Manufacturer Turns to Steel Framing
One school of architecture cites as a truism, “Form follows function.” In building, one might want to say, “Availability determines materials.”
Not entirely, of course, but to a great extent. One thing the North American continent had when the Europeans came was wood, and in most areas wood became the prime building material.
New Englanders used a lot of stone because New England has lots of stone, but even then wood was probably used in half or more of the building. Southwesterners--Indians, Spaniards and Anglos in turn--built with sun-dried clay (adobe) bricks and tiles, using wood for such elements as rafters but keeping it to a minimum; they were following comparative availabilities. Later, when the lumber industry developed, wood regained the lead.
In most of the country, what archeologists call “monumental” structures--churches, government buildings--were usually built of brick or stone to be more impressive but the predominant building type for smaller buildings and for homes was wood frame. And still is.
Two other materials, concrete and steel, have been used sporadically in home construction for decades but in the past few years more attention, and therefore more use, has focused on them. Homes built of concrete panels are beginning to be found; steel framing in homes is still uncommon but certainly not unheard of.
This is part of a current trend, the search for ways to build equally good homes less expensively. Another part of that trend is the growth of various manufacturing, rather than building, techniques. An Anaheim company, Raphael Homes, 1309 S. Euclid St., combines a number of them.
Steel framing is a big part of their system. “If you see it, it’s wood; if you don’t, it’s steel,” was the way it was put by Jeffrey Weiner, vice president and son of the founder-president, Raphael Weiner.
Pre-built steel-framed panels form most of the walls of their houses and are combined with a pre-manufactured core containing kitchen, bathroom, water heater, whatever heating, cooling, air conditioning and ventilating equipment is called for, and sometimes a wet bar. The cores range from 8 by 24 feet to 10 by 46 feet and have an 18-inch crawl space underneath.
The system is not confining. Raphael Homes has prepared plans for houses from 420-square-foot “granny cottages” to a 4,248-square-foot model in their “Grande Estate Series” that has three bedrooms and 2 1/2 baths plus a maid’s room with its own private full bath, living, dining, family and utility rooms, study, kitchen, wet bar and attached three-car garage (priced, turnkey, at $126,000, exclusive of land).
In addition to its prepared plans, the company will design to the buyer’s specifications. In fact, Weiner said, “We’ll do everything that’s wanted--the site plan, the floor plan, building permits, the actual manufacturing, the construction and the certificate of occupancy, even arranging 30-year financing--or any part of it that the owner wants.” He pointed out that the company gets the permits for all its jobs.
With such a variety of sizes, planning and upgrading options and purchase methods, Weiner estimated that the homes cost from about $26 to $36 a square foot on a turnkey basis and from about $19 to $25 on an “owner-finish” basis, in which the company furnishes and completes the core, walls, roof, dry wall, bathrooms, kitchen and heating, plumbing and electrical systems while the buyer does the finish work.
Raphael Homes also builds multifamily dwellings with the same system. It is now building a 33-unit project and is under contract to build a 133-unit project in Los Angeles County. It is currently building a 14-unit phase of a Northern California tract of 30 single-family houses.
After stick-building for five or six years, Weiner said, the company has been factory-building for 13 years. The present system was developed over about 10 years; the firm first went from stick to sectional building and then to its present technique. Last year’s business volume was $3.4 million.
One of the structural innovations the company credits for the non-manufactured look of its homes is their own collapsible roof truss system. After roof panels are completed in their factory, the steel trusses are folded flat for shipping and raised back into place on the site. That makes possible steeper roofs than in most manufactured housing; Weiner said 5 on 12 is standard (five inches rise in 12 inches vertical distance, or almost 45 degrees.)
And in all of it, he stressed, design and its aesthetics rule: “The design controls the technology,” he said, “the technology does not control the design.”