Park homes

Anyone got experience of working on these? I'm advising a relative who's thinking of buying a 1988 Omar Ranch Style home for all year residence. I've done all the Googling about the pros and cons of the basic idea, but I don't know anything about the construction, and what the specs are likely to have been at that time as regards insulation etc. Do they have timber rafters and joists between which celotex could be fixed? I'm thinking exterior insulation panels might be prohibitively expensive, and probably not as effective.

Any advice welcome

Reply to
stuart noble
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I lived in one 15 years ago. Had it for 6 years, and generally liked it. Cold in the winter, warm in the summer would accurately describe it. The walls were 2" thick, so you'd get cold if the heating wasnt on. Although, as the volume of the full building was small, it didnt cost a great deal to heat, I think it was typically 2 bags of coal a week to keep the Parkray going 24/7. Mine had an ally skin,2x2 framework, stuffed with rockwool insulation, with a hardboard inner. I upgraded over the years with insulation backed plasterboard for both the walls and ceilings, and this did seem to make a difference. Blocking off the underfloor is a big energy saver, as ours only had an 18mm chipboard floor, laid on the steel chassis, so the only insulation there was the wood and carpet. Bricking it up definitely made a difference.

Alan.

Reply to
A.Lee

Thanks, that's interesting. I was afraid the walls on this one might only be 2" thick, but it sounds as though there wouldn't be a problem upgrading the insulation. I hope just replacing the Rockwool with 50mm Celotex on the ceiling would make a big difference, as I don't think we would want to lose height. I'll try and find the specs for this particular model.

Reply to
stuart noble

Oddly enough, I posted about this a few weeks back, since I know someone who lives in a (probably older) but similar beast. External insulation seems to be the way to go to avoid losing space. Even modern specs are not as good as current building regs.

Figures quoted at the time suggested:

Elements BS 3632 vs Part L Building Regs. Walls 0.6 0.35 Floor 0.35 0.25 Roof 0.35 0.16 / 0.2

Construction seems to vary. Some are ali skin on wood frame and steel space frame chasis. More modern ones seem to be some sort of rendered board on wood frame.

Reply to
John Rumm

Cheers. I'll look into that. All fairly tentative at the moment, but these older park homes seem like a viable option if you can improve the insulation without spending a fortune.

Reply to
stuart noble

They have two tremendous disadvantages:

  1. They're normally sited on sites where the site owners are taking high annual fees for use of the site and
  2. The planning people don't like them, so it's almost impossible to get permission to locate them elsewhere.

Provided you're satisfied with regard to both these points, then as a short-term answer for a year or two they can be OK. But they're a very fast-depreciating asset.

John

Reply to
John MacLeod

Yes, i have heard of such places. The one I was on however was quite alright, £10 per week rent in 1987, was £12 when I left in 94.

Well, yes, but if they are already sited, you dont really want to move them.

I paid £9600 in 87, sold it for £10,000 in 94. I had upgraded it quite a lot in that time, but nothing too extravagant. Pretty reasonable price I thought at the time, as house prices had crashed that year, which made it affordable for us to buy a house. I wanted a quick sale, and sold to the first who looked at it, so in hindsight, I could have got more, but we wanted the money quickly for the house deposit.

Alan.

Reply to
A.Lee

Yes, I've done the pros and cons bit to death thanks :-)

Reply to
stuart noble

so you havent the hassle of dismantling it, wire and pipe routing and lots of coldbridging, you mean to glue kingspan to the outside and then weatherseal that with another layer?

[g]
Reply to
george [dicegeorge]

Yup basically. Many of the modern homes have a textured render finish of some sort, so one can slap foam boards all over, and render over for a similar effect. From what I have read they have also made dispensations in the legal maximum sizes of mobile homes to allow for the insulation of existing maximum sized ones.

Reply to
John Rumm

I wonder how this affects the roof overhang/guttering etc

Reply to
stuart noble

Same as with any external insulation job really. You will lose some overhang (and in fact what you have may limit the amount of insulation you can get in. You will need to alter downpipes and extend windowsills as well.

Many of them have pitched roofs with some "loft" space, which means more convention loft insulation can be used there. Alternatively flat roofed units can in effect have a warm deck style flat roof added on top of the existing one.

Reply to
John Rumm

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember "george [dicegeorge]" saying something like:

That's my plan, fwiw. I was buggering around thinking up ways of doing it, then realised, as this is actually an old agriculturally-related building, some insulated box sheeting would look right in place. 100mm of Kingspan bonded to PVC coated steel and only needs to be through-bolted every couple of feet. Sorted. By using seconds I can slash the cost dramatically.

Reply to
Grimly Curmudgeon

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