James Brew is sure he has a winning plan to make framing a house simpler and faster, but he is now up against one of the tougher challenges of his four-year dream.
He has studied Japanese architecture and culture. That helped him forge a relationship with a Japanese company whose technology he wants to use.
He has hundreds of e-mails from people interested in his plan. He has tested it and helped build the first house with the system.
Now he just needs $1 million or so — preferably from someone who knows how to run a factory.
Brew wants to bring to the United States a house-framing system that uses metal fittings and precut lumber from a computerized factory. The system was developed by the Japanese company Kato Sangyo Co.
What Brew now must do is make it through one of the most critical steps an entrepreneur must take. Then it gets risky.
“Financing is probably the most critical phase to starting up,” said Dick Braun, an entrepreneurial development specialist at the University of Minnesota Duluth’s Center for Economic Development.
Still, Braun said, “More make it through the financing stage than actually succeed.”
Brew got the idea while studying Japanese culture and design, a longtime fascination for him.
In 1998, he came upon an article on the Kato Sangyo house-framing procedure. He wrote to the company, and the company’s executives showed up at his office a few months later.
That was the start of a long courtship with the company. It eventually led to an agreement to have Brew work on introducing the technology, called Metalfit, to the United States.
The Kato Sangyo system starts with a computer-aided house design. The blueprints are sent in digital format to a factory and are used to control machines that precisely cut the lumber to the proper size. They also cut notches and joints into the lumber.
Those notches and joints are sized to accept metal fittings. Each piece of wood is numbered and keyed to a drawing of how to put the house frame together.
Putting the frame together consists of hammering the pieces together and requires no skilled labor.
The house can be cut in the factory in a few hours. In a few days, workers can have the frame put together and enclosed.
David Chmielewski and his wife, Jennifer, built the first Metalfit house in the United States in the Carlton, Minn., area. David Chmielewski is sold on the concept.
“I think the big thing is the fact that the construction of the shell went so fast,” said Chmielewski, who works with Brew at LHB Engineers and Architects. “And it’s really square and it’s plumb, and that just makes the finishing easier.”
Brew believes the system offers several advantages in addition to quality.
Speed is one. A house frame could be designed, cut and built in a few days.
Another is waste. The system’s automation cuts back on wood waste.
A third is lower-cost labor. In areas with labor shortages, the house contractor doesn’t need to find carpenters to put up the frame.
Brew believes that retiring Baby Boomers may lead to more shortages in the building trades.
Although the end cost of getting a house framed is about the same as doing it the traditional way, the product is quicker and better.
“I really believe there is a genuine need for a system that requires low-skilled labor,” he said.
Articles about the system in Popular Science and Builder magazines led to hundreds of e-mails from people interested throughout the country, including contractors who say they have problems finding labor.
But getting the system accepted also may be a challenge. Brew is looking for a consultant to write a business plan and study the market potential for the system.
If that works, he will find the partner with money and a factory. Two options for the factory are available:
A less automated system that costs about $750,000 and uses four or five workers. It can turn out one 2,000-square-foot house frame during each eight-hour shift.
A fully automated system that costs about $2.5 million and uses two workers. It can turn out four 2,000-square-foot house frames in an eight-hour shift.
“Understandably, no company wants to do that unless the market is there,” Brew said.
Bob Owens, owner of Owens Forest Products, says the market may be difficult to crack. He says he is “optimistic about the home. I like it.”
But he also believes it’ll mostly appeal to do-it-yourself homebuilders. There are a number of companies now competing for that market share.
“I think it’s very good,” Owens said. “But it’s a very small percentage of home starts. It’s difficult to get broad acceptance.”
Getting people to accept new ideas and making them work can be tough, said Braun.
“It’s a revolution in the sense of the process,” he said of the Metalfit system. “Revolutionary ideas take time, and that becomes frustrating for the entrepreneur.”
