How to create our HOME?
It is not easy for anyone who wants to build a family house today. One of the dilemmas is how to build it, and here we are thinking not only of money, but also of building materials and technology. We think that we already know brick, we know its advantages and disadvantages, but this is a gross mistake, because today it is not very easy to get the type and properties of brick (the late B30) that we knew and used decades ago. Today, masonry panels, which only resemble brick in colour, are the norm, but have different properties in every other respect. Its loose, porous structure increases its thermal insulating properties while maintaining its heat-retaining capacity. Masonry units made using the new technology are more suited to infill masonry and less suitable for multi-storey buildings. What other options are there? The technology colloquially known as “lightweight construction”. This is not an exact term either, as timber and metal-framed (but even log and beam buildings are usually included in this category); small and large panel variations assembled on site or in a factory; frame-only, or almost completely prefabricated as a wall can also be included in the lightweight category.
The materials used – we’re only referring to thermal insulation – are polystyrene, XPS, glass wool, rock wool, blown wood fibre, cellulose, glass, pur- and pyrfoam, and the sheet materials used to make the slates; plasterboards, which are used for building, vapour resistant, waterproof, fire retardant, radiation protection; and various gypsum fibre and MGO boards. With combinations of all of these, and by layering, almost any type of wall construction can be created, even individually, to meet the specific needs of a given family or institution.The only question is how to create a building or product suitable for housing from the various wall structures, using which technology.Increasingly popular are modular and container houses, mobile homes and so-called “Tiny Houses”, i.e. rolling houses.First, let us understand the technological variations.
A site-assembled building – where the frame structure is assembled on site – be it metal or wood, it is clad with some kind of board (OSB, gypsum fibre, V100 furniture board, etc.) and then filled with some kind of insulation material. The frame structure of the factory-built walls can be made of metal or wood, clad with different boards and filled with insulating materials.Houses made in this way are called prefabricated houses, but not yet finished houses.The term ‘prefabricated house’ is even protected by a standard in Austria, meaning: ‘In a factory, regardless of the weather, the walls are completed in full height and length, and are delivered to the prepared foundation in a separate vehicle and assembled to at least semi-finished condition.’ The lightweight and prefabricated houses have received much criticism, but also much praise, and their suitability is demonstrated by the thousands of satisfied homeowners who now use them.
Why is it criticised? Because of the seemingly simple on-site assembly, many people have tried to build such a house without any expertise, because one does not have to carry heavy bricks, carve them, put them on a rack, paint them, etc., but just put up a few pillars, tile and paint them, and it looks just like a brick house. Well hence the need to be cheaper then, and because they were built without expertise, of inadequate materials, ignoring building physics and building biology, they were damp, cracked, cooled, overheated, (they were shed category, and unfortunately such construction can still occur) so were rightly considered frivolous construction, and cheap.
With the right materials, the right plans and the right expertise, frame-framed, prefabricated buildings do not become damp, have no cooling surfaces, do not overheat in summer and do not cool down easily in winter, and with thinner walls more useful surface area can be created, while good insulation means less energy is needed to heat and cool the house. Of course, this can be a site-built house or a prefabricated house, either way you can build an excellent house, provided the contractor has the right experience and expertise.
In the old days, a major criticism of this technology, voiced by staunch supporters of traditional technology, was that the walls had no mass, no thermal resistance and therefore brick was better. Because we no longer heat our homes with a wood-burning stove or a tiled stove, which we heat well in the evening so that it is still warm enough in the morning and the walls can keep the heat in, but with some kind of continuous heating. In the meantime, energy efficiency has come to the fore and standards have become stricter, so the masonry has become lighter and lighter in order to improve its thermal insulation and heat-retaining capacity and value. Therefore, the Hungarian Chamber of Architects has issued a proposal that, as ‘brick’ has become lighter than lightweight walls, lightweight technology be replaced by the term ‘prefabricated technology’. Environmental awareness has also become more prominent, so the name of the Lightweight Construction Trade Section within the National Federation of Building Contractors has been changed to the Environmentally Conscious and Assembled Technology Trade Section. Our mosaic word name has been retained as MAKÉSZ. Membership is open to companies whose construction product(s) are certified, in today’s terms “assessed”, have a National Technical Assessment (NTA, formerly NTE) or European Technical Assessment (ETA) and apply it accordingly. Unfortunately, 11 years after the amendment of the Construction Products Regulation, even now, even the authorities are still looking for an ESI, an authorisation. Yes previously, the ÉME i.e. Technical Approval for Construction was the approval of a tested product for installation in buildings. Since 2013, the NMÉ i.e. National Technical Assessment assesses the properties of the product, for example the lightweight construction wall, but does not authorise it. It is up to the architect to decide whether, on the basis of the assessment, he can design the product for incorporation into a building and whether it can meet the requirements.
Environmental awareness includes the increasing use of natural, renewable or easily degradable end-of-life materials that do not harm the environment. This is not only the use of wood frames, but also the use of wood processed in other ways to produce wood veneers of different hardnesses and sizes. The use of hemp and straw as building materials is becoming increasingly common, as is the use of sheep’s wool as a building material in the form of boards and blown-in sheets, and even in thermal insulation systems. It sounds strange, doesn’t it, that environmental protection is being expressed as not cutting down any more trees. Wood can be managed in the same way as any other crop, only it has a longer growing life, but it can be recycled and even at the end of its life cycle of several hundred years, it decomposes easily! In addition to the above, it also has the enormous merit of producing 1m3 wood from 1.2 tonnes of CO2, which releases double this amount of oxygen into the atmosphere! Wood from sustainable forest management should be used as a building product. Many environmentalists would also like to ban the saw to prevent trees being felled, even though foresters believe that it is the saw that makes the forest grow. Large amounts of overstocked trees already emit minimal amounts of oxygen, so they sequester way less carbon!
As an underestimated material, loam is once again enjoying a renaissance, because in addition to its extremely good biological properties, it also has excellent physical properties. Little did we know that it has an anti-allergenic effect, can absorb 16 types of harmful substances from the air, has excellent humidity control properties inside the home and even retains heat. We are not, of course, talking about stamped-down loam, but about the use of loam today in a similar way to plasterboard, for example as fibreboard or as a finishing plaster inside the home. It should also be borne in mind that today only buildings with a near-zero energy demand can be built in compliance with the relevant regulations. Incidentally, the best way to achieve this value is to use prefabricated technology. In Europe, there are now prefabricated house manufacturers who produce only Plus Energy houses, i.e. they produce more energy than they need and store it not only with hot water storage but with advanced batteries! They also use similar technology for their modular houses, Tiny Houses. For these buildings, it should be noted that they are relocatable, Tiny Houses can be easily towed to a remote location, so they should be able to operate in island mode without external connection.
The most important aspect of home building is not the technology or the choice of building material. It is the living space, the design of the rooms, how much of what you need, what is the optimum size, spacing, temperature. How we will use what, how noisy we will be, or where we will be disturbed by the noise of other family members. We need to plan the layout of the rooms based on our habits, comfort, transport, where the sun will shine from, etc. If we choose a template, there is a good chance that we will have more or less of something, bigger or smaller than we like, or that it will not be oriented properly. As a point of view, you need to determine how energy is to be captured, how energy is to be dissipated, ventilation, shading, storage, etc. It is not so easy, when you think about it, to design a family home that really makes you feel the way you want to feel. What is the simplest technology, how much surface area do we need? Measure the minimum areas of your current living space where you move around and use regularly. Which of these objects are in daily use. How much of the storage space is used by our everyday objects? What are the surfaces and spaces where we could put our things? From such an approach, we can find out how much space we need for our lifestyle. For modular houses and Tiny Houses, we need to further minimise our space requirements. For these, the main consideration is that if we are bothered by the noise, traffic, neighbours and crowding in our current place of residence and want freedom, peace and quiet, to get away from the world, or to live in a new community, in a natural environment, in a more environmentally conscious, healthier environment, then it is the necessities of our over-urbanised lives that we need to leave behind.
Which technology should we choose to build the home of our dreams? Don’t start with which is the cheapest, because you’ll go wrong. For the reasons mentioned above, many people think that prefabricated houses with frame (lightweight) construction technology should be cheaper. This is not true. Because the cost of the wall structure represents only 10-15% of the price of a house, the rest being the foundation, roof, electrical installation, external and internal vents, heating, ventilation, hot and cold tiling, sanitary fittings, etc. So what is the advantage? Thinner walls, better thermal insulation, much lower energy bills, plus, for the same external envelope size, a larger net surface area, and the materials used protect the environment and the climate. In terms of lifespan, the building will remain stable for hundreds of years, it is more resistant to earthquakes because of the frame structure, there are no thermal bridges, the internal climate is healthier, it is a factory-made industrial product, and the construction costs are more calculable. With modular houses, Tiny Houses, your ” residence ” is built in the factory, ready to move into and occupy immediately.
After all, how much choice do we have? There are still plenty, as you can choose between a metal or wooden frame, with different insulation and cladding materials. If environmental considerations are paramount, you can opt for a wooden frame, as is the case in the vast majority of European countries. Beyond that, there are many variations in the choice of wall construction. How thick should it be, 14-16-20cm, what sheet material should it be covered with (slated) gypsum fibre, plasterboard, osb, magnesium oxide, aqua panel, fibreglass, single layer, double layer, with or without a gap, what internal insulation, single or combined, glass wool, wood wool, rock wool, cellulose, hemp, or perhaps straw (soon even with slab sheep wool? ) and the outer sheet, also osb, gypsum fibre board, furniture board, hard frosted paper, which provide the stiffness, or in the vernacular, the disc stiffness. How many more variations and different combinations of these give us the possibility to choose a wall construction that suits our needs, possibilities and of course requirements! There are many other factors to decide on, which, in addition to the thermal insulation of the walls, are very important in determining the operation, the maintenance and the costs. First of all, what kind and size of external windows, plastic or wood, possibly tinted or aluminium, not to mention the wood-aluminium combination, which is now considered the most aesthetic, but in price the premium category? The opening should be sliding, hinged, tilting, or combined, how to shade, with shutters, blinds, textile shades, etc., and before choosing the fittings and sanitary ware, we must decide what kind of heating we want. Today, the most comfortable and energy-efficient option is surface heating, because it uses low temperatures and requires little energy, which can be generated by a heat pump, that can be operated free of charge by solar panels. Now comes the tricky part, because we look at the budget and (unless we have a cost estimate made after the sketches are done, then we will know the order of magnitude) we find we have gone overboard with the costs, and we have to fiddle around with where and how much we can save, so that the usability is not compromised!
Another consideration might be whether to choose a company that produces a few houses a year using a simpler, manual method, or a CNC-controlled company that even uses a robot to produce a large number of prefabricated houses a year? The one who can offer us a service that meets our needs during the preparation phase, whose products and references we like, who we believe will be able to build the most environmentally friendly, energy-efficient house that meets our needs!
Are there any size limits?From January 2020, it will be possible to build a 4-storey prefabricated house in Hungary without a special permit and with the appropriate certification, and it will also be possible to live in a mini house under 50 sqm, which can be moved anywhere. Our suggestion is to design the right HOME by optimising the needs and available budget, technologies and materials!
Twenty years ago, 3.5% of family houses were light-frame houses, but today this figure is around 15% of all frame houses built with prefabricated technology. This is only because after 2015 the demand for such houses increased so suddenly that we could not cope with the capacity! From 2019 onwards, modular and container houses started to make a comeback, and Tiny House appeared, with already two manufacturers in Hungary.
Which is our house? “Where the environment, shapes, smells, sounds and colours harmonise with each other, where we feel comfortable in a pleasant environment, that is our house, that is our HOME!”
József Kárpáti
Ambassador of Bee Home
ÉVOSZ-MAKÉSZ Professional Section
Consultant for Environmentally Conscious Building
Készház Menedzser kft. Üv.
www.evosz-makesz.hu
tel.: +36 30 206 3360
