On 18/09/2010 17:43, John MacLeod wrote:
On Sep 18, 10:29 am, stuart wrote:
On 17/09/2010 23:45, John Rumm wrote:



On 17/09/2010 15:15, stuart noble wrote:

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.

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.

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.

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

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