Cascade Built is excited to announce that our newest project, Alley House 2, will be a modern modular pre-fab home fabricated by Method Homes and designed by David Foster Architects. This 3bd/2ba home is targeting LEED Platinum and features radiant floors, high-performance windows & insulation and non-toxic finishes. Located next door to the original Alley House, this new Cascade Built home is designed with livability in mind, enabling people to live where they work and play. We caught up with Method’s mastermind, Brian Abramson to get the skinny on going prefab:
From a buyer’s perspective, what are the main advantages of going modular versus traditional building?
The benefits of modular are fixed costs, shortened build time, minimized disturbance to the site, the fact that the home does not have any exposure to the elements while being built and the precision that is achieved while building in a controlled environment.
What are some of the sustainable features included in Method’s prefab homes?
The most sustainable feature and point of differentiation from site building is that we dramatically minimize the waste that is generated. By building in one place we’re able to reuse scraps and throw very little away. Our production facility only has a small residential size roll-out trashcan for actual waste and that is all that is not recycled. In addition to minimizing waste our focus is on indoor air quality, efficiency, and using durable and sustainable materials. To this end we use no products with formaldehyde, and only low VOC adhesives and stains, we use a minimum of blown in insulation rather than batts, and we seek out materials that last.
Explain the production and installation process of a Method home.
Generally site work and factory production happen concurrently, after 2 months the pieces of the home are trucked to the site and installed in one day with a crane. It takes 1 week –2 months to finish a home onsite depending on the number of pieces and complexity so the total build time can vary from 2-4 months
Here’s a time lapse video of one of Method’s homes being installed by crane in Quilcene, WA:
If you’re interested in learning more about the Alley House 2 pre-sale, get in touch !
