Eco-friendly Clayton iHouse on sale, coming to a highbrow trailer park near you
By Laura June 
posted May 7th 2009 11:33AM
posted May 7th 2009 11:33AM
Clayton Homes, a US-based company which makes and sells manufactured (prefab) homes, is getting in on the i-naming game with their latest bit of construction. The iHouse is a prefabricated, customizable house that is so energy efficient that Clayton estimates it costs about $1 per day to cover all of its electricity and heating needs. The house makes use of solar panels, energy-efficient appliances, thick walls, heavy insulation, a rainwater-catching system, a tankless water heater, and dual flush toilets to meet its eco-friendly goals. The company, which sold about 30,000 manufactured homes last year, thinks that the iHouse could quickly come to represent about 10 percent of its business. Prototypes of the house -- which at around 1,000 square feet costs $140,000 completely furnished -- are popping up all over the US, and as of last Saturday, are officially on sale nationwide. One more photo after the break.
[Via Yahoo News]
[Via Yahoo News]
$140,000 does not include the lot or any of the sewer hookups etc.
I build super energy efficient homes in Louisville KY. The $1 a day is very doable in most parts of the U.S. We build 2200 SF with 4 bedroom and 2 1/2 baths WITH THE LOT for $164,900. That homes only uses about $24 / month to heat and cool. That's with no solar panels. For about $25,000 after rebates it would be easy to make this a Net Zero home.
My customers reported total monthly energy costs over the winter at about $85 / month. These are normal people living normally. Not "tree-huggers" living in a dark cold house.
How to build a super energy efficient house:
-2x6 exterior walls instead of 2x4
-1" of XPS styrofoam on the exterior of the entire home
-seal every air gap
-keep the HVAC in the conditioned space of the house
-use low-e argon filled windows
That's a good start anyway. You can build extremely energy efficient, durable and healthy home for the same price and building a normal leaking, crappy house.
Abe
I don't care how many plasmas you put in it... it's still a trailer. FAIL.
Pretty IKEA-esque kitchen in that thing...
Well if I bothered to read the article that would have been obvious. I think IKEA makes entire prefab build your own houses in Europe.
"What's that?"
"It's an iHouse."
"But it doesn't have windows."
"Exactly! Mwaahahaha!"
I'd live in it
Tornadoes aren't going to care how fancy it is - if it's a trailer, with a high enough wind, it's toast.
If it's *any* sort of house, with a high enough wind it's toast.
A lot of the wind-related damage you see following storms that hit trailer parks are caused by improperly securing them to the ground. Put down a concrete slab, sink anchors into it, and use modern prefab building techniques, and this thing will be resistant to all but the worst.
Pre-fab/Manufactured homes are already eco-friendly. There is almost no waste from the manufacturing process. Adding extra insulation and double pane windows lets the mfg add a hefty mark-up to their $30k homes. Brilliant.
Did anyone configure their own? It costs over $15k just to deliver it! That doesn't include the "foundation" or hooking it up to utilities. By the time you're done, it's $200k+. There are communities of brand new construction in Stockton, CA selling for less.
The shipping depends on where you are.
The shipping for my zip code was 750 bucks.
Still looks like a double wide to me.
This mobile home will last you for years and years, unlike those cheap plastic mobile homes that have 90% market share. This is actually a lot cheaper than having to buy one of those crap ones every year. With one of those po$ mobile homes you have to spray for bugs all the time, but you're still guaranteed to catch one. You don't have to worry about that with the iHouse. You never need to worry about bugs because it's so secure. Then there's all the stuff that comes with the the iHouse. You get a free productivity items like a free pen and paper. Or photo and video sorting helpers, like envelopes and boxes. Also, even though they're both made out of the same parts the iHouse is much more reliable. You get what you pay for /s
Nice! A house trailer that looks like a house boat (aka the house trailer of the sea).
It is like putting parsley on shit, lipstick on a pig, you can't polish a turd... etc..
It is still a trailer, when you set aside their attempt at segmenting the market, and differentiating their line. With the state of the real estate market in many regions the price they are asking would get you a real place to live that includes the land.
Like lipstick on a pig, the i-House1's 'green' features are commendable and help mask flawed, inefficient and ugly design. (No offense meant to pigs). Truly efficient houses have a much higher ratio of floor area to exterior wall area to reduce energy loss. The i-House1 with Flex unit has about 190 linear feet of exterior wall length for 1000 sq.ft of floor area. By comparison, a 28'x36' house (1008sf) has 128 lin.ft. of walls. The i-House1/Flex wastes 50% exterior wall area or more. Or, as 48'x48' house (196 lin.ft. walls) would have 2304 s.f. of floor area, over twice the i-H/Flex area. 6"thick walls can't compensate for the heat loss/gain that inefficient design costs.
The interior leaves a little to be desired, once the attractive furniture is removed for clarity. A kitchen island without sufficient counter space adjacent to the sink and no cupboards overhead nearby is inefficient too. What's with no bedroom closets? Even the bath is inefficiently planned. And that exterior design will turn off 95% of potential buyers, except those with little taste.
Clearly the manufacturer trimmed costs by not hiring an architect. It might be excusable if someone built only one of these, but the error is multiplied by the thousands they plan to build. (Penny saved, pound foolish).
test
So I don't know a lot about real estate (I live in LA and have always rented). How do pre-fab homes compare to regular homes as far as appreciation in value? Is it more like a house in that it's an investment or more like a trailer home that starts depreciating in value from the moment you buy it?
Jeez we're pretty spoiled in the mid west, a 1,000 sq. foot house would only cost around $80,000, they are asking for almost double.
Then again it does look awesome. If only I was single and was in the market for a new house.
Looks nice where is the pool?
It's a glorified trailer. It's going on your land. No way it's worth $140,000.
You can buy a real house for less than that in many parts of the country.
I was looking for something like this, but not for that kind of money. I guess I'll just build an addition on my current house instead.
I want one. Really!!
I hope to someday buy some cheap land out in the country, preferably somewhere nice and secluded out in the Texas Hill Country or near a lake in East Texas. I could see myself buying a manufactured house as a weekend get-away until I decide to retire in 35 years and build a retirement house.
That house reminds me of the Alabama house from "Harold & Kumar's Escape From Gitmo"
Being trailer trash myself, yeah I got myself a 1999 Silvercrest W-60 double wide, I can tell you it is too small. At least in California most parks will not allow you to bring in anything that is smaller than double wide. And as far as solor power goes, at least in my park, it's a no go. The spaces are submetered and math is hard, so they don't let you have solar panels because they just don't know how to deal with it for billing. It may work for a hermit living out in the Mojave on his own 100 acres, but in a park, in CA, I doubt it.
The panels don't have to be tied to your power grid bro. If you wanted panels on your double-wide, you could set it up so that you're using the metered connection only when your panels can't provide the free juice. Unless they've got some blanket rule in your park outlawing them. It doesn't have to complicate the billing. You just end up getting billed for way less, or even $0.
A house that size in my part of the county is $300K, so it is a bargain compared to a regular house. But a brand new 1600 sft mobile is $150K so, comparing bananas to bananas, it's par.
Dylan,
Mobiles do apreciate just like stick built homes, mainly because new ones cost more. For example, I bought mine in 1999 for $110K. In 2006, just before the housing bubble popped, it was worth $200K. That is, a brand new house same model, same park would have run you $220K, or you could buy a used 7 year old one for $20K less. It was still worth more than I paid for it, but it was not worth as much as a brand new one just like it. Right now the market is way down, everything is selling for 40-60% less than it was in 2006, my house is probably only worth $125K right now. It's really hard to say, because nothing is selling.
http://methodhomes.net/
You should visit a manufactured home sales lot 1 time. I looked at one about 10 years ago that costs just over $100,000. It had a marble fireplace, 3 large bedrooms, garden bath, a laundry room, and a deck. There is a huge, huge difference between modular aka manufactured homes and mobile homes. The true modular home requires you attach it to the lot by having the normal home foundation installed. That being written - this looks like a mobile home not a modular home. If you can, catch the time Bob Villa visited one of these manufacturers while they were building one of the modular homes. It was more 'in square' than most stick built homes.
Clayton homes is owned by Berkshire Hathaway, Warren Buffet's company. Berkshire has Bill Gates on it's board. Not suggesting these things are related, just interesting.
This would be a good deal if it were half the price.
I can imagine living in this in isolated spots like here on the SOBX.
But I wouldn't want to weather a hurricane in it.
The $1 a day utility bill would be a deal-closer for me. We have a 2600 sq ft home now (way too big for 2 people) and it costs roughly 10X that much for gas and electric. The problem is going to be with zoning. Most townships in this NE part of the country won't allow this type of construction. They have minimum square footage and foundational requirements. I can only assume these laws were passed to "keep out the riff raff," as people like to say, in a thinly veiled attempt to conceal their prejudice against people who cannot afford million dollar mansions. Until these energy-efficient, attractive homes gain widespread acceptance, they will be relegated to mobile-home or trailer parks.
People criticizing prefabs are idiots subscribing to generalizations. Prefab (in some form) is the future of building construction. It takes about 5 brain cells to understand that anything made from standard methods in factories is going to be superior in all ways to a bunch of illegal laborers building homes every which way for $10/hr. The only problem is perception. Factory homes will be stronger, more reliable, more fully integrated, adaptable, movable, easily fixable, and cheaper. Its a no brainer. Unless your a fat American with totally screwed up priorities.
If as 'radl33t' argues people criticizing prefabs are idiots, then we're a nation of idiots. (Not.) Prefabs have limited appeal. Why is that? I bet if you polled those who buy and live in prefabs, their IQs would be lower than average.
Manufactured housing has been thought of for many decades without widespread success. That's because homes aren't small and easily transported like cars. Auto assembly lines are expensive and can be located in a few spots around the country profitably, but not in every town or county or province. Prefab factories have to be relatively close to their product's destination, thus requiring many smaller facilities. That cuts their profitability without the mass scale that auto assembly lines enjoy.
Moreover, public taste in housing style and format is a lot more variable; individual parcels require a higher degree of appropriate home feature orientations; there's simply too many options needed in housing for a small local prefab shop to hammer out.
Individual builders that are profitable are reasonably intelligent; the business is hard and not everyone survives. They'd have seen the light in large numbers if prefabs were the best solution. There's no conspiracy in society or its codes to keep prefabs from mushrooming everywhere. It just hasn't proven to be a widely liked housing alternative.
That said, of course some forms of factory housing assemblies will increase. We already have industrialized particle and plywood boards to replace individual lumber boards once used. Sheetrock replaced wet plaster walls. Like prefab tub/showers replaced conventional shower/baths, prefab complete bathroom modules are a possibility someday because they're small enough to transport great distances and could save thousands of $ per bathroom. But we're not going to see much prefab housing becoming the dominant housing form in our lifetimes. Moshe Safdie's Habitat in 1967 was a gorgeous but dead-end, overpriced experiment that failed to catch on. (http://www.greatbuildings.com/buildings/Habitat_67.html) The solution is to require builders and contractors to have more education, and to receive more pay, so housing quality and energy efficiency increases. This is a critical step that government must take.
In California, homes may have to be zero-energy by about 2020 in order to lessen climate change impacts from wasted energy. But that's readily doable if builders had the education, and if home buyers would pay about 10% more upfront, while saving much more over the lifespan of these energy efficient homes. Yet too many idiots resist government regulation and the public suffers from the consequence of free-enterprise chaos.
My $98K 1500 sq. ft. 3BR, 2BA home (new in 2007) costs as little as $36 to heat and cool.
This trailer, is very nice, however.
140k for a relatively small kind of starter house is pretty not bad....... This would be something to buy plant and rent..... Me personally Ill take a brownstone on the slope in brooklyn anyday....
when is the contest on this? i'd pay for the foundation, etc then.
This will bring about a new era.... Trailer iTrash