Stone by stone vs. precast concrete elements

They are cast and "baked" elements from a single piece. Maximum width in my opinion 0.8m. And as mentioned, very precise. Elbe-Haus works with their own people for the foundation slab/cellar and walls. Only the other trades are subcontracted to local craftsmen. Their own team is very familiar with the material and works very precisely. As I said, we have been in the house since mid-2014, everything was as promised or specified in the construction service description. The deadlines were also met, even beaten.

They are factory-cast and "baked" elements made from a single piece. Maximum width in my opinion is 0.8m.
And as I said, very dimensionally accurate.
Elbe-Haus works with their own people for the floor slab/basement and walls. Only the other trades are subcontracted to local craftsmen. Their own team knows the material very well and works very precisely.
As I said, we have been in the house since mid-2014, everything was as promised or specified in the construction service description. The deadlines were also met, even beaten.

Thank you very much for your answer. Sounds good so far. Again about the prefab elements: So these are properly cast parts, like those used, for example, in the construction of warehouses? So basically a floor slab just as a wall and smaller?
I actually thought these were also those Ytong blocks that are properly mortared together in the factory into one large piece. But I didn’t know that everything is basically one piece.

Then everything has to be planned perfectly beforehand, right? Because small changes don’t work anymore since the holes for the pipes have already been dimensioned.

Question about the floor slab: Is it a real floor slab? Are you not working with strip foundations? Do you have this Cosy floor slab? I think it’s supposed to be specially insulated or something.

The prefabricated elements are made of aerated concrete. That is something completely different from a steel-reinforced base slab. But yes, they are cast in one piece and not assembled from smaller parts. Several placed side by side and glued together then form a wall. The exterior walls are connected to the interior walls, which are also made of aerated concrete or sand-lime brick, which are built with conventional plan bricks, by means of embedded steel plates. In addition, a remaining formwork element is placed on the top of the wall so that a reinforced concrete ring beam is created there, which runs completely around the exterior walls and also includes the interior walls. There is no reason to doubt stability or dimensional accuracy. And as with conventional masonry, changes can still be made. However, chasing for wastewater pipes in the exterior wall was at least not possible for us, as otherwise the remaining thickness of the wall would no longer provide sufficient thermal insulation for our Kfw 70 from 2014. Smaller chasing work for electrical and water was no problem, on the other hand.

And yes, the house planning is created very precisely and fits afterward. The type of masonry is actually irrelevant here, since for the creation of the base slab, from which the wastewater pipes must be led out, their position must be precisely known and can only be changed afterward with great effort, if at all possible. But don’t worry, that fits.

If you have concerns about being bound by your decisions afterward, let me tell you that you’d rather change something in the planning seven times beforehand than want to change something in the finished work later. Late change requests almost certainly lead to high additional costs and construction delays. So only give the go-ahead for the factory planning when you are really sure.

Regarding the base slab: This is a proper base slab. However, frost skirts like a kind of continuous strip foundation are arranged at the outer edges so that frost cannot undermine and lift the base slab. The depth of the frost skirt depends on the location of the building site but is in my opinion at least 0.8 m and at most 1.2 m. For us, after soil was added around the finished house, it turned out to be about 1.1 m, only 0.8 m was laid out initially since it was already known beforehand that soil would be added.

And yes, we have this insulated base slab Cosyflor or whatever it’s called. With 6 cm insulation under the slab.

Stone by stone, prefabricated parts are dull. We also asked ourselves this question for a long time when we were searching and came across Elbe-Haus. We found the construction with prefabricated elements advantageous because it is faster, has fewer construction problems, and also fewer thermal bridges. Thus, we looked for companies that build with such systems and found Prime Massivhaus GmbH. The process and the agreed price were adhered to. Apart from two minor delays, we were very satisfied.