Detached House Design with Precast Concrete Components

Abstract

As the design and construction of precast concrete components is becoming more popular, it is
important to examine the current situation and issues related to precast concrete house design and
construction. The selected case study is Passorn houses of Pruksa Holding Public Company Limited. The
study aims to propose guidelines to optimize the design of detached houses constructed with precast
concrete components.
Passorn house type has a living space of 120 square meters consisting of 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms
and 2 parking spaces. The 2-storey detached house model consisted of 47 precast concrete components;
35 wall pieces, 7 floor pieces, and 5 beam pieces, respectively. There are slight modifications of the
components between each housing estates using the Passorn house type such opening, grooving and
coloring on the wall, etc.
Problems found included the 35 pieces that made up the precast concrete wall panels had 32
different variations. Although the differences were slight, the structure was affected in terms of fracture
problem of wall panels with less opening edge and leakage between concrete joints.
To resolve these issues, modular coordination system should be introduced during the design phase
and the opening edge needs to be widened to no less than 60 centimetres in order to match the size of the
reinforcing steel bars. Also, wall coverings and other decorative materials need to be incorporated to seal the
joints to prevent leakages. Additionally, in modifying houses design, other materials such as fiber cement can
be used at the front part of the house, without increasing the variety of the precast concrete components.
The method proposed can be adopted to minimize the problems and optimize future construction, in
order to align the design practice of detached houses with prefabricated concrete components construction
process.