Advanced Envelope Systems for Factory Built Homes

Reduce Energy Costs through Improvements in Building Envelopes

Building Decarbonization

The Levy Partnership, Inc.

Recipient

New York, CA

Recipient Location

31st

Senate District

61st

Assembly District

beenhere

$1,100,236

Amount Spent

closed

Completed

Project Status

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Project Result

The project is complete. The project demonstrated conclusively that the advanced building envelope technologies are cost effective, commercially-viable and offer new manufactured home buyers a compelling value proposition: pay a bit more but enjoy lower monthly energy costs and other benefits. Future research could include pairing envelope technologies with advances in HVAC design to reduce the size of HVAC systems. This research helped inform future updates to the U.S. Housing and Urban Development Standards for factory built homes. To encourage future sales may require rebates, tax credits, and doing sustained promotion directly to customers.

The Issue

All manufactured homes produced in the nation conform to one set of preemptive standards, the Manufactured Housing Construction Safety Standards, enforced and maintained by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. The standards, first established in 1976, contain thermal requirements that were last updated in 1994. Manufactured homes are slowing down the State's efforts of reaching ambitious energy efficiency goals. Taking steps now to encourage energy innovation in the use of emerging envelope technologies will increase performance of newly constructed manufactured homes.

Project Innovation

This project focused on increasing the energy performance of factory built homes by developing and commercializing the next generation of cost-effective wall and roof envelope designs that are highly energy efficient, cost effective and add minimally to first costs. This project applied a combination of innovative designs and leveraged the advantages afforded by factory production to increase the energy performance of factory built homes. Currently, several manufacture home builders in California are offering these high efficiency wall and roof envelope designs as options available to prospective customers. [br /]

Project Benefits

The Manufactured Housing Construction Safety Standards is enforced and maintained by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and these standards contain thermal requirements that were last updated in 1994. This project demonstrated that improvements in building envelope can yield significant energy savings at minimal additional costs. Six California manufactured home builders participated in this research and currently offer for sale an energy efficient manufactured home with proven energy savings and at price point comparable to standard construction. Building affordable and energy efficient factory homes will help the state meet its statutory energy efficiency

Affordability

Significantly lower energy use and cost compared to current manufactured housing construction. Estimated annual savings per home of about 15 percent electric (1500 kWh) and 22 percent natural gas (140 therms), assuming a 1,680 square feet home.