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Between buying a prefabricated home and having a home built on site from lumber, there is a third option for developers that can offer the best of both worlds.
Panel homes can be custom and unique, like “stick-built” homes constructed 100 percent on site, but they are mostly pre-constructed, with all the cost and environmental benefits of modular homes.
David Kepner, the owner of the Quogue home building and land development firm David J. Kepner and Co., switched from stick building to panel homes two years ago and he said he’ll never go back.
“It’s computerized design that has changed the industry,” Mr. Kepner said last week, as his latest panel house was going up in Quogue. Computer-assisted architectural drafting allows for breaking down a home design into parts that can be manufactured in a factory and assembled at the building site later, he explained. “Virtually any set of plans, whether you get them from a plan book or a $200,000 East End architect, can be broken down into sections.”
With this new type of building, the sections, or panels, are delivered on flatbed trucks and put in place by a crane. Workers marry the panels together into floors and walls. In just three days or so, rather than what may take three and a half weeks or more, a vacant lot has turned into a house. There is still a little work to go, but most of the trouble was taken care of at a factory.
Mr. Kepner said the panels are built in a climate-controlled environment with kiln-dried wood. He orders all of his panels from Harvest Homes in Delanson, New York, which is near Albany.
Compared to the East End of Long Island, lumber rates are much cheaper upstate because there are lumber mills there and the trees are harvested there, Mr. Kepner said. Using lumber that is bought upstate, rather than from Long Island retailers, really cuts down on cost per foot, he said.
Mr. Kepner said a panel house saves 5 to 10 percent on construction costs compared to a stick-built house.
He also pointed out the environmental benefits associated with panel homes. Because they are in a factory and not out in the field, workers are able to segregate all the scrap wood and waste and recycle it instead of throwing it away, he explained.
There is also less waste at the job site, he said.
“At the end of the three- or four- or five-day time frame, you’re left with about a wheelbarrow filled with debris, and most of it is the metal banding straps that hold the panels together,” Mr. Kepner said.
On a typical building site, we need two or three 20-yard Dumpsters for all the junk, he said. “That’s just as un-green as it could be. All that stuff gets thrown into a landfill. It doesn’t get recycled.”
And renting Dumpsters and paying landfill fees is also expensive and adds significantly to the cost of construction, he added.
Mr. Kepner said he learned about panel houses from the National Association of Home Builders. “I got involved going to their meetings, because I’m always looking for better ways to do things, and I got hooked,” he said.
According to Mr. Kepner, his first panel house was a huge success and it only got better from there. He is working on his fourth panel house, he said, adding that he built all of them in Quogue.
There are some constraints in how tall or long panels can be, so they can fit on a truck and be taken on the highway legally. The constraints mean the architectural designs must be modified a bit, compared to stick-built houses. “But it’s not onerous,” Mr. Kepner said. “It doesn’t impede the design at all.”
He has also adopted the “universal design” philosophy. That is, he builds homes that are accessible to everyone from infants to octogenarians and able-bodied and disabled persons alike. “The challenge is to make it look and feel like a regular house,” he said.
For instance, when Mr. Kepner orders panels from Harvest Homes, he insists that all doorways come in at 2-feet-by-10-inches wide—large enough to fit most wheelchairs through. Normal bedroom doors are just 2-feet-by-6-inches wide and bathrooms are two inches less, he said. The dishwashers and laundry machines are also set a few inches higher, so elderly people do not have to bend down as far.
The builder said he also puts solid blocking in the walls around the shower, so if later on the owners want to add safety rails, they can without having to tear the wall apart.
Mr. Kepner said he orders all of these specifications with the architects he works with and with Harvest Homes. “I heavily influence the design, because I’m experienced and arrogant and I think I know what people want,” Mr. Kepner said jokingly. “I work closely with architects to tune up designs.”
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