BY Mary E. Medland

Indeed, New Era Building Systems recently received the Manufactured Housing Institute's award as Production House of the Year for the house, which was designed by Steven Winter Associates. The essence of the Next Generation, or NextGen, house, says Elliot Fabri, president of New Era, is that it significantly pushes the limits of manufactured housing. "It used to be that manufactured housing meant double-wide 'mobile homes' or single-wides," he says. "But now the industry has grown to such an extent that we're able to create two-story conventional homes . . . the NextGen home should open the eyes of a lot of people."

PATH, a public-private initiative administered by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, was created by President Clinton in 1997. Much of its work is aimed at developing affordable housing that is also energy and resource efficient, safe and durable.

The numbers alone for the Danbury, CT, Cape Cod project are impressive. Put together in a site-built community, the NextGen house cost 90,000 to construct, land not included, while a comparable site-built residence runs $200,000.

Not only are costs reduced significantly, such houses can be constructed and completed in several weeks, as compared to the several months it typically takes to finish a site-built residence. Indeed, says HUD, "manufactured housing can often be the 'make or break' solution to the demand for the affordable housing . . . From the beginning, NextGen was envisioned as infill housing [housing that can be inserted into existing urban lots]."

Yet, Fabri believes it has a future anywhere. "It's not just an urban house . . . with its mass appeal, the NextGen house could really to anywhere, whether to rural areas or to a beautiful subdivision," he notes.

As far as energy costs go, the savings are significant as well. The Danbury house not only meets the Energy Star designation, which requires that the overall performance of heating and cooling systems is 30 percent less than the average site-built dwelling, but exceeds that performance by almost 20 percent. That translates into approximately $180 less for the homeowner in annual energy costs, largely as a result of energy-efficient appliances and lighting, as well as improved insulation.

Such efficiency also translates into less pollution: estimates are that the NextGen house will product 872 fewer pounds of carbon dioxide, and 6.5 fewer pounds of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides annually.

And then there are the aesthetics of the project, which are, in many regards, as important and impressive as the numerical statistics. "It's a great house with a steep pitched roof that I think is really symbolic because it suggests a suburban tick-built house," says Jeff Bellows, senior architect and project manager with Steven Winter Associates Inc., the Norwalk, Ct-headquartered firm that provided both design and technical assistance on the project. "We're hopeful that people in the manufactured housing industry will really take notice."

The creation of this NextGen house arose from a study that Steven Winter did for HUD -- a theoretical design evaluation of existing technologies that could be brought into the industry to improve quality. The result was a book, titled "The Next Generation of Manufactured Housing: Design Phase, 1998," which provided a green light for the Danbury prototype. "Once HUD gave us to go-ahead, we had full latitude to design a home that looked as good and functioned as well as a conventional custom-designed house," says Bellows.

The partnership between New Era and Steven winter worked well, but not unexpectedly, there were challenges in translating architectural design and establishing communication between the design and the production professionals. Fortunately, says Bellows, New Era had considerable experience from having worked on similar housing projects. Many of the ideas, which came out of the NextGen book, were discussed and adapted before a final agreement was reached.

From Fabri's point of view, the details of working out the paperwork for some of the new technology was unduly time consuming. "We were often dealing with an archaic system in which we had to ask permission to do all these new things," he says, "largely because HUD never envisioned this type of housing being built." But, overall, enthusiasm outweighed the minor annoyances.

"The most exciting thing about this project has been introducing quality architectural design to this industry," says Bellows. " We really think it's a product of much higher quality and is much more refined than what is conventionally being produced in the HUD Code industry."

Bellows hastens to add, that while he has great regard for the manufactured housing industry, it has, at times not paid enough attention to design details, such as the placement of windows or other spacial relationships.

The nuts and bolts of the NextGen house itself include two bedrooms, two baths, and a living room, dining room and kitchen, put together from two factory built sections on one floor. The second story is unfinished and has room for either a third bedroom plus storage space - or two bedrooms - and bath. The house measures just under 28' by 48', and has a total of 1,200 square feet.

And, in the case of this house, much of the technology used was already on the market, making widespread implementation of the dwellings immediately achievable.

The NextGen's Tamarack ventilation system has been on the market for five years, if not more. This air distribution works through what is known as "inside-the-envelope" ductwork, in which the air never has to go outside the house to be properly distributed. Consequently no heat is lost to the environment, so the effect is that of zero percent losses, as opposed to industry standard losses that run 30 to 40 percent in recent manufactured housing studies.

The Kosmo hot water heater, which provides instantaneous hot water, has the added benefit of eliminating the need for a separate heat pump or furnace. Again, such water heaters have been around for decades, although they are still a novelty in the manufactured housing industry. "This is very simple and very clever," says bellows. "You only heat the water that you are using, and while the problem in the past has been getting enough flow to satisfy demand, this unit is close to ideal in its ability to provide sufficient water flow when required by the homeowner."

Other features of the NextGen house include energy-efficient windows, increased insulation in the flooring and compact fluorescent lighting. For those who cringe at the thought of having standard-issue office fluorescent lighting in the home, these compact fluorescent light fixtures are an entirely new breed. The light quality is virtually identical to that of an incandescent bulb and the company fluorescents use one quarter as much electricity and last between five and ten times as long.

In the end, however, Bellows believes the Danbury site's biggest challenge - and achievement - was to be taken seriously. "We successfully lobbied many building code inspectors and local building department people in Danbury to convince them that we could put a HUD Code house into a standard site-built residential neighborhood with out any problems or detractions," he says."We also worked to convince the Danbury Housing Authority that, indeed, this was not an inferior product and was not a 'mobile home,' but was a house that would be very satisfactory."

Builder Fabri expects to continue manufacturing NextGen houses, and he believes that other manufacturers will get on the bandwagon as well."When it comes to affordability, this house is possibly the best value for the dollars spent that is available today."

This NextGen house will be a rental property under the management of the Danbury Housing Authority, and plans are under way for another house in upstate New York

In the end, Fabri and Bellows believe the NextGen house will signal a wake-up call that demonstrates how effective a HUD Code home can be.

© 2000 by Manufactured Housing Institute. All rights reserved.