“The Loft,” a modern singlewide shed roof design by Palm Harbor

How many singlewides have you seen which look like this? I’ve photoshopped the color down several shades on the façade, because I thought it would look better with a unified color scheme, given all the windows and design elements they have going on. Gray and dark gray aren’t my favorite house colors, but unifying the palette emphasizes the modern look of this shed design. You can see the actual model colors in the video:

Manufactured home factories usually give a choice of colors for the home’s exterior, and sometimes type of siding, e.g., cedar or hardboard. Unless you’re buying the lot model, the interiors of manufactured homes usually come with white walls. The dealer will sometimes throw in some paint, if you ask, but it would be colors used in the model.  

Speaking of gray, you will notice in the video on the home’s website, the interior of the model is all soft gray, including the ceilings. Having worked with drywall on two my own homes, I hate gray walls. It’s the color of naked drywall. Yeah, I know, it’s a trend, like very dark cabinetry. I don’t like that either.

Gray walls and ceilings are depressing and remind me of unpainted concrete basement walls. If you’re afraid of color, paint your walls beige, and ceilings either white or a lighter shade of beige than is on the walls. That will keep the room warm and friendly, rather than cold and depressing.

The wells of skylights, and sometimes perimeter around windows look best in white, not in a color matching the wall color. No skylights here, I was just throwing it out as a tip.

Dark cabinets and dark wood in general look old, like colonial furniture and wood trim from the 1800s. Sometimes dark wood looks good in high-end kitchen cabinetry, I will give it that much.

In a small, modern home like this, light cabinetry would look better, and be in style forever. I’m pretty sure it’s an option. The rage for dark kitchen cabinets has been going on for over 15 years, and some day it will end and those cheap stained dark brown cabinets will look just fugly.

I remember around the year 2000 when a friend who follows trendy home design crap first told me dark cabinets were “in.” It looks good in some kitchens which cost as much as a singlewide trailer.

Scandinavians and the Shakers, they like light woods and design which look clean and simple. I bet some of these dark stained cabinets look awful after 10 years of wear. Then you can paint them white. That’s a big job, painting cabinets.

My other pet peeve about dark wood is when it is used as molding on any small home, but especially a home with a low ceiling, as in a strip of molding between the walls and ceiling. Thus the dark strip running around a room makes the ceiling look even lower, and it looks silly. On the more upscale doublewide manufactured homes, I have seen dark trim which was better quality and looked okay.

Natural or lightly stained wood cabinetry is beautiful, like knotty alder and other woods Palm Harbor and Karsten used. They will always be in style. Pine is soft and light, and probably not as suitable for cabinetry as harder woods, since it dents easily, but my favorite cabinets were the knotty pine ones I had in my last house.

My blog is opinionated, but I’m not shilling for any particular brand or company, even though I lean toward singlewide homes by Palm Harbor and Karsten. It just so happens I like their singlewides.

No company is paying me, except I’ve earned about $150 in the last 5 years from Google AdSense, which places ads in the right column of this blog. As some of my posts get older, they pick up more views, about 100 a day for the popular posts.

Anyway, the reason so many of my picks for fairly good quality and stylish smaller manufactured homes are either Karsten or Palm Harbor is that they have good home interiors. Besides having nice interiors, they are of better quality than most; simple, solid, and not too fake or cheap looking. For example, Karsten’s one piece tub/shower doesn’t look like the awful, cheap looking units that lower end homes have. Instead, I would prefer theirs to tile, having grout wear away, and having to re-grout around a tub because of the line where the tub meets the tile.  

You can buy a new low-end singlewide for $25,000 and I understand why someone might do that if that is all they can afford. There was a time when I had such a terrible problem with a major roof leak I couldn't locate, a low-end trailer with a good roof would have saved me from misery. 

However, when there are homes like this $51,000 Palm Harbor which in the long run may make you feel happier, save you money on energy costs, and last longer because things on it won’t fall apart as easily, then it is worth it if you can afford it, to buy a better quality home like this. Because of the better style—higher ceilings, drywall, nicer windows—these are the only homes I can really like, and would like to own myself.

With the shed roof singlewide and a home oriented toward the south, the slanted ceiling would pick up a lot of light from the clearstory windows, more than a flat ceiling, and I like this kind of slanted ceiling.

One reservation I have about this shed roof design is that when solar panels become more popular, and your house is oriented with the tall side to the south, which you’d do in climates that have snow in winter, the roof would be slanted the wrong way for solar. If you had room, you could either have a free-standing tracking solar array or in a decade or two, solar shingles or a thin panel which could be put on the front of the house.

This home appears to have 8” or 10" eaves on the sides and eaves of only a few inches on back and front. It’d look better with the same eaves on the front, or even a foot and a half of eave on the front, for best passive solar design.

Inside, unless you need extra storage, the structure with two shelves on each side, between the living room and kitchen, I think it has to go! I’m sure you could tell them to delete it from the build. It ruins the modern look of the house. I don’t know, maybe it would look better with books or something.

This model, "The Loft" is located in Albany, Oregon, which is a Homes Direct dealer which has this Palm Harbor model for $51,000. It's the only one, but you can probably put one on order at another dealer. HERE IS THE LINK to that website, which features a lot of other nice homes, all with prices, which I like. (I don't like when you have to call for a price.)

For example, HERE IS A LINK to a $35,900 singlewide called "The Perris" on the same page. It's also a Palm Harbor home. It's not as exciting as "The Loft," but with only one bathroom and less style, it's less expensive.

Paying $35,900 for "The Perris," rather than getting a bottom-of-the-line singlewide for $25,000, is probably worth it. "The Perris" would look nice inside, if it had one or two walls painted a color other than white. The whole thing is kind of a whiteout inside right now. I wanted to include this because sometimes the pricier brands like Palm Harbor produce some nice, inexpensive homes.

Some dealers offer granite counter tops and stainless steel appliances on their luxury homes, but on the inexpensive homes they're kind of cheap all through. Palm Harbor and Karsten both build quality in their singlewides and small homes. Again though, fail on the dark kitchen cabinet color.

State standards for manufactured homes are high in Oregon, Washington and Northern California. By law, they can't sell any manufactured homes with 2 x 4 walls, except if they are "park model" RVs. In states with lower standards, you can sometimes pay extra and get a home built to higher standards, and that's what you should try to do. For example, locally, for me, the Karsten factory in Albuquerque will build a home with R-21 insulation in the walls, instead of R-19.    

Back to "The Loft"...Perhaps because I’ve spent too much time trying to find roof leaks, like in places where buildings meet, the simplicity of a shed roof, one simple rectangle, it’s beautiful. Tell me what you think of this shed roof design in the comments. 

Simple roof and siding fixes to prevent small problems from becoming big problems

And now for something completely different...Rather than writing about a manufactured home today, I’m going to introduce you to three products you can use to keep your house from falling apart, or to fix it if it is falling apart. I’ve picked these three because although I’ve looked at many YouTube videos as I went about making repairs, I never saw references to these three in particular:

1. Self-tapping screws. (Get an assortment of a few sizes, like half-inch ones, and ones that are about an inch long.)

  2. Kool Seal UV Resistant Black Patch & Coat (gallon size available at Walmart or Home Depot).

3. Roof Repair Fabric (fiberglass mesh used with Patch & Coat above, for patching larger areas or cracks).

Whether you live in a stick-built house, an RV, a single or double wide, the old maxim about a stitch in time saves nine still applies. The sooner you can fix a small problem, the better the chances are that it will not develop into a major one.

For example, if you see a damp spot on the ceiling or wall, the time to try to find the source, which sometimes can be very difficult, is right away. The water that is getting in can sometimes be from a crack or opening that is many feet away from where it is leaking. If you wait a month, or sometimes even a few days, you’re risking water damage, mold, wood rot, floor damage, and needing to replace drywall or studs. My house was kind of a wreck when I moved in, and I’ve used these three things to fix many problems.

Leaks most commonly occur around outlet pipes, vents, skylights, edges of flashing, around missing shingles, under swamp coolers, at the juncture of a water spout to the roof, and at the edges of the roof, where roof lines meet, and through cracks in the roof, and around windows.

Sometimes a plain roof with no gables looks boring and cheap, but it is a thing of beauty if you’ve ever had problems with roof leaks at gable joints.

There are a few YouTube channels which feature people who tour abandoned houses and buildings. Sometimes they’ll show a house that looks like it was once an expensive house. Stacks of old magazines or newspapers show it was abandoned only eight years ago. But it is a wreck inside, not because of vandalism, although that is sometimes the case, but simply because it developed a hole in the roof at some point, water got in, or even that a window or two got smashed or were left open. After just eight years, it was rotting and falling apart.  

There are single-wide trailers that are 40 years and older, which look in perfectly good condition because their owners always kept them up, even though trailers from that era were not as well made as they are today.

Small problems may stay minor for quite a while, but at other times they don’t. The longer you put it off, the bigger risk you’re taking. Manufactured homes do not have advantages when it comes to maintenance. They need it just as often as any stick-built house. Sometimes you just don’t know when something is headed toward a disaster, because it is hidden.

 A lot of my neighbors have carports, accessory buildings or houses with metal roofs. A sheet of metal or aluminum will flap and bang at a loose corner every time it is windy. Then a big wind strikes one day and the sheet of metal flies off down the street or into someone else’s yard. Okay, I confess, that happened to me once. LOL.

SELF-TAPPING SCREWS (ALSO CALLED SELF-DRILLING SCREWS)

Sheets of metal can be screwed back on, or better yet, fixed using a few screws before they fly off. A neighbor who worked in construction, mostly on roofs, clued me into using self-tapping screws. Get yourself some self-tapping screws if you have any metal siding, or a metal roof. Putting just a few screws in a piece of metal siding will prevent it from blowing off, and it will keep water out.

Self-tapping screws come in different sizes and are easy to use, because they will start a hole in thin metal without having to drill a pilot hole. That’s why they’re called self-tapping. They seem to hold a lot better than regular metal screws. Get the kind of screw with the flat head with the lip, as shown in the photo. The lip on the edge makes it so the screw head is nearly flush with the surface. They come with different head styles, and this style works the best for me.

Sometimes you have two sheets of metal to screw together, and there is no stud to screw them to. These screws will even hold pieces of metal together.

KOOL SEAL UV RESISTANT BLACK PATCH & COAT

The next product I stumbled on myself, at Walmart. Usually I don’t like Walmart for building products because some of their building products have been on the shelf too long or they are overpriced. This product was cheaper than at Home Depot. I got my last gallon for $16, I think maybe because it had a big dent in it.

It comes in a gallon can and is called Kool Seal UV Resistant Black Patch & Coat. In 2017 at my Walmart, I think I've always paid less than $20 for this at the store. I notice it’s $25 to $30 online. Write down the exact name. Kool-Seal makes a lot of different products. This one is patching compound for asphalt roofs, although I’ve found it also works on metal roofing and siding, shingle roofs, stucco, vinyl siding, brick and painted wood surfaces too. I’ve used it as caulking around aluminum and vinyl windows, outside, on a wooden structure. When used for caulking windows, use masking tape to get a straight line. And you can paint it when it dries.

 It’s black and looks like tar, but it contains no solvent and hardly smells at all. You can get intoxicated on some of these products, even when using them outdoors, but this is odorless. It has pieces of fiber in it to reinforce it. The first time I opened it, I was surprised at how fluffy it is. But it works better than anything I’ve tried in decades, and that includes expensive latex patch coating, liquid aluminum roof coating and especially tar. You will never go back to tar after using this.

While it’s wet, you can clean it up with soap and water. I wear plastic gloves while using it anyway. And if you get it on your clothes after it has dried, it’s hard to get off, so wear an old shirt.

ROLL OF FIBERGLASS ROOF FABRIC (LOOKS LIKE A GRID OR MESH)

For use on wider cracks or openings, up to maybe half an inch, use the Kool Seal Patch & Coat with fiberglass roof “fabric,” which I will refer to as mesh from here on in. It comes in a roll usually about 6 inches wide and a 100 feet or more long. You can cut it to any size you need to make a patch.

Here is how you apply it: Put a thin coat of the Kool Seal Patch & Coat down using a plastic or metal tool, like a cheap plastic drywall taping knife (an inch or two wide), a putty knife,  a straight-margin (square end instead of pointed) trowel, a spatula with a square end, or I even use a regular old table knife most of the time.

After spreading the base coat down over a crack or opening, lay the fiberglass mesh on top, and then spread a coat of the Kool Seal on top of the mesh making sure none of the grid pattern shows through. If the crack is small enough, you don’t have to use mesh. A bigger crack repaired with the Kool Seal Patch & Coat alone won’t last more than a year, if that, in areas with standing water. So that’s why you should use this fiberglass mesh on bigger cracks.

For me, this Kool Seal Patch & Coat works at least three times as well as tar and since it doesn’t stink, I like using it a lot more. It doesn’t crack, pucker or peel off as easily as tar either. It says on the can that it dries smooth and flexible, but really, it dries hard, which I like. I guess it has just enough flexibility not to crack.

Silicone is a good sealant, but when it dries it stays flexible, so it might be good for inside a crack, but not so much on a surface that sees a lot of water and sun exposure. I find that silicone just flakes off too often at the edges, and it is very expensive.

Kool Seal Patch & Coat doesn’t last forever, but it lasts longer when used in areas which don’t get constant sun exposure, even though it’s UV resistant. I had a leaky skylight on a shingled roof and the Kool Seal has worked for 5 years without re-application. When I use it on stucco or a painted wood surface, since it’s black, I paint over it after it dries, and it holds paint fairly well.

If you’re using it on an aluminum roof where it’s visible, you can paint over it with some aluminum paint or better yet, aluminum roof coating. I mean the stuff made to spread over your roof that has bits of aluminum in it and reflects the sun, as well as coats and seals the roof. It’s not going to match a metal roof exactly, but it won’t stick out as much as black.

I live in an area of houses where nearly everyone has flat roofs, except people who have manufactured homes. A flat roof has some slope, but not much. Even new houses with flat roofs will develop some roof leaks after 5 years. A friend with a 10-year old house had a leak near one water spout, and he spent $20,000 on a new roof before he told me about it.  

Lastly, if you are doing some patching, screwing or repairs on a sloped roof, wear footwear that doesn’t slip, and take precautions like roping yourself to the chimney or a secure place, for example, a post on the other side of the house if you don’t have a chimney, if you have to. Tie one end of a rope around a post, throw it over the roof, and tie the other end around your waist. Even among professionals, falling of a roof is one of the most common and serious accidents. Ladders are also dangerous.

A 3D-printed carbon fiber experimental house of the future

This prototype house and hybrid natural gas/electric vehicle were built (3D printed and assembled) back in October of 2015. The house was assembled from 3D printed modules, by Clayton Homes. Architectural design by the large firm of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill.

I don’t know how I missed something this epic, except I must have been watching too many cat videos that month. Come to think of it, news about this broke around the time I happily retired. Don't miss this video by Clayton about the home. It is excellent.

The AMIE (Additive Manufacturing Integrated Energy) house sits on the grounds of Oak Ridge National Labs in Tennessee, where it and all of its systems are being monitored and tested. Oak Ridge is the same place which refined uranium-235 for the Manhattan Project in Los Alamos, New Mexico, where the first atom bomb was built to drop on Hiroshima during WW II (1945).

It turns out Oak Ridge National Labs does a whole range of research into things like energy and materials in their Energy and Environmental Sciences division. In fact, they were the primary players in the development of this AMIE prototype house and vehicle, along with several other private businesses, organizations, and educational institutions who collaborated. The panels which Clayton assembled to make the house were printed out on a 3D printer in carbon fiber with ABS (a thermoplastic added for strength) at the Oak Ridge National Labs.

This is a proof of concept house, built for research of a unique energy sharing system between home and vehicle—solar/electric in the house and natural gas/electric in the hybrid vehicle.

As they say in their video, “The home won't be usable today or tomorrow.” Obviously, that’s not a sales pitch, but what they mean is this particular house is not going to be coming off a production line ever. For one thing, it doesn’t have a toilet or bathroom, so it’s more of a small lab built for testing the energy systems. But there are kitchen appliances that will run, and the house will be heated and may have hot water. There’s a bed that pulls out of the GE kitchen unit. Maybe the outhouse is out back?

Let's go back to another house of the future. This one was the real House of the Future at Disneyland, built by Monsanto and MIT. Think plastics.

Monsanto's House of the Future stood in Disneyland’s Tomorrowland between 1957 and 1967 and was the most popular attraction there for years. If you like the nostalgia of the one video above, search on YouTube for more about it, because there are several different small documentaries of the house. That House of the Future never became a production model either. However, the future did turn out to have houses which contained a lot of plastics, just not with so much plastic serving as the structure of the wall. When it came time to remove it, it proved nearly indestructible, and couldn't be broken or even dented with a wrecking ball or chainsaw. They had to use choker chains.

Back to the present future house. Here are two more videos about the AMIE house and vehicle. They are both more technical and not as good as the video near the top of the post. 

This AMIE house and vehicle are about sustainability and energy, and the latest 3D printing of modular panels and parts. Both those things are pretty exciting. If they work well, the implications for scaling up these technologies could be enormous.

From reading on the web, I knew that there were a variety of materials which could be used in 3D printing for smaller things like models, or structures that would fit in a room, but I was familiar only with 3D house printing being a large contraption with a reservoir of cement which poops out through a nozzle, forming the walls of a house as it is controlled by a computer.    

How could the YouTube video about it have less than 3,000 views? Even if it were just a carbon fiber shed from a 3D printer, it seems like it would have more. I suppose it has a lot to do with it not going into production anytime soon, and it not be livable. That’s understandable. When I was young there was so much talk about flying cars, most people thought everyone would have them by now.

Warren Buffet is the owner of Clayton Homes, and it’s nice to see a tiny fraction of his billions in something like this, as I doubt any other manufactured home company would have had the resources or interest to collaborate on a project like this.

Whatever you think of Clayton, from maybe having a bad experience with their dubious lending practices -- at one time anyway -- or a problem with one of their trailers, they have stuck their necks out in some concept projects which haven’t had immediate commercial return for them. Any shadiness that went on with Clayton's lending practices were dwarfed by the subprime mortgage crisis of 2008, where 10 families lost their stick-built homes. 

A few smaller home manufactures have pioneered building homes with SIPs instead of a stick frame, but that hasn’t become an industry standard yet. Perhaps the SIPS wood sandwich with foam core insulation will be bypassed for new panels printed in 3D, thus skipping the step between stick framing and something better. I would like to see nearly all houses move away from the use of stick framing with dimensional lumber, and into something more sustainable, durable and modern.

They mention the R-30 insulation all around, which is excellent, but of course, it's not integrated and printed out that way. The insulation was just conventional hard foam board insulation, not printed out with a printer. The real leap will come when the 3D printer can whip material into a suitable exterior surface, insulation and interior wall all at the same time. 

Although this is the most rad house yet, Clayton has experimented with the i-House, eHouse, and Gen-Now homes which were new concepts with limited production. But they did pay off in being a way not only to attract attention, but also test what new features customers would like in their homes, and what things are practical to do.   

When the sun isn’t shining, and it’s nighttime or cloudy, and the vehicle is parked at home, this AMIE house can get its energy wirelessly from the vehicle’s battery storage banks, which are charged by the natural gas engine when driven, or charged by solar from the house.

When the vehicle is parked near the home, it is positioned over a wireless charging dock, and gets its batteries charged via the solar panels on the roof of the house during the day. Whether it’s receiving energy from the house through the solar panels or sending it back to the house, the vehicle doesn’t have to be plugged in.

In the 1890s, Nikola Tesla, one of the greatest scientific minds of the last few centuries, spent several years trying to transfer high voltage power wirelessly. He failed, but now smaller amounts of electricity are transferable wirelessly, for use with laptops and small devices. But Oak Ridge National Labs are getting it up to enough wireless electricity transfer to power a house or car, or at least charge one. I think I read where this higher wireless energy transfer is one of their breakthroughs in this project. It’ll be interesting to see where it goes.  

In addition to Disneyland’s House of the Future, this house also reminds me of Buckminster Fuller’s Dymaxion House and all of the wonderful houses which have been in the Solar Decathlon for the last few decades, built by college student engineers and architects. A few of those came with vehicles, too.

CLICK HERE for a link to the Oak Ridge National Laboratory's Innovations in Building website, to explore more information about the AMIE house and vehicle, as well as all the other projects they have going on.

CLICK HERE for a link to the Treehugger website, which after writing this I noticed has an article on this house with lots of nice photos.

The following is a list of materials and products used in the AMIE house, including GE’s “FirstBuild” micro-kitchen. Many of things you can buy and use today, or read about on the web:

1. Thin film monocrystalline PV panels (Renogy 100DB)

2. Printed interior panel

3. Vacuum insulated panels(Nanopore)

4. Steel joining plate

5. Printed exterior envelope and structure

6. Printed sleeve for tension rod & LED light

7. IGU storefront (Kawneer"Encore")

8. Micro-kitchen (GE "FirstBuild")

9. Glazing (PPG "SolarbanZ50" with PVB interlayer)

10 LED light (Optolum"Briteline 2LP")

11. Linoleum flooring (Johnsonite"Lenza")

12. Steel tensioning rod in greased sleeve

13. Disc spring assembly

14. Printed door handles

15. Minisplit (Mitsubishi"SLZ-KA12NA")

16. Printed stringer

17. Aluminum planks (Alcoa)

18. Steel chassis & amp; removable wheels

Here is a video made recently, showing the printing of a more traditional 3D printed house, this by Apis Cor and printed in Russia, outside of Moscow, in 24 hours. 

The house is only 409 sq. ft. and printed at a cost of about $10,000, not including appliances or electrical/plumbing. This will be very exciting once they figure out how to print roofs, or have robots do the windows and everything else. As it is, the crane machine which stands at the center of the building, which rotates with a nozzle which squirts out the concrete, uses only 8,000 watts.

At present, it saves time, energy and materials compared to traditional concrete building, as no forms have to be set, and complicated shapes can be printed easily:

 

Palm Harbor's 2017 "The Santa Fe"

File the interior of this one under "stylish."
 

Each year most large manufactured home factories roll out a few new models, and of the ones I've explored on the web, Palm Harbor’s 2017 “The Santa Fe” stands out. It has a fresh, upscale looking interior of some of the pricier and better designed double-wide homes or modular homes but yes, it's a single wide, and comes in two models, one 18' wide and the other 16' wide. This is the narrower model. Both are 76' long.

The light circles you see in the floor are just from the screen shot I took of the 3D tour image. Ignore those. You'll see what they are when you do the tour linked below.
 
The exterior is plain, and disappointing that it has eaves only on the ends, but it looks simple, a little contemporary, and there’s something about the window placement I like. It’s better looking than most single-wide homes but there's no mistaking it for anything other than a single-wide, so you'd have to be a single-wide lover like me to really like it.

 Back to the inside…I like the dimensions of the main space. They broke with tradition in kitchen cabinet placement by having a large window over the sink instead of cabinets looming on each side. It gives it a contemporary, open feeling which I think would be nice when using the kitchen, and you might not be as likely to bonk your head on a cabinet. 

Click HERE and then click on Video Tour, to go on a 3D tour of the home at a Palm Harbor website. Be sure to click on the full screen icon in the lower right for the full effect. This home is available to order at a couple dozen Palm Harbor dealers in Texas, and a few places in Louisiana, Mississippi, New Mexico, and Oklahoma. Check with the local Palm Harbor website for your area to see if they have a model on the lot.

A video of this home for sale at the Palm Harbor dealer in Oklahoma City, OK:

After you've taken the 3D tour, if you want to see close-up tour of the kitchen, and get a good look at the counters, including the beautiful Wilsonart plank-look island countertop -- yes, it's fake -- and the kitchen counters -- they're beautiful also -- then click HERE, and then click on on the video (and enlarge it to full screen) where Jeremiah, the general manager of the Palm Harbor dealer in Mesquite, TX, will take you on a kitchen tour of a home they have on their lot.

I prefer some of the dealer-made videos, because you see the home in more realistic lighting, and not that of a studio set up, as if the home is being lit from the light of a thousand suns. Jeremiah gets so close I think I can tell that by the window sill width, this home has only 2 x 4 walls. That is disappointing. I'm pretty sure they can make it in 2 x 6 as an upgrade. Never buy a new manufactured home, especially one costing this much, that has 2 x 4 exterior walls and poor insulation.

This following video is a slide show of the home, but it isn't as much like being there, like the 3D tour on their site:

From the photos, you'll notice the ceilings are all flat, not slanted. They look slanted in the screen grabs I did from the 3D video tour. The tray ceiling with beams is an upgrade.

There might not be enough cabinets for some people and the “work triangle” (placement of sink, refrigerator, stove) appears to be off a bit. I could see how that might impact a person’s decision, especially the cabinets, if you’re a person who is storing nuts, seeds, folded paper bags and survival foods for the Trumpocalypse.

Palm Harbor is getting smart in their kitchen designs, and not trying to match everything. They didn't use white appliances, or make the island white to match the cabinetry, and that's sophisticated and looks good.

In an open concept home, I don’t like it when they stick up extra cabinets in the kitchen which block the view to the living room, so if someone is in the kitchen all you can see is a torso moving around. Seinfeld had a memorable episode about that, where he had a kitchen redesign in his apartment and the cupboards cut off socializing with his friends.

Nice wall colors, large ceiling tray divided by beams, with no silly columns. It’s a trailer, not the Parthenon. The dining area is flexible in that you could put a long table in, or even add a second table for family gatherings.

It has a few design elements with window placement and beams which make the space harmonious, like the symmetrical placement of two large windows flanking the front door, and a ceiling beam aligned with the center post of each window. It’s little things like that which make the space look balanced, and it aesthetically pulls together the open concept kitchen, dining, and living.

The flooring, made to look like large wood planks, took a while for me to get used to. I guess it is a new trend. You can probably opt for more traditional flooring. Otherwise, I think this is the rare single-wide you could walk into, and not need a period of adjustment to like.

Palm Harbor has done 3D view tours on their newest homes and they are among the best I’ve used. A few other manufacturer's sites are using them. They work well, and can give the real feel of entering the spaces of a home without too much distortion.

The wood plank for the wall behind the TV, the counter top of the island, and the ceramic tile (well, looks like ceramic) that looks like wood planks in the shower of the master bathroom, add a natural or rustic touch. Sometimes that kind of thing goes awry, but it is just right here. I wonder what the home would look like with all my junk in it. They really got the furniture and wall colors down on this one.

On a previous blog, I’ve mentioned that Palm Harbor is one of the manufactured home companies I didn’t especially like 15 to 20 years ago because of the style of their homes then. They used to have home interiors which tried to look luxurious but ended up looking cheap. They simplified their design aesthetic and are one of the consistently better looking homes today across the model line, although I probably still don’t like most of the exteriors. You have to live inside a home though. The interior is most important. As long as people don't point at my house and laugh, I'm okay with it.

After a bankruptcy a few years back, Palm Harbor is now owned by Cavco, so they will be like Karsten and so many others, not going away anytime soon, although absorbed by a larger corporation.

Even though I continue to look at manufactured homes on the web like a maniac, I haven’t been blogging much for a while, but noticed a few things recently I’ll post about in the coming days.

Since I noticed Palm Harbor has other homes called "Santa Fe," here are the code numbers for this home, which actually comes in two sizes of single-wide, the bigger being 18' wide.

Update: As of 2/23/17, I found this photo of the home for sale down in Abilene, Texas, where it is on sale for $65,900. Visit this Abilene dealer's website to see a different set of photos, and what the home would look like with some blinds closed. Still looks good but not as magical. And my advice is to never pay that kind of price for a singlewide without 2 x 6 walls and good insulation. I don't know what the specs are on this particular home.

Palm Harbor's Fiesta Series, The Santa Fe

FF16763G, 1,178 Sq. Ft., 15'6" x 76'
FF18763H, 1,330 Sq. Ft., 17'6" x 76'

Super insulated single wide home

Not commercially available except for a limited pilot program in Vermont, nevertheless, this single-wide called the Vermod Nordic Home shows what is possible with a super energy efficient  single-wide home made for colder climates. I hope to see more homes like this in the future from the major manufacturers. Update September 2014 -- Here is a link to download brochures: Manufactured Housing Innovation Project.

On the outside, quite plain, and nothing that much different from what I’ve showcased in one of the higher quality single-wides like the Karsten SF-50. The exterior looks a little better than the Karsten SF-50. The windows follow a rule I learned from an art teacher about hanging paintings in your home or in a gallery. With paintings of about the same size, align them at the top. Therefore, the outside of this looks better to me than the Karsten (link to my review of that single-wide on the right side of this blog).

However, in this house, everything from the triple-pane windows to the tightly enclosed shell and 10-inch thick double 2 x 4 walls with an R43 insulation factor, and R60 in the roof, make this home built to Passive House standards. That means super energy efficiency and quality way beyond any stick home which is not built to those standards.

If you can zoom in on the photos of either the exterior or interior, you can tell it looks like it is very well built.

It is a collaboration among five organizations in Vermont including Pill-Maharam Architects (designer) and Vermod High Performance Homes (builder).

Only ten have been built for the pilot project but it may go into production in Vermont this year, 2014. The homes cost about $80,000 to $100,000.

You can see how the thickness of the walls makes the interior look substantial, much as it would in an adobe, strawbale or rammed-earth home. It also also features a special heating system.

If I had $100,000 to spend on a home, I would definitely consider this over the fairly nice double-wide $100,000 can buy, but then again, I love the idea of a super energy-efficient home that is built to high standards like this one. 

I don’t have a floor plan for the interior but I assume it has three bedrooms and two baths. I’ll try to post more photos here if this home goes into production.

For a more detailed article on this home, go to this one in a Vermont newspaper, the Rutland Herald.

Here's a video from a Vermont news station that did a piece on the home:

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