Your the best Belinda Love your vids

Fine report! I was a modular home builder many years. Always challenges.

I would not use it for load bearing walls, also I would put a fire protection around just in case of fire, it will melt so the protection is to buy you time to escape the bldg.

How’s about we take a retired shipping container, and make a mold out of it for straw bails, or papercrete?!?

All the still-running modular building firms I know of all have very small serving areas due to the reason you stated. Most of them believe about 200-300 miles radius is somewhat ideal for business plan in market, materials, shipping, delivery, and other logistics.

The real issue with these products are the locking system it's a total rip-off the consumer is paying $10,000 plus dollars to have their homes remodeled with these products. Do your homework the locking system is failing

Just another shitty product for the middle class people, nothing in this product is a luxury just a word to get the middle class people attached to it

Thank you very, very much for this eye-opener! Much appreciated!!

Your videos are very informative and inspiring, I request you to make videos on the innovations of aerogel as you mentioned few examples at the end of the video...

Kind of. Have you missed the border immigration flood? The hiring of illegals have driven man hour construction costs. Not to forget our ecology has been purposely destroyed. And drop the junk science CO2 BS.

These bankruptcies are sign of an absence of innovation. There is still a lot of human labor involved. There is almost no automation

This is disappointing. Hopefully the industry will learn all the right lessons. I am 100% certain modular homes are the future. The productivity of human labor does have a hard cap. You can give workers better tools & simplify/standardize processes but there is a limit. In a factory machines can take over an increasingly large part.

Why don't you try investing into recycled plastic 2 x 4 are 2 * 4 and so on music all your building material is solid did never deteriorate it doesn't break and it's recyclable

Pier foundation are much superior 😊

I installed an LVP floor and it has been great. Just make sure the floor is level first. Laminate floors can be very slippery, but the LVP floor is not. Still, putting "luxury" and "vinyl" together seems like a first-rate marketing coup.

There is a vast housing and building surplus in america. The problem is we have marginalized many regions and slummed up most of our cities.

200$/ft for a pre-fab 🤣🤣🤣 Over >1500€/m2 for build only. You know what Villa I can build in EU for that price!?

It’s be interesting here to compare what strongtowns says is needed to address the US housing crisis. Beyond this, modular housing is confronted by the real world. It cannot be standardized for economies of scale.

No more plastic! Just NO

Modular was supposed to be cheaper to build... Now all these companies have all built elaborate expensive techniques to produce those houses and are charging more for them than it costs to build it custom made on site. The only benefit is planed timing and time to built

When venture capital and tech bros FAFO.

I'm not impressed by the modular industry. If the selling point of modular design is supposed to be the savings you'd get from going with modular structures, they pale by comparison to a "tract" builder. It would be more meaningful to have factories build a kit of parts that could be assembled on-site by tract builders, IMO -- like the old Sears homes. Built at tract-scale level, all the permitting, TIFs, infrastructure costs would be shared among a wide group of homeowners instead of being shouldered individually as one does with modular homes.

Great comparison between polystyrene and polyisocyanurate, @BelindaCarr. Couple corrections: 0:20 "The monomer styrene is composed of a benzene ring (C6H6) and ethylene." It's benzene ring and vinyl (C2H3), not ethylene (C2H4). That's why it's also known as vinylbenzene. 6:40 "XPS can also attract ants and termites even though it's not an organic material." XPS is an organic material since it's a carbon-based compound. That's why ants and termites are attracted to it. One thing I would add is fire toxicity. 2011 study found that polyisocyanurate is the most toxic material insulation, mainly because of higher hydrogen cyanide production when burning. Fire toxicity is ranked PIR > PUR > PHF > EPS in under-ventilated condition, PIR > PUR > EPS > PHF in well-ventilated condition. Reference Stec, A. A., & Hull, T. R. (2011). Assessment of the fire toxicity of building insulation materials. Energy and Buildings, 43(2-3), 498-506.

Please do a deep dive into BOXABL!😊

We like it or not, container homes are the future of housing. But to make it work we have to think a bit out of the box (no pun intended) 1) How much space do we actually need? 300 sqf, 500 sf, 1000 sf, 2000 sf? We have bedrooms, dinning rooms, living rooms, bathrooms in our homes, we heat them 24/7, we cool them 24/7 but we only spend a few hours in each room. So, here we go, the big waste! Unused space! We are not working, eating, sleeping, watching TV at the same time. We just switch from an activity to another. So, if we can just push down a shelf (30 seconds or less) and that shelf became a bed, we saved space and money, the environment and lot of time ( because we do not have to slave all our lives to buy lots of things we do not fully use). Let's look at recreational vehicles. They are very practical. In a 22ft x 8ft RV can sleep at least 4 persons. So in a 22 by 8 you can have at least 2 beds, kitchen, dinette, bathroom. A container 20 ft x 8 ft is more than enough for most of us. 2) New container or used container? This is a no brain question. Brand new container of course! You can buy a brand new container 20 x 8 x8 for $5000. If you buy a brand new container you can buy it at discount without doors. You do not need the doors. More, you can even tell the supplier to forget about the back panel as well. You do not need it. So, you get a 20 ft container with both ends opened. At one of the end you put a sliding door, at the other end you place an 8 x 4 window. Here we go, you got your brand new container home without any structural change. 3) What about insulation? Easy job. Why everyone assumes that the insulation has to be inside? It can be outside! You cover the container with a tarp, you place 1 ft insulation on each side and on top, then zip everything with a PVC heavy-duty truck tarp. Such heavy duty tarp does cost up to $500 and last up to 10 years. Convenient, I would say. So, we got a container with a 1ft "blanket"! Our container is not exposed to water, snow, UVs. It can last 50 years! Every 10 years you just replace the tarp ( $500) On top of the container we place solar panels, to get some electricity and drive the rain and snow down. 4) What about interior Isn't the container new ? With the paint we like ( as we ordered). It is! So, nothing else to do there. Just get some RV stuff and fill it. Or just be inventive and create your own very foldable stuff. Here's your "house" for less than 20k! 5) I want to move it. No problem. Take the solar panels and the blanket (tarp/insulation) off, place the container on a trailer and move it anywhere you want. It's not even oversize load without blanket. Once you reached the destination, put back the blanket and the solar panels.

Love this video, I think it was well balanced and inclusive. We are still big supporters of this technology but we see your critical thinking on this topic. Thank you 🙏

Well done video. I'd love to get your thoughts on Boxabl.

I would pir 2 more problemsmthet are conected. 1 cost. At the end of the day the budget are similar for standard and prefab. The quicker time for people thet are struggling financially plays no big role. It's more a "get rich quick" scheme for most companies then a sustainable business. 2 sustainablyti/net zero/carbon neutral agenda. I understand and I am for new technologies and building in a our dance with nature and local product. But the push now is scary, and makes homes not affordable for people. Make the technologies compelling, not to push it with regulation or like a selling point and thet push the prices up.

I think you're missing two of the biggest problems with modular construction--transportation and "sustainability." None of these modular companies can reach an entire region much less every state/country whereas stick built companies are everywhere. Thus, the cost of transporting prefab components to the build site adds to the over all cost (not to mention the fact that you are also limited to what fits on the back of a truck). Also, they seem far too interested in current marketing buzz words of "sustainability" and "carbon neutral" than realistic words like "affordability." Do they really think the average person is willing to pay 50%-100% more for a smaller, modular home just because it recycles rainwater or has solar powered door knobs?

Good video. Well spoken and objective discussion. I would love to see a dedicated video on Boxabl

Hemp is better 🔥

Nope.. plastic is already killing the planet

Building homes with pre-cast concrete? Well, that has tradition, in communist European countries.

There is a huge missing element to this story, and that is legacy developers would rather invest in and destroy these disruptive companies vs allow them to shake up an industry so badly in need.. We are working with a less than 5 yr old modular group, and they've done things far differently than most of these groups in that there is no automation via robots.. standard building practices only, through highly standardized processes

Here in Ghana, shipping containers are converted into shops that sell a range of items from provisions to clothing. You might want to investigate that as well. They have been in use for decades and the proliferation suggests their usefulness.

I agree. Level headed conversations. We can't behave as though a solution is 💯. It is important to discuss the issues that stick out and address them. Homes built from shipping containers could definitely be the solution for others. A viable alternative to be explored. To have the best of it, there is need to keep an eye on improving the technology while making it safer.

Belinda is back! *happy construction noises*

Thanks for this video. Very informative. I was actually wondering about this recently. Every time I hear about the housing crisis, and it's been on my mind a lot lately, one of my first thoughts usually immediately goes back to 'well what about the modular industry?' this would seem to be the perfect answer to the currently runaway issue of constantly inflated stick-built housing prices. The promise of less costly but durable and attractive homes that can be produced on a faster timeline and adjusted to meet any budget seems like the perfect solution for millions. This leads me to wonder why they're not getting more public support from elected officials or why they don't seem to be more commonly used in my area (California, south of LA). Somebody suggested that organized lobbying from the construction trades might be one factor. I really hope that's not it but I wouldn't be surprised. Whatever the primary obstacles are whether they are social, political or indigenous to the modular industry, I really hope we can resolve them quickly bec I'm not sure I see a real solution in the immediate future to this and other countries' housing problems without this industry. Cheaper, durable but also livable and pleasant homes of all sizes and amenity levels is an option that everyone clearly needs and should have access to, so I truly hope whatever the primary obstacles are they can be successfully mitigated so this industry can be allowed to grow to meet the full demand. Also I've heard that in some or many cases banks will not give loans for modular homes? Well that really needs to be banned I believe. I would like to hear the rationale but I don't think it will convince me that that is the right thing to do. Every family or household no matter their income level has a human and civil rights to own a home of their own and I don't see why seeking a trailer, a mobile home, or a modular home should be seen as any different than someone who wants to buy a standard brick-and-mortar site built home. The only difference will be the dollar value. Banks will provide vehicle loans but they balk at loans for modular homes? That doesn't pass the smell test with me. Sounds selfish and elitist and discriminatory to me. Those in the bottom half of income brackets also have a right to seek homeownership and site-built standard homes should not be the only homes that are seen as legitimate.

Is sad to see that these modular manufactures aiming to create more affordable homes were not able to create sustainable business. One thing that appears common with the up-starts is they don't focus on building communities, or selling a minimum number of units to a given geography. This comes with added burden of permits and restrictions while adding to shipping costs. Traditional mobile home builders have offered the option of mobile home parks, which allow leasing of a smaller land area, thus lowering sighting costs. Even home builders focus on building communities, (20+ homes at time) vs. doing one-off construction on a dedicated site. Approvals, inspections, permit cost, and infrastructure cost are lower and can be spread across multiple customers.

What do you think about Elon Musk's moves in the field?

A combination of several types is best because some are better low frequency dampeners and some are better high frequency dampeners.

Just as long as their design systems enters the public domain, when they fail. Yes?

There’s no need for modular housing. We have an able workforce that can construct homes.

Absolutely want a video reviewing the Boxabl filing

How does modular construction do in Japan? AFAIK the national zoning policies there have kept housing from being an effective investment strategy, so cheaper construction should lead to cheaper housing, unlike in most countries.

I'd like to add one more: transportation to the site. Modules need to be transported to the site and the width restriction on roads doesn't fit the open spaces people typically want. It is much easier to deliver the sub-systems and have them assembled on-site.

The increases in efficiency in stick built construction haven't impacted the cost of housing. No reason to think that it should for modular housing. Without that effect, what is the selling point of modular construction?

I can't speak to business practices or how modular homes impact local construction trades where they are being built, but I can say that after literally years of watching videos and visiting company websites, I have NEVER seen a modular home whose pricing compared favorably with a nice, existing home in terms of sq. footage or lot size. What is the value of speeding up the construction process if it ends up costing more than a home that's already been built?

How do they build modular homes cheaply? I built a home, The concrete slab with all the plumbing in it was a big deal. Framing was easy, but you have to run all the electrical and plumbing through all the walls. The hard parts (except the roof trusses) of home building would be difficult to make modular.