To help rebuild homes in Paradise, California, and other areas affected by natural disasters, a Chico-based general contractor with an architecture degree has designed prefabricated, noncombustible, eco-friendly, and customizable home kits. Justin Couchot of the Chico Enterprise-Record reports Vern Sneed, the owner of Q Cabin Kits, aims to replace combustible plywood, shingles, and paper housing materials with structures built out of 90% steel.
Though Sneed began the project in 2010, and sold the first home in 2013, the inspiration for Q Cabin Kits dates back to 1986 when Sneed was an architecture student at the University of Kansas. Sneed said a professor assigned a project to the class where students were required to use a pre-engineered building as the shell. The professor told the class that the students needed to get a handle on that industry or it would take over all of the architecture students’ jobs.
The idea stuck with Sneed, who said he began thinking of ways to drive down the costs of home building while also driving up the excitement. The windows used have a heavy gauge aluminum frame as well as a tempered glass interior. Sneed said the aluminum frame is important to have since traditional vinyl window framing can melt from the wall and give fire an easy access to the interior of a home. He said with the windows, “it’s going to take a couple thousand degrees for several minutes for something to go wrong with that window.”
Sneed also mentioned the series of troughs on the exterior of the homes, which gather water and funnel it to one point so rain water can be used for agriculture or plant watering. He said the steel exterior leaves nowhere for fire to be sucked into when normal roofing panels may burn, stating that the most vulnerable part of a home to fire is its overhang. The roofing pieces are delivered in arches with a crane and bolted into place.
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