What Are the Types of Prefabricated Housing Products

Prefabricated housing products mainly include three types: panel-based prefabricated buildings, box-based prefabricated buildings, and modular buildings.

Panel-based prefabricated buildings use prefabricated wall panels and floor slabs as core components, enabling rapid assembly through standardized design. Their core advantages lie in strong structural stability, effectively expanding indoor usable area by approximately 5%-8%, reducing on-site wet work, and shortening construction periods. However, due to limitations in component standardization, design flexibility is relatively low, making them more suitable for residential or public building projects with clear functional requirements. For example, some affordable housing projects adopt this technology, integrating insulation layers into prefabricated exterior wall panels to achieve dual improvements in building energy efficiency and construction efficiency.

Box-based prefabricated buildings combine spaces through prefabricated functional units (such as bathroom and kitchen modules), with construction speeds 50%-70% faster than traditional methods. Their typical feature is the prefabrication of complete functional spaces in factories, which are then transported to the site and quickly assembled using lifting equipment. This technology has high requirements for transportation conditions, necessitating that component dimensions comply with road transportation limits, while also requiring large-scale lifting equipment on-site. Common application scenarios include temporary buildings and emergency shelters. For instance, in post-earthquake reconstruction, prefabricated bathroom modules can quickly restore basic living facilities.

Modular buildings disassemble buildings into independent modules, with full-process prefabrication of walls, floor slabs, plumbing, electrical systems, and interior finishes completed in factories. On-site assembly errors are controlled to the millimeter level. Their core advantages are reflected in four aspects:

1. Short construction period: Standardized residential modules produced by companies like Sichuan Huagou require only one-third of the traditional construction time from production to occupancy;
2. Quality control: Factory assembly line production eliminates human construction errors, with pre-installed components such as doors, windows, and appliances undergoing strict quality inspections;
3. Energy efficiency and environmental protection: Modular production reduces construction waste by approximately 60% and lowers material loss rates to below 3%;
4. Easy maintenance: Integrated design allows for quick pipeline inspections and repairs through module disassembly. This technology has been widely applied in sectors with high demands for construction efficiency, such as hotels and data centers. For example, a data center project adopted prefabricated modules to complete a project that would traditionally take two years in just six months. With the integration of BIM technology and intelligent manufacturing, modular buildings are evolving towards high-rise and customized directions, becoming an important trend in future building industrialization.