Australia gets Baufritz Homes
Posted by Nicholas Gruen on Sunday, December 4, 2011
A friend of mine, and a great contributor to Australian public policy, Mike Waller, a man who sketched out Australian competition policy on a single page and fed it up the line as an FAS in PM&C in the late 80s (or perhaps it was 1990), has wrenched himself from the policy scene (though not entirely, as he keeps his hand in with consulting and other occasional gigs) and joined a few others in setting up a company which will initially import Baufritz homes and which will ultimately build quite a lot of them here.
Baufritz homes are about the most ecologically fine habitation one can buy. Extremely energy efficient, made without nasty emissions, emulsions and things like that, they are exceptionally comfy. They are also quite pricey, but what do you expect for comfort?
One of the things that excites Mike is the fact that Australian homes are still built according to the craft model, with people turning up on site and building the house. There’s more prefabrication in units (with the efficiency gains having been captured and then some by the unions), but in houses there should be a lot more factory pre-fabrication with the ultimate building resembling a barn raising. This can reduce cost, and improve the quality and efficiency of houses.
Houses will initially be largely imported from Germany but will be progressively displaced by Australian production as scale rises. So drop into the new site of MGW Homes and let MGW know if you’re interested in buying one.
This entry was posted on Sunday, December 4th, 2011 at 7:44 PM and filed under Art and Architecture, Bargains, Economics and public policy, Environment.
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I don’t think your weblink to MGW Homes is working…
Posted on 05-Dec-11 at 5:53 am | PermalinkThese have been featured on Grand Designs (UK) quite a few times. The factory (fully unionised I bet, Nicholas!) is quite a work of teutonic efficiency.
Posted on 05-Dec-11 at 8:08 am | PermalinkThx Kymbos,
Fixed.
Posted on 05-Dec-11 at 9:51 am | PermalinkWilful:
“These have been featured on Grand Designs (UK) quite a few times. ”
I immediately thought about Grand Designs (UK) as well. I wonder why we are still stuck in the craft system? The quality of house construction and design in this country is currently very poor, I reckon.
Posted on 05-Dec-11 at 10:06 am | PermalinkMel
Posted on 05-Dec-11 at 10:14 am | PermalinkVery few houses in Australia are ‘craft’ built.
Most ‘builders’ simply assemble pre-made kits .
People with the skills needed to make bespoke things( of any kind) are very rare in modern australia.
I’m using the word ‘craft’ to mean ‘not pre-fabricated’. There’s a lot of bespoke work goes on at most housing sites, even if it’s just cutting wood to the right length. But the designs are in families and modules, that’s true.
With proper prefabrication, there’s a lot of skill goes into the design and prefabricated pieces, but often they then can be put up in a day!
Posted on 05-Dec-11 at 11:54 am | PermalinkI love the look of ‘em….
…but all that plate glass, oh dearie me, what a nightmare for cyclone preparations!
Posted on 05-Dec-11 at 12:09 pm | PermalinkWonder what’s the cyclone rating on those houses? Plenty of overhanging roof there for a cyclonic wind to get under!
“There’s a lot of bespoke work goes on at most housing sites”
There is a new ‘development’ on the edge of our town, that has put up a few spec houses in the hope of creating some buyer interest. A crew turned up and laid out the pipes and then pored the slabs , another team then turned up a few days later and banged the prefab frames together in a few hours, and then another team turned up and put the largely pre-cut roof cladding on in a day and so on.
Cutting the odd bit of excess pvc pipe is hardly bespoke craft.
Posted on 05-Dec-11 at 12:12 pm | PermalinkCan reduce, but doesn’t actually seem to! Those houses are breath-takingly expensive — the Huf Haus featured on Grand Designs seem very pricey for the size.
If cost is the problem you can whack up an enormous barn from a “pre-fab DESIGN” company. That seems to be where the costs are saved. Integrated supply chain?
Posted on 05-Dec-11 at 12:50 pm | PermalinkI can’t log into the the site selling these posh kit homes but if the kit includes stuff like inert gas filled double glazing the it will be very exy. ( and not all that effective long term)
Posted on 05-Dec-11 at 12:55 pm | PermalinkI expect the amount of plate glass depends on what design you want.
Posted on 05-Dec-11 at 1:48 pm | PermalinkConsolidated Home Industries in the 1950s built houses. The external walls, floor and roof were assembled on site and the internal walls and cupboards were made in their factory.
These houses have been transported across Victoria when they became too small and too modest for the land value of their original sites. Interestingly the best designs were mercilessly ripped off in the 1970s building boom.
I grew up in one of these houses and would like to see more prefabricated and less labor intensive building practices used in domestic construction in Australia, especially at the modest/affordable end of the market
Posted on 05-Dec-11 at 2:12 pm | PermalinkAn advertipost? An additorial? An op ad?
Posted on 05-Dec-11 at 2:19 pm | PermalinkAll of the above.
Posted on 05-Dec-11 at 2:42 pm | PermalinkSoooo…. How do you pre-fabricate brickwork?
Posted on 05-Dec-11 at 6:32 pm | Permalink(and the answer is not allowed to have the word assume in it)
How about ‘pretend’?
Posted on 05-Dec-11 at 6:54 pm | PermalinkWell it’s better than theoretically!
Posted on 05-Dec-11 at 7:03 pm | PermalinkHighly efficient, great design but very expensive, a niche market. Baufritz made less than 200 homes in the EU in 2010.
Posted on 06-Dec-11 at 1:00 am | Permalinkbille
Most of the ‘mechanics institute ‘ halls that were/are common in country towns one hundred years ago were prefab structures, it was (in 1900) a well established industry.
The house in the picture has large areas of glass– to be energy efficient it would almost certainly need double glazing and it would provably use the same sort of thin/elegant double glazing that is used on things like trains … expensive.
Posted on 06-Dec-11 at 4:59 am | Permalinkjohn, speaking from very recent experience, with the energy rating software, not even double glazing cuts it if you want 6 stars or more. Triple glazing starts to get there, but really, less windows is the way to achieve the rating. Otherwise, computer says no. Of course, the website says these homes are triple glazed. That would be a huge part of the cost of the building right there…
of course, this means that lights get left on all day, and is counter-productive, but that’s the way it works.
Mr Waller’s site appears to have a bit of greenwashing going on. He makes a lot of claims about emissions, seems to have done life cycle evaluations, but there’s no indication as to whether they were done according to a Standard, or by an independent person. these sorts of accreditation details are needed for credibility. Otherwise, I smell a bit of bullshit.
I’m sure the Germans have all of this paperwork, and the poms have probably had it translated into English. He just needs to get it on his website if he wants to be credible.
And I’ll restate – I would bet dollars to doughnuts that these houses are built by unionised labour. Not that I have a problem with that.
Posted on 06-Dec-11 at 6:52 am | PermalinkOn behalf of the termite community of Australia I would like to extend a warm welcome to Baufritz Homes and look forward to a close and enduring relationship.
Posted on 06-Dec-11 at 5:14 pm | Permalink“john, speaking from very recent experience, with the energy rating software, not even double glazing cuts it if you want 6 stars or more. Triple glazing starts to get there, but really, less windows is the way to achieve the rating. Otherwise, computer says no. Of course, the website says these homes are triple glazed. That would be a huge part of the cost of the building right there…”
The RMIT report they commissioned ran NATHERS – and even with the Baufritz house not getting full credit for some aspects (like U values in the walls) it still came in at 8 – 9 stars. And that’s with double-glazing, because if you read the fine print they don’t appear to be speccing triple glazing in Australia.
Posted on 16-Dec-11 at 10:03 pm | Permalink