Tradition meets high-tech design

COURTESY UNION STUDIO
ENERGY GURU Bob Chew and Union Studio have teamed up for Redberry, a series of modular homes, shown above.
COURTESY UNION STUDIO ENERGY GURU Bob Chew and Union Studio have teamed up for Redberry, a series of modular homes, shown above.

Modular homes and energy-efficient, “net-zero” homes have long occupied opposite poles of the building-reputation spectrum.
On one end, modulars are known for affordability and assembly speed, but also a lingering association with the trailer park or cookie-cutter tracts of ranches.
On the other, net-zero houses bring to mind high price tags, complex gagetry and unconventional, modern architecture.
Now a new enterprise from Rhode Island renewable energy guru Bob Chew and Providence architects Union Studio hopes to find a harmonious middle ground in joining these two building concepts.
Called Redberry, the collaboration has designed a series of modular homes featuring Union’s traditional New England architecture and Chew’s solar technology. The homes will be manufactured by Epoch Homes of New Hampshire.
“We have always had an interest in sustainability but have been explicit that we weren’t interested in all the gadgets that usually seem to go with it,” said Union Studio principal Donald Powers. “We felt you should be able to live in a net-zero home and not have everyone who walks by know it is a net-zero home.”
With wood shingles, clean lines and compact floor plans, Redberry houses are designed to fit in with old New England neighborhoods and appeal to buyers outside of the environmental or techie worlds.
But despite their historically inspired appearance, Redberry homes will try to capitalize on improvements in manufactured-home systems that many see as the future of residential construction.
“Modular homes struggle with the legacy of trailers,” Powers said. “The best ones are factory-built homes with more quality control than you can have in the field. The only constraint is the dimensional restrictions because you have to ship them over the road. But that can be solved.” For Redberry, modular construction allows a level of precision, insulation and “tightness” essential to energy efficiency that can’t be matched by traditional construction. It also keeps the price down, opening them up to more than the green or technology-obsessed buyer.
“It is interesting that the home industry in general has maintained the same delivery system as it had 80 years ago,” Powers said. “Every other industry builds inside a quality-controlled setting. There is a logic to building homes in the factory that hasn’t taken off.”
For Chew, who founded SolarWrights and is now an energy consultant, the advantages of modular construction include control, speed and protection from the elements.
“There is virtually no waste coming out of a factory,” said Chew, who worked for Massachusetts modular-manufacturer Acorn Homes before moving to solar power. “Once the components are dry-shipped to the building site, they can be assembled in one day. You don’t have the wood sitting out in the rain for weeks soaking up moisture.”
Over the years, manufactured homes have made progress moving up market, but the collapse of demand for new construction in the mid-2000s scrambled many modular business plans.
According to statistics from the Manufactured Housing Institute, a national trade group, manufactured home shipments in the United States peaked in 1973 at 579,960 shipments and, aside from a large spike in the 1990s, has declined since.
In 2011, there were 51,600 manufactured shipments nationally, up from 50,046 in 2010 and a 50-year low in 2009 of 49,789 shipments.
In New England, where cold winters make construction speed particularly desirable, there were 696 shipments in 2011.
Rhode Island had the second-lowest total of shipments nationally, with 13 in 2011, behind only Hawaii. But Redberry hopes to add to the total soon.
The company is finalizing a site for a model home in an undisclosed location in North Kingstown and expects to have the model finished in the spring of 2013.
Central to the Redberry concept is Union Studio’s design being tailored to Chew’s solar systems.
The Redberry houses will feature a large array of electricity-generating, photovoltaic solar panels on the slope of the roof and also Chew’s “solar loft,” a passive system using the sun’s rays to generate heat, including a large tank of water in the attic.
From Chew’s perspective, part of the inspiration for Redberry was to utilize solar-thermal technology, which has been left behind somewhat in the race to develop better and cheaper photovoltaics.
“As the solar companies started to get larger and more specialized, they stopped doing solar thermal, which is more efficient than photovoltaic,” Chew said. “The other frustration was all the certifications and sustainability awards houses were getting without solar at all.”
Epoch Homes President John Ela described Chew’s mix of passive solar and active solar as “an economical approach that is better than anything that has been brought to market.”
On the future of manufactured homes, Ela said they have gained market share after most historical housing downturns and he saw no reason that would not continue now.
Redberry plans to build large and small models of its home, with the larger version coming in at around 2,000 square feet and the small at 1,600 square feet, Powers said.
Although the entry prices have not been set yet, Powers said the larger house would likely start in the $400,000 to $450,000 range and the smaller house in the $300,000 to $350,000 range. •

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