ᐅ Completion: Shell house: masonry construction or prefab home?

Hello from Lower Saxony,

we have found a nice plot of land and are currently planning our new house. It is now certain that we want to have a house designed by an architect. With the plans, we will then request quotes for a shell construction package (shell, windows, front door, roof, brickwork). We will either complete or subcontract the rest of the trades ourselves.

I tend to prefer a solid masonry house, but I’m still not entirely sure because I don’t fully understand the pros and cons yet. You can find quite a bit of information online on the topic, but it doesn’t always make things clearer. Maybe you could share your experiences or opinions, and then I will create a list of advantages and disadvantages.

And obviously, given the current construction costs, an important question is: what is more cost-effective for us?

Thank you, and have a nice Sunday

ceritus80 schrieb:

Actually, I tend to prefer a solid brick-and-mortar house, but I still can’t fully decide because the pros and cons aren’t completely clear to me yet. [...] Maybe you could share your experiences or opinions, and then I’ll create a list of advantages and disadvantages. And of course, considering the current building costs, an important question is, what is more affordable for us?

Forget approaching the specific truth for your individual case using the method of a sports bet (which team will score more goals “pro” or “contra”). The final result will be “42” after penalty shootouts in extra time. Just a party game, nothing more. The dangerous thing is that it looks like a methodical approach. You should better put your concluding question first and then proceed as follows:

ceritus80 schrieb:

It’s now clear that we want to have a house designed by an architect. With the documents, we will then get quotes for a shell house (shell construction, windows, front door, roof, facing brick). We will do the rest of the trades ourselves or subcontract.

Yes, exactly, have the architect really only “design” the house for you, meaning letting the architect complete design phases 1 and 2 (search terms: module A / house building roadmap). This way you will have exactly what you need for further clarification, namely a preliminary design (which is still construction method-neutral). With this, you approach suppliers of “both kinds,” i.e., building contractors for so-called solid brick-and-mortar houses and manufacturers of so-called prefabricated houses. Select four to five suppliers: two brick builders, two timber builders, and possibly a third from either group. To all these suppliers, ask the same two questions: “What does it cost if you 1. build exactly this house design* for us; and 2. alternatively, a model from your catalog that is as similar as possible?” Now you will get responses—expected and unexpected, concrete and vague, spontaneous and those after dialogue. You will learn more than you want to know: about fast salespeople and competent sales consultants, about expertise, stupidity, reliability, and boldness. And you will also gather enough useful information to continue working with. Whether building a private home turns out cheaper this time as brick or timber depends on each concrete case.

With the results, go back to the architect, who will now develop the preliminary design into a design development. If the results of the preliminary inquiry round are “undecided,” you won’t avoid the dice or coin toss. If the result is “pro timber,” the architect creates a design for a timber house, and you return to the “prefabricated house manufacturers” for a more detailed quote and the planning for permits and so forth. If the result is “pro brick,” the architect also completes design phases 4 to 7, and you find a general contractor for the shell construction through a tender. You already excluded the option that the architect only plans up to the permit stage and you immediately contract a general contractor instead of tendering, with the requirement of “what is cheaper,” since that path would cost more money in mistakes than common lay wisdom can imagine. In the upcoming November, you can read the detailed procedure described here in the four-part post series “House Building Roadmap Reloaded”. You should already be familiar with the further search terms as attentive readers of my posts (roughly from the last nine months; you don’t need to look further back).

*) Of course, you ask for a “weatherproof shell” each time—this or something similar is the stage of completion according to your description.

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Good evening,

Thank you for the tips. I will take a look at your blog. Basically, we want to proceed exactly as you described.
I’m already looking forward to the conversations with the home sellers. I am quite well trained in dealing with sellers/advisors and not completely new to the industry.

But back to the topic, setting aside the question of “what is cheaper/more expensive,” what other advantages or disadvantages are there when it comes to prefabricated houses? So far, the home sellers have listed the following reasons:

- Sustainability due to renewable raw materials (not an argument for me)
- Indoor climate is supposed to be better
- In summer, wooden houses don’t heat up or retain heat as much as solid construction
- Achieving KFW 40 standard is easier and more cost-effective
- Thinner walls and easier to hang items on them (not an argument for me—there are wall plugs for that)
- Better sound insulation inside and outside

Regarding wood or solid construction:
One of the selling points of modern wooden houses has been their durability for decades. People always refer to the current era as “modern.” By now, many of these buildings have either undergone extensive renovation or have been demolished. We also had one of those typical 1970s box-style houses. We noticed that sellers still use the same selling argument today. Whether it will prove true this time, we probably won’t know for several decades. Of course, the standard of wooden houses today is different, but solid masonry houses have already proven themselves, often unchanged in their construction method.
I also consider the argument about heating a masonry house to be just a common saying. Sun protection is the key. Insulated bricks, once they reach a certain thickness, also provide very good thermal insulation values. Subjectively, we always found wooden frame houses to be somewhat warmer in the height of summer compared to masonry houses. A potential advantage for some might be the shorter construction time, as well as the elimination of drying times for wall plaster, etc. In the end, we chose the masonry house because we live not far from the Danube, which in 1999 was already at our front door. I dare to say that a masonry house can handle severe water damage better than a wooden house, and the repair is, in direct comparison, simpler and more cost-effective to carry out.

ceritus80 schrieb:

I am really looking forward to the talks with the home sellers, [...] But back to the topic, setting aside the question "What is cheaper/more expensive," what other advantages/disadvantages are there regarding prefabricated houses? So far, the home sellers have mentioned the following reasons:

Why are you looking forward to talks with home sellers? (Only a minority of them have deep product knowledge.) Apart from the amusement of watching them awkwardly belittle competitors’ offers and/or treating customers as if they were fools, there is hardly anything to expect. The "pros and cons" are individually uninteresting because they are interchangeable: there are facts, and there are arguments, but the overlap between the two is negligible. Every seller tries to sell you a different story – but even from that, it’s hard to draw sound reasons for making decisions, because it may well happen that the boldest chatterbox happens to have the best product. And you might miss out on that if you harshly criticize this company.

You are left with little choice but to separate sales from advice and seek something like what is called "fee-based consulting" in the insurance industry. Or to be knowledgeable yourself. Not all sales arguments are lies or objectively irrelevant, but subjectively, what matters differs in each individual case overall. There is no product with only advantages nor one with only disadvantages, and your relatively best compromise might be very different from mine. That is why, as an advisor, I always find it important to advise rather than patronize. In other words, to “coach” my clients, help them find their truth, and present them with the relevant differences in the particular comparison so they can weight them appropriately.

Simply claiming as a black box, “Provider X is the best, my calculation method is secret – just trust me, because I have all the wisdom,” is of little use to you, and that is why I reject it. You may have read from me here several times that I consider other advisors no less competent than myself (sales consultants rarely or never do that), and for interested parties firmly convinced that a “prefab” house is their solution, I often recommend specialized colleagues whom I mention regularly as even better choices. Less than ten days ago, I spontaneously updated the fourth part of my basement rule series by adding a reference and link to a freshly released explanatory video by a colleague; elsewhere, I have also praised a branded “prefab” house distributor multiple times (because they provide sensible advice and offer tips useful to clients regardless of brand).

Yes, even branded commission-based advisors do not have to be bad. By the way, independent architects are also a good option if you want to be guided to your optimal home in a supplier-neutral way. Unfortunately, architects are not always construction method-neutral; many are strongly committed to either masonry or timber construction. For this reason, I recommend initially commissioning an architect only for “Module A” (as I call it in the homebuilding plan, meaning design phases 1 and 2), because up to this point a quasi omnipotent preliminary design emerges and the owner has a resting phase to make a crucial decision that may later lead to changing architects.

I would like to highlight one of the aspects you mentioned, namely total wall thickness: when I started working in construction consulting forty years ago, the differences were significant. Back then, a typical “prefab” house had a monolithic masonry wall of 30 cm (12 inches) thickness, and the 365 mm (14 inch) size was just emerging. The “prefab” house at that time had around 16 cm (6 inches) wall thickness but, in terms of thermal conductivity, it performed two octaves better and was usually, as today, mistakenly called timber “frame” construction while actually being a thermal insulation composite system.

Today, to paraphrase Hilmar Koppers, we are talking about “peanuts,” meaning only two to three centimeters (1 inch) difference in wall thickness within the same efficiency class (for example, EH55 under the Building Energy Act or EH40, comparing “apples to apples” or “pears to pears”), and this comparison covers everything from monolithic to external thermal insulation composite systems (ETICS) to wood-based insulation composite systems (WICS). Yes, in EH40, the masonry walls are usually more expensive than timber ones. You can practically forget the aspect of indoor climate in the market, as clay builders are niche players and therefore statistically insignificant. However, the “massive” and the “prefab” market leaders seem to agree on one thing: the real winner is esoteric nonsense. Well, at least they have a “common enemy.” ;-)

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https://www.instagram.com/11antgmxde/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/bauen-jetzt/

Whether Stone or Timber Frame
Most of the time, it comes down to a gut feeling, a memory from the past, or something that cannot be fully explained rationally. Flood victims will probably lean more towards solid construction (see above). Conservative people probably will too.
Others find wood more exciting or tactile than stone, or simply find the prefab home industry fundamentally interesting and are therefore considering timber frame construction.

ceritus80 schrieb:

I’m already looking forward to the conversations with the home sellers. I have quite some experience dealing with salespeople/advisors and am not completely unfamiliar with the industry.

I would approach this with a bit more openness. After all, times when salespeople were pushy have become rare. Don’t forget: You are the one who wants something and you are a private buyer 🙂