Japanese Homes to Solve Housing Crisis?

The cost of building a home is soaring. Materials are expensive, and skilled labor is scarce. The high costs are contributing to a crisis in affordable housing, in the Great Lakes region and around the country. A new technology from Japan could be part of the solution. The structural pieces of a custom-designed home are cut out in a factory, using wood manufactured from small-diameter trees. Even unskilled workers can assemble the house on site in about a day. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Stephanie Hemphill watched a home as it was being built:

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The cost of building a home is soaring. Materials are expensive, and skilled labor is scarce. The high costs are contributing to a crisis in affordable housing, in the Great Lakes region and around the country. A new technology from Japan could be part of the solution. The structural pieces of a custom-designed home are cut out in a factory, using wood manufactured from small-diameter trees. Even unskilled workers can assemble the house on site in about a day. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Stephanie Hemphill watched a home going up:


Five East 5th Street is a narrow lot a few blocks above downtown in Duluth, Minnesota. A new basement juts out of a hole in the hillside. From the front yard, there’s a spectacular view of Lake Superior.


Most of the houses in this neighborhood are at least 80 years old. They’re small houses built for working families. A few vacant lots show where dilapidated houses were torn down.


One day last month, the new house arrived on a truck.


(sound of Martin listing parts)


Santos Martin works for Kato Sangyo, the Japanese company that invented this system of homebuilding. He calls out the part numbers as half a dozen apprentice carpenters carry the pieces off the truck. Soon the lot is covered with stacks of house parts – corner posts sixteen feet long, and insulated wall panels in various sizes, as big as 4 feet by 9 feet.


Then the workers start to put the pieces together.


“Every component is numbered, every component has a specific place and an internal metal connector that allows you to put it together like you would a TV entertainment center or a bed frame.”


James Brew is the architect who had the dream for this house.


Brew was fascinated by Japanese culture since he was a kid. He’s traveled to Japan several times, and hosted exchange students in his home. Two years ago he learned about a Japanese company that created a home-building system that allows even inexperienced workers to frame up a custom-designed house in a day,


“People who haven’t built with this system, there they are pounding together a beam and a post and with a little bit of weather cooperation they will probably have this entire house framed today.”


The beams are made of laminated strand lumber. Instead of cutting big trees into 2 by 4s, laminated strand lumber uses smaller trees and even waste wood, glued together like plywood.


This type of “engineered wood” is being used more and more in homebuilding. What sets the Kato Sangyo system apart is the way the framing pieces are locked together with metal connectors.


The beams for this house are four inches square, and either eight or sixteen feet long. At the end of each beam there’s a slot for a metal connector. It’s like a large hinge. Workers slide one end of the hinge into the beam, and match the other end to a slot in the floor.


Then they raise the beam until it’s standing upright. They slide the insulated wall panels into the spaces between the beams. Everything is supposed to fit precisely because it was cut to order in a factory. Once the framing is up, workers will add siding, and the house will look just like the other ones on the block.


The assembly is mostly a matter of matching the right parts. So it’s an ideal project for people who are just learning how to build. Lisa Lyons is one of the crew members. She and her co-workers are part of a job training program for battered women. After a year of learning standard construction techniques, Lyons says this job is fun.


“Before it’s a lot of framing, a lot of measuring, and this here you just pound in some pegs and stand it up and it’s just like lego blocks, it’s really cool.”


The Japanese system offers not only speedy construction, but the potential for more affordable housing. The parts for this house were made at a factory in Minnesota. They were cut by hand, which took a couple of days. Architect James Brew says they could be cut in a couple of hours in a fully automated factory.


As the house takes shape, visitors stop by to watch. They include businesses thinking about the Japanese system as a possible new industry for Minnesota. James Brew says it would cost about a million dollars to buy the equipment to make the house parts. And he’s talked with a lot of lumber and construction firms that are intrigued with the idea.


“So there’s many interests in the system and the idea, the technology, but it’s again chicken and egg. Which is first, sales without a factory, or factory with no sales, or together. It’s very difficult.”


Brew is hoping the house in Duluth will provide the demo that will spur some business to decide there’s a future for the Japanese system in the United States. For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Stephanie Hemphill in Duluth.