Central Valley mobile homes
The Hardest Buildings in the Valley to Keep Cool
Thin walls, big windows, little shade and a metal roof. Manufactured homes get hotter faster than anything else we film.
Modesto & Central Valley, CA
- Film
- Solar control
- Property
- Manufactured homes
- Issue
- Rapid heat gain
- Benefit
- Cooling cost
The challenge
A manufactured home has less wall mass than a stick-built house, so it stores less heat and gains it faster. The windows are often large relative to the floor area, the lots are open with very little mature shade, and the air conditioning is usually sized tight. In a Modesto July that combination produces a home that is uncomfortable by mid-morning and expensive to cool all day.
What we did
Solar control film on the glazing taking direct sun, prioritising the west and south elevations where the gain concentrates. In a home this size the windows are the dominant heat path, which makes film unusually effective here — there is no thermal mass doing the work that film has to do in a heavier building.
The result
Rooms warm far more slowly through the day, the air conditioning cycles instead of running flat out, and the UV that fades flooring and furnishings in an open-lot home is largely gone. It is one of the highest-impact residential jobs we do per dollar.
