Low-Cost Single-Family House through The Use of Precast Reinforced Concrete Elements

Abstract

A technical design is developed to attend and assist populations in need of single-family housing and for populations in post-emergency situations. It exposes a production process of precast reinforced concrete elements, to be produced in a small production plant or at the site, with a minimum of equipment and tools. It is intended to establish a low-cost single-family house construction system with pre-fabricated reinforced concrete elements, which will become a technological alternative to traditional confined masonry construction. It presents a production line of six types of houses. For the comparison, a methodological process is followed, the comparison is made between the process of building houses with precast concrete elements and with the building process by confined masonry, the traditional process most used in Peru. The dominant principle of comparison is the equality of the useful surface of the rooms. The outstanding and visual difference is in the thickness of the walls, in the prefabricated house it is 0.10 meters and in the houses with confined masonry it is 0.15 m. The costs, production times and assembly, of the building with prefabricated elements, is low, compared to the building process by confined masonry. An in-line production process is established, of prefabricated elements with minimal equipment. The basic criterion is to manufacture that does not exceed the capacity of the size of the manufacturing, transport and assembly equipment. A simple process for the assembly was examined, a minimum period of construction of a prefabricated house of 2 hours was determined at any time of the year. The lowest cost, the direct cost has been achieved in VUF 04 at $ 264.50 US dollars per square meter and in total costs of $ 374.54 US dollars per square meter.