MHS offers some degree of superiority over stick frame construction

By : Eric Hunting
Part 2

These limitations on structure and its adaptation are reinforced by the reliance on nailed connection and plywood and plaster board use. Using nailed construction, the act of assembly itself permanently damages the material it uses. Upon completion, the structure becomes impossible to modify or repair without first performing some form of surgical demolition causing possible additional damage and producing much waste in the process-since the material is damaged by its construction process and can't be reused. Very little of the material is directly reusable in the event of renovation or demolition. Most of it simply becomes trash when taken apart, ultimately increasing the expense of repair and renovation. While larger pieces of framing can withstand multiple re-nailing using nails in different locations, you can only get away with this a few times. Eventually the integrity of the wood is completely lost and one is compelled to replace it altogether. We like to pretend our homes are built to last forever but in reality they all -if based on stud frame construction- have a built in obsolescence. A point where, because of the nature of this building system, they MUST reach a state of diminishing returns where the cost of repair or renovation becomes higher than total replacement. This inevitable condition tends to be hidden by the tendency of labor and bureaucratic costs to inflate faster than the rate of home deterioration, always keeping the cost of new home construction slightly ahead of old home renovation and perpetuating the illusion that homes appreciate with time. But ultimately this cannot be sustained -especially when homes are relying more and more on materials with less and less reusability, such as SIPs.
Because of these limitations the use of stud frame construction has, in fact, been quite limited. Though originally adopted by farmers to aid in building agricultural structures with solitary labor, today it is ONLY in common use for suburban housing. All other types of buildings -industrial, municipal, commercial, urban mass housing- generally rely on the true traditional technology of post and beam construction, though these days they normally use steel instead of wood. One would think that by now the limitations of stud frame construction would have become so obvious that its use for housing would be in decline. But the public seems largely oblivious, tending to have a poor grasp of history and being easily fooled into thinking that anything which has been around for at least one generation has been a 'tradition' forever. Thus this form of construction has become very ingrained into the culture despite its obvious flaws. People simply have no memory of what came before -and little understanding of what's behind the plaster board and siding in the first place- and so the methods and materials commonly used by the other classes of construction are regarded as 'new' and 'unconventional' even though their roots are thousands of years deep!

Let's now look at MHS. With its reliance on factory fabricated modular aluminum components using quick-connect assembly technology and standardized dimensions, the Modular Housing System of US Systems presents a radically different situation from that of stud frame construction. But its virtues are rooted not in new technology but rather in the practical advantages of traditional post and beam construction. MHS is essentially a traditional post and beam system using a simple rectilinear space frame geometry and a bolted rather than nailed method of assembly. It overcomes the limitations of using large heavy specially crafted lumber -the limitations which compelled the invention of stud framing- through the use of a light weight low cost recyclable material -aluminum- and precision engineered mass produced modular components. It is a system which offers us the best of both worlds; the flexibility, simplicity, and strength of traditional post and beam structures with the labor savings and efficient economics of industrial production. It is the closest we have so far come to the ideal of a plug-in architecture.
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