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By Jenny Slafkosky, STAFF
WRITER Oakland Tribune Saturday, September
25, 2004 -
"THE entire bedroom arrives at the building
site on a flatbed truck a bright yellow
"Wide Load" sign waving from the back.
With a small team of workers the pieces
of the house are affixed to the foundation
and, in a matter of months, it's home sweet
home. Pre-fabricated, or pre-fab, homes
have been popular in Canada and Europe
for years but in the United States the
term still brings up visions of low-quality
materials and shoddy construction -- a
stigma that designers and contractors are
trying to erase. "Pre-fab has been around
for a long time," says Michelle Kaufmann,
architect and designer of the Glidehouse,
an eco-friendly modular home featured in
Sunset magazine and on HGTV.
Katherine
Pfaff's custom home is part of Sunday's "Parade
of Panelized Homes"in the Brickyard
Cove neighborhood of Point Richmond.
"But now the technology is around to make
it work really well. Pre-fabs are higher
quality, more 'green' and more structurally
sound than regular framed houses, but they're
still sort of hiding behind this veil of
misconceptions."
Kaufmann, a Marin County resident, designed
the Glidehouse because she and her husband
wanted to own a home but were overwhelmed
by Bay Area housing prices. Using materials
such as corrugated steel, bamboo flooring
and low-VOC (volatile organic compounds)
paint, the Glidehouse has created a buzz
among buyers looking for aesthetically
pleasing and environmentally conscious
building alternatives.
The clean, modern, factory-built design
has become so popular that Kaufmann is
overwhelmed with orders and requests for
customized designs.
"The clientele has actually surprised
me a lot," she says. "I thought it would
be a lot of younger people who are first-time
buyers, and that's definitely one of the
groups, but about half of the buyers are
people who are later in life. They can
afford more but are choosing this house
because it's green and it supports their
views."
: The glidehouse, designed
by Michelle Kaufman, has modular rooms
that can be arranged in a variety of
floor plans.
The Glidehouse's modular pieces or "rooms"
can be arranged in a variety of floorplans
from small, one-bedroom rural cottages
to two- and three-story urban designs.
The result is a modern-looking dwelling
with a sloped roofline and bright, open
interior, anchored by a long "bar" of
built-in storage along one side.
A standard 627-square-foot, one-bedroom
module starts at $81,000 while a 1,344-square-foot,
two-bedroom option starts at $161,000.
In the Bay Area, the most costly thing
about going pre-fab is the land to build
on.
"There's a huge difference between manufactured
and modular homes," says Kaufmann. "Modular
homes are built to site-built codes and
use all the local structural, framing and
connection codes." According to Kaufmann,
the term "manufactured homes" refers to
mobile or trailer homes. For those who
like the idea of pre-fabricated construction
but want to break free of modular designs,
other pre-fab options are available on
the market.
Katherine Pfaff moved into her customized
pre-fab home in Point Richmond in 2002.
Unlike the modular design of the Glide-
house, Pfaff's home is "panelized," meaning
the walls, including framing, are built
under controlled conditions in a factory
and delivered to the building site to be
assembled according to the owner's customized
design.
Pfaff was so impressed with the quality
of her panelized home, made by Modulex
Homes of Canada, that she decided to quit
her job as an executive at a high-tech
start-up and start working for the company.
"Some people think anything that is pre-fab
is going to be a trailer home, and that's
just not true," she says. "The thing about
a panelized house is that it's the same
as a stick-frame house. Building inspectors
can't tell the difference."
Traditional "stick frame" or "site built"
homes are framed, sheathed and finished
outdoors at the building site where raw
materials such as lumber, roof trusses,
studs and drywall are subject to damage
by weather and possible theft. In the
controlled conditions of a factory, these
issues are eliminated, which can reduce
costs.
On-site labor costs are also reduced because
the pre-framed, kiln-dried panels are easy
to assemble and take less time to go up.
"Most contractors are used to working
with a framing crew, so sometimes it's
difficult to convince them to build the
first house,"
says Pfaff. "But once they do they're very
enthusiastic about it. They don't ever
have to go back in and deal with warped
green wood."
While Pfaff's home is a high-end custom
panelized home, the construction method
is so cost-effective that it is being used
for affordable housing units including
Oakland's Dogtown development in West Oakland. "At
both the high end and low end of the price
scale you get incredible value," says Pfaff.
Katherine Pfaff's home will be featured
in "The Parade of Panelized Homes," an
open house from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday
in Point Richmond. Meet at 1413 Sandpiper
Spit Road in the Brickyard Cove neighborhood.
Visit www.manzanitahomes.com or call (510)
233-1769.
--
Pre-made panels or modules require less
labor to assemble on-site and costly construction
mistakes are avoided because building conditions
are quality-controlled. Factories also
purchase the materials in bulk at reduced
prices.
--
Less material waste, both at the factory
and on the building site. Traffic to the
site is reduced because fewer workers are
required to finish the project.
-- Pre-fab
homes can go up in less than half the time
than a regular stick-frame house.
--
Factory-controlled building environments
reduce damage to materials, warping of
wood and construction mistakes. Some pre-fabs
use new, high-tech materials and treatments
that can withstand extremes of weather
better than stick-frame houses.
--Flexible
design options and amenities can make your
pre-fab just as fab as you are.
Web resources:
www.manzanitahomes.com
www.glidehouse.com
www.fabprefab.com
www.livemodern.com
You can email Jenny Slafkosky at JSlafkosky@angnewspapers.com
or call (925) 416-4856
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