Thread: kit home vs prebuilt/transportable homes?

Originally Posted by button

am wrestling with whether I might put a kit home or prebuilt/transportable home on it (ie one of those ones that turns up all"folded up" and then gets unfolded on site).

Up here in QLD you can also whole completed houses moved onto your site.
You can get decent houses quite cheap but the majority of the costs is in the moving.

See http://www.houseremovals.com.au/ as an example of what I'm referring to. It might be worth considering if you haven't already.

I looked into this at length. I know someone who bought one of those prefabricated houses from a company in Albury. It came in two halves and it was 'bolted' together on site. The footings, plumbing and electrical connections were put in place in the weeks before the house arrived and then it was all hooked up within a day or so of the house arriving.

Pros: One day there were just a heap of steel piers sticking up out of the ground, the next day they were moving furniture in (or something like that).

Cons: There's a 300mm wide cover strip that goes up the wall, across the ceiling and down the other side in the main living room where the join is. The rest of the join is located on a wall. The size of the house is limited by the maximum width they're allow to transport by road.

Kit homes: You have to build it yourself. If you're planning on using a builder, then it will be cheaper to have them quote the whole job and forget about kit homes.

thank you both for that - Silent C, I had suspected that having a builder assemble a kit home would be more expensive than just starting from scratch but had nothing to back up my suspicion - why is it more expensive to build a kit when (presumably) there's some economies of scale in the manufacture of the kit that aren't available to a custom builder?

Kit homes are usually supplied by frame and truss companies and they buy all the other bits at discount prices, so you would expect that all the bits would come cheaper than what the builder could get them for. I probably should have said it "may" be cheaper, because obviously it depends upon the builder and his contacts.

However, when I was looking at a kit home, I got the price of one house broken down into components, the first being the frame, trusses, roofing, windows, external doors and cladding - basically to lock up. I then had a friend who is a builder take the plan to his local suppliers for quotes. It ended up considerably cheaper.

The basis of a kit home is the frame and trusses - this is the only bit that is custom. All the rest of the stuff is just bought in standard quantities. Any frame company can build your frame in the same form you would get it from a kit home company. It's a fairly competitive business, so if you get a couple of quotes (and make sure they know you're doing it) then you can get them to compete with the kit home prices on that component.

The other factor that may make kit homes cheaper is that they buy most of the other materials in bulk, or have standing arrangements with suppliers based on volume. Again though, it's competitive and you can get those same prices yourself if you shop around. Things like tiles, carpet, taps and other hardware are usually selected from a short list, which limits your choice. If you want something that the kit home company doesn't have on it's schedule, then it will be extra. Again, you can shop around and get good prices on these things if you take the time.

The other thing that is usually factored into the kit home pricing is access to support and technical documentation - a builder is not likely to need these. That would be only a minor part of the overall price though.

If you go for a trussed roof, the builder will have the trusses made up. It's fairly common for them to buy the wall frames ready made too. I had one builder tell me that with the prices he was getting from the truss company for wall frames, he could barely pay for the timber and then he would have to add his labour.

I guess the thing to do would be to quote both and see how they compare. That's pretty much what I did (although we built ourselves and didn't use a builder) and the kit home lost out.

One other factor, depending on your access road, you can get a kit home into places where it would be impossible to get a transportable.

I spent a year looking at this

I found a draftsmen for 700 bucks to draw iup the house for me, to what i want.

At this stage my stumps and flooring is 10k frame 5 k outside cladding about 5k doors and windows about 7k

It would cost you about 50k for a kit home at the same stage

It all depends on how much you want to do yourself

I like these guys

www.prebuilt.com.au but found them a little exe

There is quite a bit of info around on alternatives to using bulders and different ways you can purchase and construct a "kit" home. Just because it is a kit home it does not have to be purchased off the plan. As Silent C eludes to the manufacture of trusses is becoming increasingly competative and most companies are able to give you a cost for your wall and roof framing based on your own design very easily. There is quite a bit of information and some peoples experiences on this site www.byohouse.com.au that is worth looking at.

i looked into the harkaway homes and if i remember correctly they help out with the permits you put the foundations down then they come and put up the frames and trusses, then it's up to you to do the rest with full back up from them if any probs arise.
they say a rough way of working out the final price is if you use a builder it will be roughly double the price of the kit.
if you go to their site they have heaps of info, i've been through their display homes and there very well built, with some very good styles.
all the best with it and keep us informed on which way you go and why

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:d

A guy goes to a psychiatrist. 'Doc, I keep having these two dreams. First I'm a teepee; then I'm a wigwam; then I'm a teepee; then I'm a wigwam. It's driving me crazy. What's wrong with me?' The doctor replies: 'You gotta relax. You're two tents.'

Harkaway definitely have some nice houses and they're worth checking out. Certainly not a cheap option though. They're all about authentic reproductions of period houses.

Hi Button, welcome.
All of the above is great advice.
We went through all the options and finished up having an old (1950s) weatherboard/fibro home shifted to our block.
What we did
The house was shifted by a reputable mover who had the home shifted to his factory where it was completely re-wired, had the tile roof removed and replaced with corrugated iron, new downpipes and gutters fitted, all the asbestos cladding (top half of house walls) removed and insulation fitted to top half then re-cladded with fibro cement sheets. The house was then transported to our block, re-stumped, wiring finished off and the mover did the patching of the joints, floor joints, walls etc.
We have been working on it while we live in it by doing a room at a time. Lots of time has been spent re-doing their shoody patching & joining. Total cost before we started work $55,000 including GST ($5,000) for a 120 Sq Metre home with ducted evap aircon and wood fire.

What we WOULD NOW do with the benefit of HINDSIGHT
Have the house moved, stumped, re-wired, re-roofed & insulated & cladded (if needed)
then completely strip out the entire inside of all wall cladding, ceilings etc. then make any structural design changes (move doors and walls etc.) then fit or have fitted new ceilings cornices, walls etc. The end result would be a great house in a shorter time for a little bit more cash outlay. Whatever choice you make, the best thing we did was to insulate the roof, all the ouside walls and some of the inside walls with glass batts. Our house is very thermally efficient and very sound proof also. It is a work in progress (3.5 yrs so far) but the result is pleasing and it is really something to have so much of yourself in the place. If you want any more info of pics, just send me an P.M.

Phill.

Hi again all

The CFA has now got back to us and confirmed our suspicion that our "perfect" building spot on the land - north facing, looking towards Mt Franklin and with a large enough area already partly cleared - is classified as high bushfire risk because it's on a northwest slope and apparently fires travel fastest from the northwest. That limits our building materials a fair bit, so I'm thinking that a kit/transportable may just be too much hassle because we'll have to modify a fair bit of it....

... I think this is going to be a long adventure

If I recall, high bushfire zone requires toughened saftey glass windows, non-combustible cladding, bronze flywire, gutter leaf guard, a few other things. ie. it's not extreme. You can download the details of what's required from the RFS site for NSW so I would imagine there to be something similar for the CFA. Or you can probably pick up a hardcopy at the council offices.

When I was looking into it, the kit home suppliers were all over it. The three I had the most dealings with were Kitome, PAAL, and Harkway. All of them can provide you with a kit to the right spec (for a price) and as the building supplier, it's up to them to certify it. Of the three, Harkway was going to be the biggest problem in that department because they use timber windows (vic ash). I think from memory they could supply them in one of the low flamability index timbers if required.