Live In The Mobile Home Of The Future
Would you live in a mobile home? No? What if it were solar and wind powered, and tricked out with the latest modern conveniences and looked sharp?
Treehugger's Lyod Alter is selling his one-of-a-kind miniHome Solo prototype for $100,000. Whether your trailer park is urban or of the more traditional variety, you can live off the grid in environmentally-friendly style.
In a related story, people are also selling their houses so they can live off the grid in converted shipping containers, CR Home and Garden blog reports.
For Sale: Sustain Minihome Prototype [Lyod Alter via Curbly]
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Comments:
I wouldn't pay $100K for a mobile home, that's for damn sure. You can get an actual house for a lot less around here.
Plus, I've lived in an apartment that size (with my husband) and it's awful.
it's good design. It deserves a better name than a mobile home.
it's nice. i would live in it, my apartment is about the same size.
Great. A higher quality tornado magnet. As if the originals weren't good enough at what they did.
I live in an apartment smaller than a trailer. If it wasn't so damn expensive I would move it to a non-tornado prone place and live there.
Neat design. Nicely appointed.
Wait, what's that? 350 ft^2 and $100,000?
Oh.
Never mind then.
The problem with classifying it as a trailer is it ends up with the stigma of a trailer. Most trailer parks are pretty lousy places to live. If someone wanted to mass produce these there would need to be some better alternative for where to locate them.
Having something fully contained and fairly off grid that you could put in a rural site might have benefit as a second home.
i would live here for $50,000. $800 a month rent for 5 years comes out to $48,000.
@yume_ryuu: Based on the phone number associated with the owner, it appears o be located in Toronto, so you should be relatively safe from Tornados.
I love trailers and mobile homes. Part of that is I can pick them up dirt cheap, and rework them into what I want. I could add wind or solar to an existing trailer for far less, and be happy with my green options.
In my last trailer, I gutted the inside, and used recycled cabinets, and materials to redo the interior. I paid very very little to do so, as I did all the work myself.
If you take away the affordable aspect of a trailer, then folks like me end up thinking, what's the point.
"it was built to the highest standards without compromise"
That explains the cinder blocks and 2x4's holding up the 'porch'. Can you get it with a '72 Chevy up on blocks in the front yard?
A rose, or mobile home, by any other name...
In the 90's our local paper ran an article about a small minority of people who were selling their $300 to $500 thousand dollar homes and moving into trailers. They sounded like the happiest bunch since their cash flow went up like 100% a month. The article ended with all of those interviewed wishing they'd moved out of their expensive homes much sooner in life to live a simpler style.
But I must agree. It would all depend on where your trailer was parked as to how happy you'd be with it. Some parks are excellent, but most trailer parks deserve the stigma.
Damn hippies
How if I can get it air dropped on to 200 acres of that cheap Oragain/Washington state wilderness they sell on late night TV.....
As a kid, I lived with four other people in a 750 square foot home off the grid...and it was actually awesome. If I wanted to live alone, this would be my dream house. I think it's beautifully designed.
I only buy my mobile homes from someone I can trust...and also someone who can take a crescent wrench to the face 5 times.
+ Watch video
@iron_chef: The idea is cool, but does anyone else get the feeling that it kind of looks like a dorm?
@Rachacha:
Well getting it from Toronto to Tokyo will be a little tough...
Oh and I guess finding space in Tokyo will also be a little hard.
Nope. Because at the end of the day, it's still a trailer. And if this trailer's a rockin, don't come a knockin D:
How does it handle below freezing and 120F degrees? It's only big enough for one person in my mind. Of course, I'm 6 feet tall so most places (and cars) are made too small for my size.
There were a bunch of different models on display in DC at the Solar Decathlon a couple of weeks ago. All were small and utilitarian. Houston's entry may be mass-marketed in the future, and it is built to withstand hurricane-strength winds. I think they were estimating the cost at about $85K. They were all much bigger than this, too.
Sorry, I should have said Rice University (in Houston).
Umm...."
Complete with dual flush toilet, gray and black water tanks, full kitchen with propane powered fridge and stove, microwave and richlite counters."
"Quite possibly the world's first, completely self-sufficient, ecological trailer design, the miniHome features ...."
Which is it?
@srh: That's about par for the course where I live. Well, if they actually made 350 sqft. apartments. I'd buy one.
@Michael Belisle: I bought a good house for $51k here. $49k (Plus tax benefits) would have me off the grid VERY easily.
@CumaeanSibyl: I spent less than that on a sailboat that can live off the grid. And when I'm tired of the view from my waterfront property, I move.
@quail: there's a whole lifestyle movement about tiny houses. and often you can get around city codes and taxes by putting them on wheels.
i've been fascinated by it for a while. [and of course went out and bought 1600 sq ft]
Urban or urban? Maybe you meant "urban or rural" or "urban or suburban"?
@Klaus_Kinsky: My car was 45k, and when my girlfriend kicks me out that's going to be where I live... not sure if that's relevant but it seemed to go with the conversation.
Looks alot nicer than the typical mobile home. While small, I thought that just meant you were "living green"
@SaraFimm: The only time I've stayed in a mobile home it was freezing inside - wasn't even that cold outside! Don't know what the rules are in the US but in the UK they're exempt from the energy saving rules - or at least they were when the one I was in was built.
I've been warmer in tents.
@yume_ryuu: We chose to live in Tokyo, we are fated to live in tiny apartments.
Unless you're filthy rich, then disregard.
@quail: Plus I bet it would be great for all those couples who's kids have grown and gone, or even older childfree couples. A lot of people seem to have "too much house", and really feel it in this economy.
@Paladin_11: In case you never noticed, not everyone lives in Oklahoma or Kansas. Or do you assume that tornadoes happen in mountain ranges too?
@DrLumen: If it didn't LOOK like a trailer, I might consider it an option. The 'rents have a lot of land and are starting to reach the age where they need to be looked after, but I don't want to put an eyesore up in the backyard.
When a tornado comes by, every mobile home is wind powered.