Modular construction is an excellent way to get a building done fast. Just ask China’s Broad Sustainable Building, a firm building in Changsha, the capital of Hunan province, who claims to have built a 57-story skyscraper in just nineteen days. In this time-lapse video, the firm shows the construction of “Mini Sky City” at a rate of an average 3 floors per day– an incredible speed!
Modular construction allows builders to assemble pieces of a building offsite
While this doesn’t seem to have much to do with log cabins at first blush, the team here at TruLog has had our eye on modular construction for quite a while. Though there’s nothing like the feel of a hand-built log cabin, let’s face it: building a log cabin by hand is a long, exhausting, and expensive job. Modular construction allows builders to assemble the large pieces of a building offsite, avoiding issues like weather and condition delays, and reducing construction time.
Modular construction can open up log-cabin living to a whole new range of homeowners. By cutting down on construction time and material investment, the cost of building a log cabin can be reduced considerably. Likewise, modular construction opens up a huge range of properties to development, and with less site disruption on the whole, keeps them looking pristine.
This isn’t to say that modular construction is perfect, however: critics of the process are quick to point out that, by definition, modular construction leads to a range of less-unique buildings. When you keep log cabins to a set of building blocks, you’re limited in the amount of things you can accomplish in their construction. However, this isn’t much of an issue unless you’re looking to spend millions on custom construction– the variety in construction possible in modular buildings means that you’ll get what you’re looking for in a cabin no matter where it’s built!
In fact, did you know that modular log-cabin construction has a long and storied history?
The Sears company started building modular homes that you could order from a catalog in 1908, which provided housing for thousands of families moving to the American West. This is certainly something we’ll talk about further in another blog post, but people have been building homes from kits for over a century in America, and the designs have only improved over time!
Building a 57-story skyscraper in nineteen days and building your own log-cabin getaway might seem like two completely different things. But the construction methods being developed across the world can have a profound impact on how businesses like ours help our customers make their dreams come true.
No matter if your cabin is modular or hewn from logs by hand, we hope you care for it like a second home. Our steel log siding can help any cabin stand the test of time– it also fits modular construction like a glove.
