and a product with superior quality: they are semi-detached houses, with excellent acoustic and thermal insulation in wooded areas”, says Garcia.

Wood frame technology was created in the United States, which today applies the model to almost all of its constructions. The technique enables the construction of houses with up to five floors and has among its advantages the speed of delivery of the work and the lower cost compared to masonry construction.

By using prefabricated materials, light and easy to transport, a house can be ready in two months.

So far, Alea has launched six pilot projects in Santa Bárbara d’Oeste, Iperó, Mogi das Cruzes, Leme, Araraquara and Itapetininga. The factory is located in the Gran Floridian logistics warehouse center, on the Governador Adhemar de Barros Highway (SP-340), has 18,000 m² and machinery imported from a Swedish company.

The selling price of the units for the final consumer ranges from R$150,000 to R$200,000, with subsidies of up to R$47,500 through the Casa Verde e Amarela program.

The houses have two bedrooms, private backyard and parking space. The condominium offers the options of a single-story house of 44 m² and 47 m² and future residents have access to a wide range of leisure items, such as barbecue, playground, pet space and fitness.

According to the builder, an Alea woodframe house is estimated to reduce the carbon footprint by 15 tons compared to a concrete wall house.

Headquartered in Belo Horizonte and with two factories in Minas Gerais and Pará, Opus is preparing to produce modular 3D houses of up to 73 m² with galvanized steel chassis and insulated panels. Inspired by containers, the constructions use less carbon and tend to be more affordable for the final consumer.

According to the company’s CEO, Felipe Ventura, prices will start at R$40,000. “It is a production line with the help of robots. There is no waste of material and it will take two professionals to install a house. In one day, the house is installed”, he says.

Because it is prefabricated in modules that fit together, the consumer can move with the house, just move to another flat piece of land. “It is possible to place two modules on a trailer”, says Ventura.

The construction company from Minas Gerais will have three models of residential houses starting in 2023: the Opus Uno, measuring 27 m² with a bedroom, bathroom, living room, kitchen and terrace; the Opus Lux, measuring 81 m², consisting of three modules, with a suite, two semi-suites, living room, kitchen and balcony; and the Opus View, measuring 73 m² in three modules and on two floors, with a living room on the top floor and three bedrooms, as well as a kitchen and bathroom on the ground floor.

The company invested around BRL 20 million in a new factory, with the expectation of being able to produce one module every ten minutes, increasing from one thousand modules per year to up to 13 thousand.

“It’s a way to reduce the housing deficit, accelerating the construction process of a product with better finishing and modern”, says Ventura.

Parts of prefabricated houses…

…WITH WOOD FRAME

Responsible for sustaining the construction, structure has three main components:

  1. Wooden pillars called mullions, corresponding to the height of the ceiling
  2. Barroting – represent the floor that is above the ground floor
  3. Sleepers, work as a support for the windows, configured as horizontal pieces

in the step of sealwood frame construction uses cladding sheets and joisting sheets, as is done in masonry construction

In the wood frame, it is the plates of the so-called OSB (Oriented Strand Board), which are normally used for sealing. Specific to avoid infiltrations

When sealing the floors of the house, the sheets are thicker

For the finishing cement boards are used in wet areas of the property, such as the kitchen, bathroom and laundry room

At electrical and plumbing installations are the same as those in masonry

For bracing reinforcement, wood frame construction uses a wind protection French hand call

And waterproof rubber tapes make it easy to connect wooden parts to foundations

🇧🇷 WITH GALVANIZED STEEL IN 3D

Projects that use steel panels, called “steel frame”they are light and have good thermoacoustic insulation

O closure can be made with cement boards, drywall or wood

The construction uses isothermal panels to prevent the passage of heat and maintain the temperature of the internal environment unchanged

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