New home : Sekisui HEIM vs. Sekisui House

[tre]

Hello!

You may have seen my previous posts about reinforced concrete homes. We were looking for an RC home, but have decided that, for the most part, all of the companies around here are impressively difficult to work with and unhelpful. So I've kinda changed the game plan and started looking around at other builders. Chromedome shared his great Sekisui Heim experience with me, and from the other conversations we've had, it seems like Misawa and Sekisui House are both great too.

Does anyone here have a Sekisui House steel-frame house?

Purely from a structural standpoint, I'm wondering how SHeim compares with SHouse. Heim's structure uses massive, thick steel frames, with rooms built at the factory and shipped to your land. SHouse uses much much smaller steel frames, but many more bars, and they also build most of it on-site. In terms of structural integrity, it seems like SHouse's smaller beams would be WAY less strong than SHeim's....does anyone have any comments on this? Both companies say that none of their homes in the Tohoku Quake fell apart completely, and almost none of them suffered huge damage.

Misawa uses wood paneling, which also seems a bit more trustworthy than the typical woodframe house, but again, it's hard to compare it to steel in my brain!

Any comments are appreciated! Thanks so much!

[chainbolt]

Makes sense. "Heim" is German, and by the name they indicate a more stable and solid way of construction than the flimsy, often even wood based construction type ala US "House".
Pun intended.

[Hijinx]

These Hebel homes seem pretty solid as well.