fbpx

Blog

The top 3 tips for building your kit home. (Part 3)

1. Set a realistic budget. 2. Be organized 3. Plan for the future.Eye to the future

Plan for the future -  When you're building your new kit home it's important to plan for the future.  More specifically what will life look like in the future and how much will it cost to operate your home in the future?

When it comes to floor plans most think about what their life is like now. Are you married, do you have kids or do you have extended family living with you? The decisions must be made on floor plan, number of bedrooms and bathrooms etc. However, your floor plan needs will change in the future. Those changes revolve around the aging process. An interesting side note, did you know that every day 65,000 people are turning 65 years old in America. As we all age our bodies don't work as well as they did when we were younger. In addition to reduced mobility, our vision changes. I'm not just talking about the need for glasses. When we're 60 years old we need 3 time the amount of light to see as well as we could when we were 20 years old.

To help address the aging process, Pacific Modern Homes, Inc. (PMHI) as developed the Transitional Home Environment (T.H.E.). T.H.E. is specifically designed to help us all Transition through all of stages and ages of life. To help illustrate this approach we've designed two kit homes to show the specifics, the Sonoma and Bodega. These floor plans incorporate Life-Style Options, Home Automation Features and Accessible Design. All of which help your new kit home be able to transition with you through all of life's stages. The Sonoma and Bodega are the only fully T.H.E. design kit homes, but we can incorporate many of these design features into any of our other kit homes. If you'd like further details, please contact your PMHI Dealer.

With energy cost continuing to rise, it's important to keep future home operating costs in mind. There are two parts to this aspect of building a kit home; energy upgrades while building the home and preparation for future energy upgrades.

While building your kit home it's important to consider the energy upgrades that will have a reasonable return on your investment (ROI). These days many of the optional upgrades will be compared to home much you'll likely spend for energy costs in the future. The rational is that energy costs continue going up and that the rate you'll pay in the future will be higher than today so upgrades today will save you money in the future. However, some of the upgrade costs when compared to how much you'll save over time don't make a lot of sense when compared to how energy efficient new construction is today.

Our kit homes already include the best energy upgrade options for our part of your building project. Our kit homes include 2X6 exterior wall framing for the living space, PV solar panel ready roof trusses and a lifetime glass break warranty.

With 2X6 exterior wall framing you can increase the amount of insulation in the exterior walls of the living space of your new kit homes. This will reduce the amount energy loss through the exterior walls.

Since our Pre-Engineered kit homes already include PV solar panel loads for the roof trusses you can decide if and when you want to have solar panels installed on your kit home. Since this is already done it will cost less to have panels installed on your kit home later because the roof trusses won't have to be modified to accept the additional weight of the solar panels.

Energy efficient windows are very import part of the overall operation cost of any home. We include Milgard Tuscany vinyl framed windows that include SunCoat Low E glass. They have a lifetime warranty for the inner seal as well as a lifetime glass break warranty. All of these features help insure you have continued energy efficient windows. There are additional energy upgrades available. To learn more, talk to your PMHI Dealer to see if any of them would be right for you.

Inquiry Form

Please let us know your name.

Invalid Input

Please let us know your email address.

Please enter a valid phone number

Example: 123-123-4321

Please let us know your message.

Invalid Input

By clicking this button, you submit your information to Pacific Modern Homes, who will use it to communicate with you regarding your requested information, our other services and that you have read our Privacy Policy and Cookie Use.