Prefabricated House & Solid House - Assessment of Offers

Hello,

gladly, how far along are you currently? What are you planning?

I have started a conversation.

I can recommend Keitel-Haus to you. In the end, we did not build with them, but have only heard good things and received a very good offer. In the offer comparison, Keitel-Haus performed as follows for us:

Keitel-Haus (Brettheim)

Mr. B. (Fertighauscenter Mannheim) is a likeable, committed salesperson who gave a very good impression of his company. Highly recommended if you want to build with timber frame construction but individually and not according to a catalog. The company is the test winner in the two leading prefab house magazines in Germany. The tests were each based on surveys of home builders. Additionally, we received five recommendations from operators of construction blogs.

Features
o Construction method: timber frame construction
o Southwest basement or Bürkle basement
o Heating company: Brehl or Heidelmeier
o Heat pump/ventilation: Alpha-Innotec or Tecalor (identical to Stiebel Eltron)
o Kneer-Süd windows
o Discount possible for direct contracts for basement and heating
o 7 months construction time

Advantages
+ excellent reputation
+ cheapest offer
+ short construction time of 7 months (of which 3 months is delivery time for the house, during which the basement is built)
+ easily meets KfW-55 due to energetically excellent walls
+ unlike other prefab house providers, each house is individually planned
+ windows with hidden fittings and stone exterior window sills are standard
+ diffusion-tight or diffusion-open walls (for additional charge) available (we had the cheaper, diffusion-tight ones calculated due to the central controlled residential ventilation)
+ pre-sampling possible
+ likeable, unobtrusive salesperson (Mr. B. from the show house at the German prefab house center Mannheim), quick and detailed offer preparation, transparent pricing policy

Disadvantages
- floor-to-floor windows in the staircase are conceptually more expensive than in a solid house
- increasing story height for larger room height is conceptually more expensive than in a solid house
- expensive prices for wall and floor coverings as well as exterior facilities, own awarding to local craftspeople likely cheaper

More info on other topics can be found in our construction blog (construction company: Gemünden / location: Budenheim / builders: Juliane and Peter), which can be easily found with a Google search.

I have been building with the company Keitel-Haus since August. My experiences are not only positive. Deadlines (installing door frames, etc...) are not met or only after the third phone call. I understand that a wooden house is not built as precisely as a solid house. But I did not expect so many "crooked" walls.

Since the door frames are now installed plumb after the second attempt, I now have a gap of more than one centimeter behind the door panel to the wall at the top in the visible area!! Many things are not clearly addressed during the selection process. For example, that you cannot even put a small flowerpot on the miserable windowsills because the windows almost align with the inside of the wall. (There is almost no window niche!) The windowsill width of 6 cm (!) is mentioned in the small print of the protocol but is not explicitly pointed out as an unusual dimension.

When you bring up the problem to the site manager, the response is:

"You shouldn't put anything on the windowsills either—the windows are there for ventilation".....

The site manager downplays many problems or simply does not respond to my emails about construction defects.

I have been building with the company Keitel-Haus since August. My experiences are not only positive. Deadlines (such as installing door frames...) are not met or only after the third phone call. I understand that a wooden house is not built as precisely as a solid house. But I would not have expected so many "crooked" walls.

Since the door frames are now installed plumb after the second attempt, I now have a gap of more than one centimeter behind the door panel to the wall at the top in the visible area!! Many things are not clearly addressed during the selection process. For example, that you cannot even place a tiny flower pot on the meager window sills because the windows are almost flush with the inside of the wall. (There is almost no window recess!) The window sill width of 6 cm (!) is mentioned in the fine print of the protocol but not explicitly pointed out as an unusual dimension.

When the site manager is asked about this problem, the answer is:

"You are not supposed to put anything on the window sills either – the windows are there for ventilation".....

The site manager downplays many problems or does not even respond to my emails pointing out construction defects.

What advantage is there to setting the windows so far inward?

What is the advantage of setting the windows so far inside?

Assuming a typical prefabricated house, you have about 14 cm of insulation on the outside.
Plus the window frame about 8-9 cm plus 6 cm rails for the roller shutter. And with a Kfw70 wall, you only have about 6-10 cm inside.

We are currently also building with Keitel-Haus and are having serious problems. Significant errors were already made in the planning, so that, for example, we could not carry out a chimney. The planning by PBB, which has the same managing directors as Keitel-Haus, is very amateurish. Deadlines are not met by Keitel-Haus. After deadlines were promised, we were later told that we were never given any deadlines. The salesperson explained to us, for example, that the shell construction would be completed at the latest 7 months after signing the contract and that we could move in at the latest after 11 months. Today, no one wants to know anything about this anymore.