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Design Basics

Building Site

Your Modular Home and Building Site

Before you even start to work on designing a modular home floor plan for your next house, you need to take the building lot into consideration. Your building lot influences: building budget and the price of construction; use of solar energy: views; outdoor living; home design and floor plan; type of home; egress; gardens and flower beds; gardens and more.

Existing Neighborhoods

If you are building in a subdivision, you will not have many choices on how to place your home on your building site. If your building site is in an area where you can orient your home in any direction, you can take advantage of land's features.

Existing neighborhoods and developments have the major advantage of having public water and sewer systems, paved roads, nearby utility connections. All of these advantages will keep the price to build your home lower than in a rural setting. The downfall to building in an existing neighborhood is your limitation to orienting your house which influences:

• Solar Energy - If you are planning on using solar energy you will need to orient your roof to face the south to capture the sun's free energy. This might require you to change the roof system to include a reversed gable or a garage roof to face south to take advantage of the sun in the future.
• Egress and Orientation - Existing neighborhoods have paved roads and generally dictate the positioning of your garage. If your building your modular home on a large or a corner lot, you have the choice to have a side load garage or a front load garage. If you are building on smaller lot that is not on a corner, you will be required to build a front load garage on your home with exposed garage doors. A major advantage to building in an existing neighborhood egress development improvements cost less.
• Shading and Shielding - Most developments have a limited number of trees which can offer the benefit of shielding and shading your home from the hot sun in the summer and cold northern winds in the winter. If you have a site which has little shade, you might consider ordering your modular home with extended twenty four inch overhangs to keep your home cooler in the summer. If your building site is located close to a loud busy road, you could also plant evergreens to shield your home from excessive noise. The cost to plant saplings on your building site is very low. Planting grown trees could add thousands to the price of your construction budget.
• Home Design and Floor Plan - Believe it or not your building site will be one of the most influential elements on the type of home you build and therefore the home's floor plan. If your home is in a neighborhood with primarily ranch homes, building a large two story colonial modular home would be a silly move. Your home would stick out like a double wide trailer in a McMansion neighborhood. It is always wise to build a new home that has a compatible design for the neighborhood. For example if the neighborhood has primarily unadorned simple ranches, building modular home bungalow with arts and crafts finishes would be foolish. The additional costs of the embellishments would add little to no value to the home and cost more for no gain. However if you are building a simple unadorned modular ranch home in a neighborhood with predominantly craftsmen styled arts and crafts homes, your home will stick out and be an eyesore.
• Outdoor Views - Existing developments relegate what you see out of your windows. So most developments build homes as close to the streets as possible to provide larger back yards. Often the only view you will have in an existing neighbor hood will be the street out front and your back yard. If you live in an area that is mountainous, you might get a great view of a valley, but most affordable developments where people build modular homes do not offer fantastic views.
• Landscaping - Gardens, Flower Beds, Shrubs and Bushes - Often forgotten is the cost to improve the building site after the home is completed. If you are a green thumb and enjoy gardening, you can do this work yourself and save on the overall price of improving the modular home's building site. If you are like me, I would prefer someone to the work for me and pay for it out of my construction loan budgeting permitting.
• Topography and Site Conditions - If you are building on a level building site, you can build any style of home you desire. If you building site is sloped, you might want to build a modular split level or raised ranch home. If you decide to build a home intended for a flat building site, and your lot slopes, you could consider designing the floor plan to accomodate a tuck under garage or a walk out basement. Modular homes with a tuck under garage can save you fifteen or more thousand dollars on the cost of building an attached or free standing garage. If your site has a severe slope, you might end up spending more money improving the site than having purchased a more level building lot.
• Outdoor Spaes - If you are a porch sitter like me, having a front porch is imperative to the design on my home. I also enjoy my back yard bar-b-que and my blow up swimming pool in the back yard. Your building lot and the neighborhood is a major factor on the type of outdoor living space your home provides your lifestyle.
• Driveways - One of the most costly elements to improving a building site is the cost of a driveway. In you are building in a development, covenants most likely require you to have a paved driveway installed within a year of moving into your home. Long driveways can be very expsenive and drive the price of a modular home project beyond your building budget. Keeping driveways short, straight and functional will save you money as well.