Oregon Yurtworks - March Newsletter

Green Is Our Favorite Color!

More Testimonials from Our Customers

"I'd been looking at lots of houses to have built for me. There were ones with great design, some with great finish work, some that looked great in their individual settings. But when I walked into a YURT and realized how good they FEEL, I then figured out what all the others were missing!"
Keith
Lorane, Oregon

"We can't say enough good things about the yurt itself--it's beautiful, functional and well built. Everyone who steps inside immediately understands why we chose a yurt over a conventional structure. "
Ginny and Dennis
Ashford, WA "

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Mindful Living Blog

Along with the new name change, Mindful Living has also updated our blog. Feel free to check it out. Simply click here.

Why should I choose a Mindful Living home over a stick-built home?

Time is money when you talk about construction. By purchasing a home made of system-built panels you can reduce your build time and reduce the amount of interest you will ultimately pay if you financed your construction.

Construction errors on-site are significantly reduced if not eliminated completely when system-built methods are utilized. If you follow the set-up instructions provided, then your home will go together quickly and without costly on-site errors or misjudgments.

Construction cost overages due to theft from the construction site is greatly reduced. Thieves think nothing about carrying away a few boards, shingles, or other readily available materials versus carrying away a panel which is heavy and difficult to hide.

Increased security for your job site. After the panels go up you have a secure, weather-tight structure to store your expensive building materials in.

Your cost in a system-built home is a set price. When you build a home on-site there are many factors that can affect the cost of the building. Everything from rain and snow to the traffic and travel times required can have a direct cost on the bottom line of on-site construction.

Because the majority of the complex carpentry work is performed at the factory you do not have to hire a team of highly skilled carpenters and craftsmen. If you are a skilled carpenter, then you can hire a laborer workforce and your costs will be much less than a highly skilled crew.

Job site inspections can be reduced. Code compliance is observed from the design of the project through completion.

Increased quality. System-building techniques are designed to provide optimum results. We use the highest quality tools and repeat the same production techniques to ensure that the final products go together faster and products consistency and quality are maintained.

Prefabrication provides you a cleaner job site. With fewer of the complicated and messy jobs being done onsite you can avoid piles of construction waste. Waste can be reduced from an on-site average of 10% to less than 1%.

The weather doesn't affect a system-built home to the degree it does an on-site build. Once a framed wall is up if it doesn't have roof on it the wind can blow it down. With a system-built home you can pick your weather window for the erection of the structure and quickly provide a weather-tight structure to work in.

What are Systems-built Homes?

More people are familiar with the term "modular" rather than "systems-built" when describing a home that is built off-site and trucked to its permanent foundation. The short answer is that systems-built, modular, and pre-fab all mean basically the same thing. The common misconception is that a site-built home is better than a home built off-site.

Our Systems-built homes are built in a manufacturing facility and consist of anywhere from 21 to 112 panels for typical homes up to 3,813 square feet. One of the big advantages that systems built homes have over site built homes is the manufacturing facility. The manufacturing facility can build homes year round in a Controlled Environment having perfect conditions and better Quality Control.

The panels are transported to a job site 70-90% complete. Once the home reaches the job site, the modules are lifted onto the home's foundation by crane.

The truth is that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) confirmed that modular/off-site homes withstood a hurricane far better than site-built housing. In its report "Building Performance: Hurricane Andrew in Florida," assessment teams from FEMA concluded that modular homes withstood the 131-155 mph winds of the Category 4 storm in August of 1992 far better than site-built housing. You may obtain a copy of this publication by contacting FEMA's distribution center at 1-800-480-2520 and requesting publication number FIA-22. Additional information is available at the FEMA site, FEMA publication file FIA-22.