How Thick Are the Walls of Prefabricated Houses

The thickness of the walls of prefabricated houses generally ranges from 120 mm to 150 mm. The following provides a detailed introduction from the aspects of wall materials, application scenarios, and existing issues:

Wall Materials and Thickness Range
Prefabricated house walls typically use cement prefabricated panels as the main material. The thickness design needs to balance structural strength and construction convenience. According to building codes and practical application cases, the standard thickness range for such walls is 120 mm to 150 mm. Among them, walls with a thickness of 120 mm are mostly used for non-load-bearing partition walls or low-rise buildings, while a thickness of 150 mm is commonly found in scenarios requiring a certain load-bearing capacity, such as the exterior walls of some brick-and-concrete structural buildings.

Early Application Scenarios and Structural Characteristics
In the early stages of building technology development, cement prefabricated panel walls were widely used in brick-and-concrete structural buildings due to their advantages of fast construction speed and low cost. The design logic was to shorten the on-site construction period through the standardized production of prefabricated components while utilizing the compressive properties of cement materials to meet basic structural requirements. However, this wall system had obvious limitations: due to the lack of a continuous insulation layer inside the panels, their thermal conductivity coefficient was high, resulting in poor winter insulation performance; the connection joints between the panels were mostly mechanically fixed, and long-term use could easily lead to cracks due to temperature changes or foundation settlement, affecting structural stability; in addition, limited by panel size and material properties, their load-bearing capacity was weak, making it difficult to meet the needs of high-rise buildings or large-span spaces.

Existing Issues and Industry Limitations
With the improvement of building energy efficiency standards and structural safety requirements, the defects of cement prefabricated panel walls have become increasingly prominent. Poor insulation performance leads to increased building energy consumption, which is not in line with the development trend of green buildings; insufficient structural stability is manifested by weak lateral resistance capacity, making them prone to overall collapse under extreme loads such as earthquakes; weak load-bearing capacity limits their application range in multi-story buildings. Based on the above issues, current building codes have imposed strict restrictions on the application scenarios of cement prefabricated panel walls, allowing their use only in temporary buildings, low-rise rural houses, and other scenarios with low structural performance requirements, and requiring the addition of insulation layers and structural columns as reinforcement measures.