I am building a new family house: should it be a brick house or a lightweight structure?

Nowadays, unfortunately, very few families can afford to build a single-family house since loans are available to a very small group of people and support from ‘CSOK’ has also been diminished. But here is the year 2024, which opens new horizons when it comes to CSOK and mortgage loans.

If you have the financial means to do so, it is worth doing a lot of research beforehand, because you can save or lose a lot as a result of your decision. Before starting to plan a new family home, the first thing will be to decide what we are going to build it with. Do we stick with traditional building materials, such as stone, brick or concrete, or choose something more modern?

If we choose the brick house, for our future house to live up to current demands, we must have at least one 30 cm brick masonry element, 3 cm of plaster inside and outside. For the building to achieve energy class AA++, it would be necessary to provide it with another 20 cm of thermal insulation and plaster. The final result is a 53-54 cm thick wall structure.

A modern and light building, with a wall thickness of 30 cm, achieves the same objective.

We can see that if we assume the same insulation value for the two technologies, we will have a house with an entire room size in favor of the prefabricated or light house, maintaining the gross external dimensions, in case of 100 m2.

Taking into account the current cost of purchasing a single-family house, 10 m2 more usable area represents a price advantage of about 6-7 million forints for a 100 square meter house with a light construction. It is often said that people build lightweight houses because they are cheaper. This is a partial truth. The difference between the cost of a modern light house and a modern brick house is not very significant.

In lightweight homes, we build with much more and higher-value materials in a short period of time, while brick houses cost much less to build. On the other hand, the construction time, for the latter, is longer and labor costs rise considerably, offsetting what we had gained in materials.

The only differences between the two technologies are in the construction of the walls and the floor and ceiling slabs because: the windows, the electrical and heating installations, the coating, the painting and the wallpaper, are identical.

What will be the difference between both technologies?

Parameters ↓	Lightweight wood or steel structure	Modern Brick House
Energy savings:	High energy efficiency.	Medium.
Earthquake resistance:	It can withstand earthquakes of magnitude greater than 8.	Weak.
Construction time:	2-3 months.	6-12 months.
Mold formation after construction:	Excluded due to being dry construction.	Yes, if water penetrates the structure or if there are thermal bridges.
Fire protection:	A fire protection limit of up to 2-4 hours can be achieved. Light houses, being qualified systems, already met the strict requirements years ago.	The system is not certified, only the individual materials meet the requirements.
Allergies:	Excluded	They can occur in case of mold
Design freedom:	There are no modules of a certain size, so there are no restrictions. Curved walls, circular rooms and openings can be easily created. Up to 28 meters of unsupported truss roof structure can be built. Subsequently, the construction can be easily converted since 75% of the partitions do not support loads.	There are sizes of modules such as beams, semi-joists, joists and other various elements. If we consider this, construction becomes more expensive.
Can it be done all year round?	Yes, since there is no wet technology.	In freezing climates it is not possible to carry out several phases of work. In Hungary, they would be viable for maximum 9 months.
Environmental protection:	1 container of garbage is generated on 1 construction site, so minimal waste is burdened on the environment. Minimal energy is required for its construction. The frame structure of the steel structure lightweight houses is 100% recyclable.	It takes a lot of energy to build it and a lot of dust and waste is generated during construction. It cannot be recycled.
Useful surface:	With the same insulation, the net area of a 100 square meter house can increase by 10-13 square meters.	With the same insulation, the net area of a 100 square meter house will be reduced by between 10-13 square meters.
Price guarantee:	Since it is done in a short time and usually by a single contractor, prices are guaranteed. There are no surprises.	There are countless horror stories of those who were hired for this and that but in the end, nothing good turned out. Tip: The work should only be done by one or two contractors and ask for a price guarantee. Otherwise, you will have to pay price increases due to the long duration of construction, not to mention that, if you are in charge of planning the costs, many things may have been overlooked… At the end of the works, the additional cost of one or two million can be very unpleasant…
Technical security:	The technology has an NMÉ, that is, national technical evaluation, issued by the ÉMI. A single, extremely qualified work team carries out the construction of walls, roofs and floors, so there is no risk of misunderstandings or dimensional discrepancies occurring during the works. It is not necessary to coordinate the work of bricklayers, carpenters, ironworkers, which reduces the possibility of errors to zero.	Only individual building materials have ratings. In our country it is not necessary to test the entire building, only in the case of light construction. Therefore, close attention must be paid to the suitability of each material, in relation to the others.
Dimensional accuracy:	Extreme dimensional precision.	If it is done by a professional contractor, then this system is not like old houses, which were held straight by the applied plaster.
Durability:	A useful life of more than one hundred years thanks to the modern materials incorporated. The materials used in the lightweight steel frame and glued laminated timber houses are straight, have a uniform material structure, are dimensionally accurate, do not deform, do not dry out, do not crack and do not move afterwards. The supporting structure has a 30-year warranty. The useful life of galvanized steel in dry conditions is at least 150-200 years; while the glued wood supports guarantee the static load capacity for up to 500 years.	More maintenance is needed to maintain structural stability, especially if the building is not permanently occupied.

In short: a modern prefabricated house can have a considerably longer lifespan than its brick counterpart. It has better thermal insulation, is more dimensionally accurate, is faster to build and offers greater technical security. A very important thing to mention is that a modern prefabricated house, if it has wood fiber or hemp insulation in the walls and floor, will also have better thermal mass than a brick house.

Brick houses are still being built, so what’s the reason?

People travel both by motorcycle and by car, but the car is more comfortable, the car has air conditioning, the car is safer… We could list more, but there are many things like that in the world. According to popular thought, the brick house has an older history in our country, which is not true since the bricks of the current era are masonry blocks and not solid bricks, as was used in previous centuries.

There will always be something in some technology that people consider more important than all the others. It is a fact that prefabricated houses and light houses have a long history in the construction sector since almost all houses have wooden roofs and continue to be the choice of the majority of the European population, especially in the regions richest in Germany.

20 years ago, in Hungary between 2 and 3% of constructions were prefabricated house technology. In 2024 this figure will exceed 12%, while in Bavaria the proportion of these, with a wooden structure, will rise to at least 40%.

Many people opt for the modern brick house because they are united by tradition, because it has worked, because it is the one where our parents lived. Our great-grandparents lived in adobe, which our parents later replaced with the more modern brick, so to each his own.

The point is that, regardless of the technology we choose, we always use only qualified materials and choose our builder carefully, checking and corroborating his experience, observing his previous work.

Our company manufactures and constructs steel frame and wood frame prefabricated houses, modular houses, dome houses and Liapor technology houses.