I’ve been watching the construction of a small apartment building across the street. Two men are mixing concrete on the street and are slowly putting up the building.
The building will have a garage and studio apartment on the ground floor and 80 m2 apartments on each of the three floors above ground. In six months they have built the first floor slab (that required seven men with buckets and a small portable concrete mixer one day) and are now working on the block walls on the ground floor.
Labor is relatively cheap here in Ilhéus. Is prefabricated construction just too expensive? I’m just curious.
-@alan279
Quality workmanship is hard to find nowadays. Lack of skilled tradespeople and construction trades were always seen the occupation for the most destitute, therefore looked down upon. Sao Paulo alone built an entire population of "Nordestinos" who found jobs during the construction boom of the 60's , 70's and beyond, as a source of cheap labor. Nordestinos being, the migrants from the Country's Northeast ( Bahia, Paraiba, Pernambuco, Piaui, Alagoas, Sergipe, and some Mineiros on the mix ).
So builders of any size, will resort to prefab, as a least effort alternative, to save costs, and to get the building project off the ground.
Most people, even locals, do not realize, the largest post war dividend was the import of affordable skilled labor. You can't beat Spaniard, Italian, and Portuguese masonry quality workmanship that built our buildings in the period from the 1910's towards the 1960's. That generation is gone.
Baianos, for most part, are reliable and decent workers, alongside Mineiros, who are top choice to build. But Mineiros worth their salt in the building trades left for America. Baianos being manageable and reliable, tend to work at a slower pace, while Mineiros are industrious and work quietly, so says the stereotype.
As a frame of reference, you can sample quality workmanship on older buildings on the São Paulo Antiga website, and look up "Imoveis Antigos". It's a Journalist personal blog on Sao Paulo of yore, including buildings, traditions, stories. The building or street section captures severan neighborhoods you can spot works of the past. I would redirect anyone towards places like Mooca, Campos Eliseos, Bom Retiro, Bras, Lapa, Se , to get the most out of it.
A good example of my point, is the lack of brick factories ( Olarias ), that once dotted the outskirts of Sao Paulo. Good old buildings had walls erected with solid clay cooked bricks.. Nowadays, the hollow clay brick still presents itself as a decent alternative. Yet, in many projects, cinder block bricks are replacing it. It's cheaper to actually buy them,. or buy the machine and making them on the job site. Most Olarias are gone.
On last thought on how better clay bricks are overall ( solid or hollow )... Clay bricks are better insulators, given its refractary properties. A room or house erected with clay bricks will ne cooler under the summer heat, and warmer under the cold of the winter. That, and the fact, that cinder block ( concrete mix ) bricks perfform horribly with humidity and water seepage.
Concrete has been the choice for anything two stories and up for quite a while. Prefab rebar reinforced beams lined up and filled with hollow clay bricks, and then the concrete pour from the mixer works for most simple jobs. For more structurally elaborated jobs, prefabs are the way to go to save on expensive pours.
And lately, thanks to the influence of American companies, dry wall has been all the rage, mostly for quick to fix subdivisons, particulaly suitable in building office floors . Add that to the grow of building materials by domestic manufacturers ( the choices are endless, there are materials and fitments never seen in America ).
Still, given the choice, between a prefab buit, and a built from the ground up structure , I will go with the later. Good bones make for decent repurposing and retrofitting jobs. The newer stuff barely can make through the first generation.
