Cost questions: commercial materials/techniques vs other methods

I'm new to this world of modernist homebuilding, but am thoroughly hooked. There's a lot to learn, especially with regards to materials and construction options. I've heard it mentioned that looking to commercial building practices can offer some savings per square foot. I was wondering if someone here could elaborate on that a bit - maybe giving some comparisons/examples on what sort of materials and techniques offer up such savings, and how these compare to other methods.

Thanks!

- Derek

I'm not so sure that assumption is necessarily true once you account for some of the mitigating factors that would lead you to that conclusion.

1. •commercial projects are generally much larger than residential and so they have more s.f. to divide into the construction cost, giving what looks like alower $/s.f.

2. •commercial isn't generally up to the same energy efficiency we'd like to see in a residence.

3. •commercial doesn't have the budget intensive rooms (master bathrooms, kitchens) associated with residential.

That being said there ARE some commercial systems that can save money in the end, but usually only when compared to higher-end residential systems. Commercial windows are an example of this. Decent commercial aluminum windows are going to be cheaper than top-of-the-line residential wood windows, but they aren't cheaper than residential-grade aluminum windows, which are of particularly low quality.

Mark

When we began the process of designing our house, this idea made sense to me as well. By my logic, all the strip malls/retail/warehouse buildings that are cranked out every year must be utilizing the most economical methods and materials avaliable, right? Start reading up on things like masonry buildings, commercial windows, steel framing or whatever you see being used in your area and you'll quickly discover why many of these things are less than ideal for residential construction. Unfortunately just mimicking commercial building practices for residential purposes is not as simple as you might think. One of the most importnat things I've learned during our process and what commercial construction exploits extremely well is the idea that SPEED equals lower cost.

As far as actual materials...
Example: the home we're in the process of building uses Hambro open web steel trusses and corrugated steel decking for the floors and roof exactly as you'd see in most any commercial building. I estimate the acutal cost of materials alone to be nearly double that of a conventional wood joist floor/roof. Then there's the additional equipment (crane, skid loader, pump truck, etc. that a commercial contractor already owns and I don't) required to handle and install vs. a couple of guys with nails, straps and hammers.

Another example: poured concrete finish floors like you'd find in any Home Depot or wherever. Problem A is finding a flatwork contractor who is capable of producing this kind of finish (i.e. smooth, almost polished look accomplished with steel troweling only, not mechanically grinding and polishing for X dollars a square foot like the residential concrete guys want to do), the good ones are the COMMERCIAL contractors, which leads to problem B: more often than not, a commercial contractor in ANY trade won't even consider taking a residential job, period.
Another issue I've discovered is that because there are stricter code requirements applied to commercial products, they inherently cost more because of the added RD and testing to ensure the product meets these requriements.
I could go on, but the point is that the cost of any material or method depends largely on the situation and commercial situations are drastically different than residential.
All of this is not to say that I don't believe there are ways to exploit the mass-produced economy of certain commercial materials and methods. It has just been my experience that after you factor in all of the other steps involved in acutally using them, it's not necessarily cheaper.

This whole discussion probably has some relationship to the comment from another thread that the award winning Miller/Hull loft project in Seattle didn't make money, though they do seem to be working on some similar, but bigger, loft condo projects elsewhere.