Conventional construction of walls involves the erection of framing either of wood or metal. The exterior is then usually covered in with some form of panels and/or bricks or siding. Insulation is placed between the framing and studs, and the interior wall is then covered in usually with plaster board of some kind. It is very well recognized that this involves a large number of different operations, using on site labour, which is paid at relatively high hourly rates. The use of materials on site is also wasteful, in that such materials have to be cut to length and fitted, and the cut off portions are discarded.
Considerable economies can be achieved by the manufacturer of factory built modular housing. Usually however this involves relative complex, repetitive operations. In addition, such pre-fabricated factory built homes are usually built in a relatively complete form with complete walls, doors and windows for the four sides of the dwelling. While this greatly reduces the cost of the housing, the actual fabrication costs still represents a substantial cost of the total house cost.
A partial solution to the problem is to use wall panel systems, in which wall panels can be prefabricated to a standard size, in relative high speed automated factory systems. The panels are then shipped to the site and simply put together to erect the completed walls. Even these systems however suffer from a variety of disadvantages such as the use of various different materials, having differential rates of expansion and contraction, and the use of some materials which may be subject to deterioration, rot, or attack by insects and the like.
Clearly it is desirable to provide for a low cost construction technique in which portions of a building may be pre-built and finished in a factory, and using durable, long lasting materials not subject to attack by rot, weather or insects. It is further clearly desirable that such building components shall be capable of being manufactured by relatively unskilled factory labour, and may be erected to form a low cost dwelling or other building, in a speedy, efficient manner, using a minimum of on-site labour with minimum skills, and requiring only a minimum of heavy equipment. Ideally such a system will require no special form of fastening, or fastening devices or use of specialized tools. The buildings built with this system should be capable of withstanding hurricane and earthquake shocks to a very substantial extent.