Other industries moved production indoors long ago: cars, planes, medical equipment. Housing can do the same.
Instead of building most of the house on site, we produce the structural parts indoors. Light gauge steel framing (LGSF) and prefabrication mean most of the work is finished before the house reaches your plot.
Every stud, opening and cable hole sits in the digital drawing first, then the machine rolls and punches it. The parts fit without cutting on site.
Walls, floors and roof panels are built indoors at a steady temperature, so nothing warps and nothing waits for the weather.
The panels arrive numbered, insulated and with the routes for cables and pipes. The shell is closed in days and the trades start straight after.
Light gauge steel framing (LGSF) is a building method in which thin, high-strength galvanised steel strip is cold roll-formed into precise structural sections, then assembled into complete wall, floor and roof panels in a factory rather than cut and nailed together on site.
The steel we use is S350GD+Z275: structural grade, with 275 g/m² of zinc bonded to both faces. Members are typically C89 × 41 mm at 1.15 mm thickness, spaced on a 625 mm modular grid, and deepened or thickened only where the structural analysis asks for it.
Because the machine forms the frame from the digital drawing, every stud, opening, hole and screw is decided before any steel is cut. In the hall the crew reads the plan instead of improvising.
Average EU detached home. Average annual consumption.
Modular by Better Build. Average annual consumption.
less energy to heat, every year the house stands. On a 120m² home that is roughly €3,100 a year at current Central European rates.
The steel frame carries the house. What is wrapped around it is what turns 350 kWh into 15. Here is each layer and the number it is responsible for.
Insulation runs both between and over the rafters, so the steel never touches the outside air. The standing seam sits on a ventilated cavity that keeps the deck dry and takes solar mounting without penetrating the membrane.
A continuous layer of wood fibre outside the frame breaks the thermal bridge that every steel stud would otherwise create. Inside, a 50 mm service void carries cables and pipes without a single hole through the airtight layer.
The walls inside the house carry no load, so any of them can move later without touching the frame. What they do carry is sound. A steel stud packed with mineral wool and lined twice on each side is what keeps a television in the living room out of the bedroom next to it.
A house this airtight needs proper ventilation. The unit takes the warmth out of the stale air going out and puts it into the fresh air coming in, filtered. The ducts are routed in the hall, from the same drawing as the steel.
Steel-frame modular houses, built indoors and delivered across Central Europe.
