Prefab room construction
 

Finally, now we know why all Marriott rooms have the same look and feel! :)

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-f...t=oft02a-15la1

Well it's something new that they're doing.

Slight sidetrack - I saw a couple of shows recently on HGTV that used prefab. The houses looked great & you wouldn't have known they were prefab, but the build/install time was shortened (and the houses were in the 6 figures, so not cheap).

Cheers.

Sometime in the mid-seventies, a senior housing agency in my town built a six story prefab tower next to my Junior High School. They set a record by building it in something like seven days. It was fascinating to watch the building go up, which is pretty much all we did that week. It's still standing and in use today, about forty years later. At the time, the head of the agency, a woman who was close friends with my parents, said something that has always stuck with me. It was along the lines of, "In the US, for some reason people look down at pre-fab, but think about it. Would you rather live in something manufactured by a regular work force, working inside with all the equipment they need, or built by whomever they were able to get to show up at the site and with whatever equipment could be brought in?"

6 figures could be as low as $100,000, which is very cheap as houses go.

Off-topic:

Well the two HGTV shows I saw the houses were $300K-600K (and yeah, the upper end one surprised me too). Unless you knew the house was pre-fab, you wouldn't know it. You'd think they were normally built. They were large houses built off-site & then transported/put together on-site. They weren't trailer homes ;)

Some trivia:

"While the total cost of a prefab home is highly variable based on size, amenities, and location, you can expect to pay between $180 and $220 per square foot. Essentially, prefab homes are homes that are constructed in a factory before being shipped to a building site in pieces, where they’re then assembled on-site in a matter of days... prefab homes must be constructed according to state or local building codes...In other words, prefab homes must meet the same building codes as traditional “sticks and bricks” construction, so you can build a prefab home practically anywhere...prefab homes typically qualify for construction and home loans, so you don’t have to have the total home cost on-hand. "

This isn't the house I saw but evidently pre-fab Huf Houses have quite a following & can go up to $500K

http://media.hgtv.ca/wp-content/hgtv...m.threshold=30

http://media.hgtv.ca/wp-content/hgtv...m.threshold=30

Here's a prefab in New Jersey (not Huf Haus)

http://media.hgtv.ca/wp-content/hgtv...m.threshold=30

http://media.hgtv.ca/wp-content/hgtv...m.threshold=30

On-topic:

Doesn't surprise me that Marriott (and other chains) might move to pre-fab in future if they can get hotels put together in less time & save the hotel chains/franchisees $$.

Cheers.

If prefabricated hotel rooms make it harder to hear your neighbors, I'm an instant fan of this construction method.

^

This is my one and only major concern.

The article's picture is of a Fairfield Inn being constructed in OKC. I wouldn't expect Hotel George V in any circumstances. There are places where this approach need not hurt the brand(s) or customer experience at all.

And it's not like Marriott is doing a ton of them. 50.

But here's the reason why it makes sense for the franchisee/Marriott.

"Construction of the 354-room hotel in Hawthorne is expected to be completed in six months, compared with the estimated 20 months needed without prefabricated rooms."

Cheers.

Eh, not news at all...
 

The Hilton Palacio del Rio in San Antonio was constructed by HB Zachry for the 1968 Hemisfair World's Fair using prefab technology. It was reputedly the first hotel so built, and remains in operation.

The technology proved so successful that Zachry used it to construct a hospital on the northern edge of downtown SA as a sample to show a Middle Eastern bigwig what they could build in the desert. It also remains in operation.

Another famous example is Disney's Contemporary Resort (opened October 1, 1971). That's the A-frame hotel in Florida with the monorail that runs through the building.

http://my-content-locker.com/temp/Di...ary-Resort.jpg

Rooms were constructed in a factory a few miles away. They were transported and set into place with a crane.

http://my-content-locker.com/temp/Di...-transport.jpg
Source: http://boingboing.net/2013/07/27/bui...ontempora.html

There's an urban legend that states when rooms where to be renovated, they would simply slide them out and replace them with new modules. But, that plan failed because the building settled and locked the rooms in place.

From having worked at Disney World, I can say that this is a false rumor. The rooms were never intended to be removed, as they had balconies attached after installation. Additionally, the plans never had any contingencies for maintaining plumbing for rooms if a unit on a lower floor were removed from a stack.

If you are interested the company which built the modular building is Guerdon Modular Buildings. They have a time lapse video of building the rooms and constructing the Fairfield Inn in Folsom California. Kinda crazy to see just how finished the modules were.

Brilliant thought and probably helps explains the shoddy construction here on LI.

Hilton have a few Hamptons in the U.K. like this. Stayed in the Aberdeen airport one a couple of weeks back and the noise wasn't too bad either internally or externally.

No better than a standard build tbh but definitely not any worse.

I am astonished that new properties continue to open in this modern day and age without any thought to soundproofing whatsoever - neither in the horizontal direction, nor in the vertical. It's pretty clear that a lot of rooms are separated horizontally by nothing more than a couple of thin layers of sheetrock. Perhaps the need to give these modular rooms some hull integrity en route to the construction site will actually lead to improved soundproofing, even if inadvertently?