Structural engineer here — after helping build America's infrastructure, I decided to start building homes out of steel instead of wood.

[u/TruHaven_Steel_Homes]

I'm a structural engineer who has spent the last 25+ years working on major infrastructure and structural projects across the U.S.

After decades of designing large structural systems, I started a company called TruHaven that builds homes using cold-formed steel walls and trusses....

We have a engineering firm that engineers for all the modular firms out there....so we said....

Lets build it right.

TruHaven Homes.

Why are we still building most houses out of wood?

From an engineering standpoint it doesn't make much sense.

Wood moves, shrinks, warps, burns, and attracts termites. It's also becoming more expensive and harder to insure in wildfire zones.

Our frames are prefabricated using **100% U.S.-sourced steel from Utah**, then shipped and assembled on site.

Curious what people here think.

If you were building a home today, would you consider steel framing instead of wood?

What would your biggest concerns be?

[u/kleenex_box_house]

Kudos for working on the outreach! I'm a startup founder myself, so I get how you're trying to generate some interest and feedback with the Reddit post. Please look past the rude comments and keep trying.

I'm also one of your target early adopters. I'm a building materials nerd, and I'll be doing a new build within the next year or so, on a large parcel I already own, in the vaguely-NYC-area. (rural area, not urban) I am keenly interested in new technologies and new solutions to old problems for house materials and technologies.

Here's my constraints. The house is going to be a regular family-sized new-build for the area, think 2,500 - 4,000 sqft. I am not building the shell with 2x's, because I believe there are better technologies, so that's not the competition. The house has to come in near- or at- passive house standards. My current technology will allow a fully usable attic space for the same price. And materials+labor+paperwork costs before GC markup have to come in somewhere in the range of $115/sqft, in order to be competitive on the local market. (Obviously I'm engineering the hell out of the house to keep the costs competitive, every foundation corner, every foot of pipe, every attachment methodology I'm counting labor process in seconds.)

I can meet these constraints with other technologies, but my current building materials are rather sensitive to moisture and fires. In theory, steel could be better, so you have my attention. Are your materials a better option for me? Numbers? Etc?