Brit company develops hurricane resistant mobile home--why not US?

[yurbud]

Last time I checked, in Hereford, Hampshire, and Hartford hurricanes hardly hever happened.

I thought of this after Katrina since domes are the most resistant permanent houses, so a tube or something more oval would be better than current American mobile homes.

http://www.theorb.biz/homePage.asp



http://www.theorb.biz/holidayParkHome/FAQs.asp

I also wondered why someone didn't start a business converting retired airplane fuselages into mobile homes since they have the right shape and structural strength for that job.




Slap a wall on either end of this, put wheels on it, and you've got a pretty tough mobile home:

[rucky]

1. Check these out...

www.deltechomes.com

[elocs]

5. Very attractive! I would live in one of those in a heartbeat.

It reminds me of the Native American belief that there is power in a circle. It shows that a home may be both functional and beautiful and leave a small footprint.

[liberal N proud]

6. Reminds me of a house in the Henry Ford Museum

The Dymaxion House




http://media.www.themichiganjournal.com/media/storage/paper255/news/2007/03/13/TheHenryFord/House.Of.The.FutureRooted.In.The.Past-2774256.shtml

Couldn't corner anyone

[elocs]

2. Why? In this case a picture is worth a thousand words--appearance.

I think that most people who live in mobile homes want their homes to at least look like a traditional home and not a can. I think it would be a tough sell in this country. I am not saying you are not correct, but that would be my guess (and I live in a mobile home myself).

[yurbud]

8. I don't think the current ones look much like traditional houses, especially single wide

[elocs]

15. Well, I live in a single wide and it looks light years closer to a traditional house

than those tubes. Yes, they look quirky and eccentric and I might even like one myself, but those of us who live in mobile homes already get put down (you know, "trailer trash") because of where we live and what we live in. Many low income people do live in mobile homes and they do not need another way to be branded or marked as different or to be marginalized and made to feel like they are second class home owners. There are so many thousands and thousands of single wides that I believe they are already accepted as a type of traditional housing.

All of the mobile homes in my court are single wides and the newer ones do look much more like a traditional home with their pitched and shingled roofs. It's a very nice and well maintained place. I live less than a block from the river and the irony is that on the other side of the river are some very expensive homes. It must suck for them to look across the river and see mobile homes that have the same view as they do. Strong winds never bothered me until I lived in a mobile home, but even though I live in Wisconsin my city has never had a recorded tornado. Geography helps a lot. But ultimately there is little way around the fact that a mobile home will be less safe in a storm than a stick built house much in the same way that a small car is less safe in an accident than a larger one.

[yurbud]

17. there are a couple of trailer parks in Malibu next to multi-million dollar homes

[yurbud]

18. who would be looking down on who if your tube survived and the stick built homes across the river

blew down?

[elocs]

21. My home is at far less risk of being destroyed than for the land to be sold to a developer.

Like I said, my city has never had a tornado in its 150 year history. Here, nobody's house has been destroyed by a storm. The expensive homes across the river have plenty of insurance to rebuild. My point is that I don't think that people of low or even modest income, who are primarily the ones who live in mobile homes, want to live in a house that is bizarrely different (in spite of being safer) from most traditional homes (I think that even single wide mobile homes are so common they are considered a type of traditional).

If the expensive homes across the river from me were bigger and more elegant versions of the tubes pictured, then I don't think the people here in their mobile homes would mind living in smaller and less expensive versions of them. But another point is that the owner of my court would never allow something like that here because she is very conservative and wants the place to have a homogeneous look. I kind of like the tube houses because I don't mind being different, but I don't think that most people want to stand out and look that eccentric and particularly low income people.

[yurbud]

23. well-said

[Edweird]

26. A singlewide is a portable "shotgun shack".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shotgun_house

I think they do resemble each other.

[arcadian]

3. Sweet! Hamster tubes!

[yurbud]

9. furnish with wood shavings, and you're all set.

[snooper2]

4. They do make them, modular homes hurrican/tornado resistant

I saw it on discovery channel...

They build the sections in a factory, and deliver via semi. Every wall stud and joist are not only screwed but glued as well. All the roof panels are glued and screwed. Footers, everything...

Can't remember the name of the company. Some community got together and helped an elderly lady get one in Missisippi during the show...

[yurbud]

10. wow. did they put her in the path of a hurrican to see how it worked?

[snooper2]

12. Well...

It was on the same property where her old mobile home was wiped out...so I guess time will tell

[yurbud]

16. great obama avatar by the way

[coriolis]

14. There is absolutely no reason a "manufactured" home can't be every bit as good in every way

as one built on site. (Imagine if cars were done that way...place and order and a crew comes to your driveway and builds it!!!....:eyes:

[ColbertWatcher]

24. They already have cars like that...

...they're called Kit Cars!

[coriolis]

27. Okay...and compared with mass-produced ones they're shit.

:rofl:

[ColbertWatcher]

28. They're only as good as the people who made them, so yeah. n/t

[coriolis]

29. I didn't mean to be a shit about it...just sayin' cars would be insanely

expensive if they were manufactured out "in the field" like most single family dwellings are. :D

[ColbertWatcher]

30. OK. I wasn't sure which definition of "shit" you were using. n/t

[RockaFowler]

7. The older Mobile Homes were built better

We lived in an older Mobile Home built in the late 50's early 60's. During the Hurricanes of 2004 & 2005, our home was the only one not destroyed. Why?? Well, everyone else had double roofs - ours did not. The ones that look like "mini-homes" do not fare as well as those that have rounder roofs (like our old house). I think my house was more aero-dynamic, so the wind just blew over us instead of catching under the double roof.
So, these "rounder" roof homes pictured would definetly work better than the newer models.
Another funny thing is that the insurance companies don't know this little bit of info, so they insure the house based on the age of the house and not the structure of the house. We could not afford the insurance on the Mobile Home (over $3000 for a 500 sqaure foot house), so we were left with no insurance for the upcoming hurricane (Wilma).

[yurbud]

11. Is yours an Airstream or something like that?

[coriolis]

13. Good thought but an aircraft fuselage has almost no strength in compression.

They are designed to be pressurized from the -inside- but can be squashed easily - like an egg if something sits on 'em..
;-)

[yurbud]

19. okay, old SUBMARINES then.

[coriolis]

22. LOL....hey now yer talkin'!

:D

[NightWatcher]

20. I'm actually working on plans and zoning for these "everything proof" homes

not my pic but a representation of an ISO shipping container home

[Swamp Rat]

25. When the levee breaks, I'll have no place to stay...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_Ny9_CrUVY&feature=related

[ThomWV]

31. Because we have laws against such frauds as these

The problem isn't that the mobile home stays in one piece, its that it stays in one place. All the screws and glue in the world won't hold one down in a tornado.

[malaise]

32. The indigenous people in Guyana still build their homes

in a circular shape. I remember when hurricane Gilbert devastated Jamaica in 1988, one of our friends had a circular restaurant which was the only structure standing in that area after the storm. She had no damage at all.

[panAmerican]

33. Because the disaster recovery business is more profitable