Sustain Minihome Hits the Road
by Lloyd Alter, Toronto 
on 04. 5.06
So many prefabs are vaporware- great ideas that never make it off the drafting board. Imagine our excitement to see the SIP walled, green roofed, solar panelled, stirling powered Sustain MiniHome hit the road to Toronto for its first exposure at the National Home Show. (although we cannot guarantee that all of those components are in this first unit) This TreeHugger may go over the top a bit about this little unit but it is the future- small efficient spaces, green materials and low impact. ::Sustain at the ::National Home Showin Toronto starting Friday.
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Sounds great!
I sure hope that big old truck hauling it around everywhere is running bio, though.
What is it with this fascination for movable homes? As far as I´m concerned they´re likely to be moved and thus polluting as well as undermining any form of society as a consequence of its mobility. Great design features on this one though, might be better if it had roots as well!
LA: Mobile homes rarely move once delivered, but have much lower impact on the landscape (no foundations) are more affordable (which is why so many people live in them) Not having roots can be a good thing.
Another thing to compare with "mobile" homes is the amount of waste generated by building onsite versus in a factory. How many of those big dumpsters get filled to the brim and hauled off during the building of one 1000 sq.ft. house (assuming anyone builds them that "small" anymore) versus an equivalent-sized factory-made home? That waste is often "wasted" from onsite building, but from what little I know of factory-made homes, the waste is re-used or recycled. And it's easier to convince the builders of mobile/factory home builders of the benefits of less waste this way than contractors and builders of permanent structures.
I'd love to see more mobile homes of this variety and others (such as MetalFit or factory-made loghomes) but I have a feeling many of the larger municipalities still can't see past developer-written building codes to this way of home-construction and implementation...
This looks like a new generation of the California Polytechnic State University solar home.
http://www.eere.energy.gov/solar_decathlon/homes_gallery.html#calpoly
http://www.solardecathlon.calpoly.edu/mainpage.html