Fabulous Pre-Fab Building Envelopes

A better way to build for residential buildings is what I saw at the HUCX Prefab open day in Ballarat. They use a clever process to convert a digital design model into panels for floors, walls and ceilings, constructed of structural insulated panels. OSB board shells filled with PIR foam, with windows and interior and exterior membranes already installed, is what will arrive on a truck at your site. The builder can erect a full house in just 3 days, sitting on Surefoot footings, all to millimetre precision. Certainly a strong value proposition and a system we are considering for our project.

Some more details:

• HUCX buildings are highly insulated and airtight and thermal bridging across the building envelopes is negligible.

• PIR foam insulation is derived from recycled PET

• Their factory is 100% renewably powered

What about the source of the wood? Well OSB board isn’t manufactured in Australia so needs to be imported from Germany. We are looking into whether the wood can is FSC and if so whether the chain-of-custody can be maintained through to our site. We are also checking into the glues used in the product.

Local innovation, high performance, recycled materials and close to zero waste. We need new approaches for single family resi and HUCX seems to be well positioned to provide something better.