So I was coming out of the mall earlier today and a couple of guys pull up to me in a truck asking if I was interested in this large home theater enclosure. They said they'd throw in the garage for free, so I took them up on their offer...

It was one hell of a foggy morning to watch our house be transported onto its foundation.

Mattamy, the largest builder in Canada has set up an on-site factory to build a number of their homes in Milton, Ontario. They can currently handle models up to about 3000 square feet in this fashion. The houses are built indoors in a a temperature controlled warehouse and then placed onto this shipyard dolly to be transported down the private road to the foundation (full 8' ceiling height basement).



Our new home is 2100 square feet (elev.D +280 sq.ft) and can be seen here (the images show an 1811sq.ft variation):
http://www.hawthornevillager.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=9051

The homes are built in the warehouse within about 2-3 weeks by crews working shifts 7 days per week. When it rolls out of the warehouse it's pretty much complete on the interior, including walls, flooring, paint, kitchens and all cabinet work, interior plumbing, etc.

After it's dropped pretty much what's left to do is finish the exterior stairs, porch trimming and pillars, eaves, exterior soffits and of course brick.



In this last image it's sitting in front of our lot (to the right of the house). We didn't wait around for them to unload it as that was going to take another 2 or 3 hours. It only took about 15-20 minutes of rolling time for it to drive from the factory to the lot. Total time was a bit longer because it rolled out a bit late and by that time a lot of sub contractors were already in the area with their trucks - which needed to be moved out of the way.

Our original closing date was February 7th but we've just asked for it to be pushed back till mid-March. This give them a little more breathing space to finish everything off, gives us more visits to check everything is as-ordered and can be fixed/corrected if not. Plus it gives us time to close our current home which unfortunately is still on the market.

Anyway, I thought this was a pretty neat thing to watch and figured someone else might enjoy the big machines.

Now that is cool!

don't worry, you can always paint it. (:

That's pretty cool! Congrats
So- how much does a house like that weigh?

"its not pink, its salmon!"

ahaha

(i work with a guy that owns a "pink" house, and yes I realize thats insulation)

That is amazing! If it's not too rude, how much would a home like that set you back?

I suspect Bruno's price is for the lot + home combined. The structure itself is likely around $250-$300K, plus whatever the land cost was..

That's my guess!

Base for that model was $327k Canadian on a 36x80ft lot. Plus $8k for a fourth bedroom option which added over 250 sq.ft to the floor plan. It came with $5k in "free" upgrade option dollars but we ended up spending about another $10.5k on upgrades over top of that (9' ceiling main floor was $6k alone).

So in total, not including incidentals like utility hookups, tree planting (they charge you when you close) plus land transfer tax... It was about $346k.

I'm not sure of the value of the actual house excluding the land. That will be assessed however and included on statements for insurance purposes soon enough.

The prices in that town (Milton) were still quite decent last year when I bought. They'd been going up of course, but this year they jumped up significantly. Where I live now (Vaughan) the same house on the same lot would probably cost $450-500 k in the resale market.

I'm currently asking $365k for my semi-detached under 1500 sq.ft home as a further example of the disparity between regions. The lot of my current residence is about 33x96ft (actually about 100 feet deep if you include the town's easement at the curb since we have no sidewalk). This is quite big for a semi-detached and quite generous for today's building standards in the area.

I have no idea how much it weighs. We didn't get charged by the pound though. Hehe. Well, maybe we did, but it wasn't broken down for us that way.

That's a great enhancement to ask for -- well done, Bruno!

(oh, and the new camera does seem to be working well, also)

That's got to come in handy when searching for something you've lost -- just jack the whole house up and see if it was underneath anything...

Peter (who thinks that Jack The Whole House Up would have made a great name for a late 80s dance record)

Wow, looks a lot simpler than ours will be (if we ever get planning permission), good luck.

How much of the interiors are done?

The interior should be complete as far as I'm aware. The only thing that should be left to do inside are the plumbing and electrical hookups in the basement. Maybe putting in the lighting fixtures as well.

I'm going to try and get by there soon to take a peek inside. And hopefully on the 24th an official guided tour to inspect everything. I need to take some measurements to order some hardware for things like kitchen cabinets (I had to ask for them not to include standard hardware).

That's pretty cool. Neat pictures. Did you ask how much it weighs? Those look like 20kip axles, so less than 80,000 lbs? How did they move it onto the foundation with the big hole for the basement? Do you have any pictures of that procedure? Why wasn't it built on site? How far was the transport?

This is the second time this builder is employing this building technique. They're the only ones in Canada that do it. To tell you the truth, I don't even know if there's anyone in the US building their level of homes in this fashion.

By building indoors they can run for almost 24 hours per day, 7 days a week. Regardless of weather outside. Temperature controlled environment also makes for much more comfortable working conditions and in the same amount of work time, more gets done.

The factor y is on site. It's only about 2000 meters (2km) from the location the house is placed on. All "driving" is done on private roads that are part of the community being built. When they're done the whole community they'll disassemble the factory.

Their older factory, in another town, which is built outside of a community was turned into a plant to machine-build sections of wall and floor. Similar robots as used in the auto-industry according to them. Those get delivered daily to this plant and are assembled by the workers. Roof trusses also get delivered and completed roofs are built on the ground and then shingled before being hoisted up onto the house and attached. You can see how much safer this is.

It takes no more than 3 weeks to build and finish the interior of a complete home. Ideally their build rate was supposed to be under 2 weeks.

There must be a story somewhere with the average weight of the homes since the factory has been spotlighted a few times by both local and national media.

Here's someone else's home delivered in December. It features Hardiboard siding applied at the factory instead of brick (installed after the home is dropped).

http://www.hawthornevillager.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?p=70263#70263

There's a lot more detail in this photo series and it covers the removal of the carrier from under the home and the sliding onto the foundation.

Here's an article from the Globe and Mail newspaper:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20070907.re-mattamy-0907/REStory/RealEstate/home

They say it takes 10 days for the homes to be completed, but that was only the ideal. 11 homes are currently in the factory at all times and a new one comes out only every few days with a build time between 2 and 3 weeks as I mentioned previously. This was their current build schedule as of last month.

That's a really great construction idea from a business and buyer point of view. What a deal.

I wonder how they can load and unload the house without any twisting and shaking which may disturb plumbing, windows, etc. Maybe they leave things kind of loose until it's on the foundation, then tighten everything up.

Congratulations on your quite clever purchase.

Oh, I didn't buy based on the factory consideration. I knew they were planning the factory but even when I bought they weren't sure if the factory was going to be up and running in time for our home.

Only homes of certain sizes and dimensions are built indoors. As mentioned, probably up to around 3000 sq.ft, but of approximately square footprint. Some models destined for corner lots are more rectangular, even though not more than 2400 sq.ft, and are being stick-built on site. All townhomes and semi-detached are also stick-built.

I believe the exterior of the homes is bolted directly to the blue I-beams you see in the various photos (take a look at the gallery in the article I linked as well). When inside the factory they can roll them down tracks that run the length of the facility. If you look at gallery image #4 you can see that under the I-beams there's another set of beams that will move with the house along the tracks. When they get to the end they probably use hydraulic jacks to lift the whole thing up. Then drive the dolly and new beams underneath it before lowering the jacks again and freeing the second set of blue I-beams. Now the house is on top of the dolly and out of the factory she rolls.

In fact they sometimes drop 2 or 3 houses outside the factory door so they can then roll them to their foundations in a row, one each day. Sometimes they have to make concessions and cancellations for weather which can lead to 2 or 3 sitting outside next to each other. Mine was pushed out a day because they had to push out the one before it due to very high winds on its original delivery date.

The home is also Energy-Star certified which was a minor selling point for us.

I'll hopefully have a chance to check it out closely and in person around the 24th. If I'll post a few pictures if I get anything worthwhile (time to test out the 18mm on my new 18-200 lens )

My brother walked into the house yesterday to take a look around (he lives close by). The door was unlocked. Nice.

I'm still trying to get confirmation on an appointment for a visit on the 24th as which time I'll take some photos of the inside. I've seen some taken quickly yesterday but they're a little noisy and not shot at a very wide angle.

As mentioned, pretty much everything is in place, even hanging light fixtures. The electrical panel is now in the basement but not finished being hooked up yet. A large propane heating element was temporarily providing heat for the whole house from the basement (fueled by a huge tank outside the house).

My biggest worry, the kitchen layout, seems to be ok - cabinets in correct configurations as requested.