Blueroof To Build Modular Communities

Roof is the limit for ‘green’ housing aimed at elderly
By Kim Leonard
March 30, 2007

Blueroof Technologies Inc. is expanding its vision from building one single-family “smart” house at a time to creating an entire community for elderly or disabled residents that could be reproduced almost anywhere.

The technology company that a local engineering professor and a retired high school principal founded offered plans for a 10-acre Independence Zone that would surround its gadget-packed model cottage in McKeesport, a suburb of Pittsburgh.

“This zone will become someplace where somebody can be fully independent regardless of their challenges, their handicaps,” said John G. Bertoty, executive director of the nonprofit company.

Blueroof Technologies and its sister firm, Blueroof Solutions, have existed for about five years and recently gained momentum by selling energy-efficient, handicapped-accessible modular homes to families and to agencies that run supervised group housing.

Blueroof owns or has put money down on a few properties, Bertoty said, and has identified 35 others that are tax-delinquent or in need of redevelopment.

Fifteen to 20 more technology-equipped modular houses would be built, according to Blueroof’s plan, along with a technology center and headquarters for the company and perhaps a community grocery store.

The first of the zone’s additional houses to be built would be an energy-efficient demonstration house, and a group home for people with disabilities, Bertoty said.

Bertoty, a former McKeesport High School principal, and Technology Director Robert A. Walters, an engineering professor at Pennsylvania State University’s campus in the city, first worked together on technology education programs.

The partners later turned their attention to the area’s large elderly population, deciding to create a company that would create jobs while selling affordable, technology-equipped homes to allow older residents to continue living by themselves.

The smart cottage became a test bed for a variety of computerized systems that secure the house and announce visitors, remind residents to take medicine and even track when they turn on the water or stove or flush the toilet — features that allow a relative or caregiver to monitor action in the house from another location.

Walters said a two-bedroom, single-story house equipped with a basic security system in McKeesport would sell for around $110,000.

“We can add technology as needed for the resident,” he said.

The company has sold or is building about a half-dozen homes for individuals or families, and is getting orders from service providers such as Allegheny East, which runs 11 group homes for residents with mental retardation and other disabilities.

“This is the first time that we have built from scratch,” Kate Bayer, the agency’s marketing and development director, said of a three-bedroom, Blueroof-built home that will open shortly.

Monitoring technology will help the on-site caretaker, she said.

“It was such a wonderful way for our folks, especially the ones that are aging, to stay in the community,” Bayer said of the house.

Blueroof — sustaining itself with $900,000 in grants from Allegheny County, foundations and other sources — forged partnerships with Carnegie Mellon University and University of Pittsburgh researchers working on a National Science Foundation-funded study on using technology to enhance quality of life.

In addition, Blueroof is staying focused on its goal of providing education and technology-related jobs in the McKeesport area.

The firm has five employees, and brings in interns from Penn State and other universities to work and study at the cottage, and eventually the technology center, Walters said.

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Modular Mansions

Modular Mansion For Sale
By Susan Nova
March 30, 2007

Prefabricated homes are no longer unusual in this area. As the technique of manufacturing modules in a factory has become more sophisticated, any configuration and size, even mansions with five digits of square footage and high-end detail work, are possible.

One new modular home in the Cos Cob section of Greenwich, set on a quarter of an acre, has been listed by Maureen Fox of RE/MAX Associates in Greenwich for more than $2.4 million. With four or five bedrooms and 3.5 marble baths, the 4,150-square-foot Colonial has marble fireplaces in the family room and master bedroom, Brazilian cherry floors with inlays, crown moldings, bay windows and tray ceilings. The shingle-and-stone house has a full attic, a full basement and a two-car attached garage.

Modular houses were erected here as early as the turn of the 20th century. Stamford had at least two Sears Roebuck & Co. houses two decades ago, when “Houses by Mail” by Katherine Cole Stevenson and H. Ward Jandl was published. Sears sold prefab houses from 1908 to 1940, starting as low as $153 for a four-room house, without bath, to one with eight rooms, 2.5 baths and a two-story portico with fluted columns at $5,972 or more.

“I wish to acknowledge the receipt of the ready-made building,” Irvin Cameron of Powell, Kan., said in a 1918 letter to Sears. “The house is all right in every respect and has saved us labor and money. I would recommend its use to anyone going to a new country as we did. Having the house on the train with us, we were able to have it up and move into it two days after we reached Powell. We now have as nice a little house as anyone.”

The Hodgson Co., Alladin Homes and Montgomery Ward also sold houses by mail after 1895, but Sears was the most successful with 100,000 sales, according to the book.

One or two Sears houses may survive in Greenwich, but a new type of prefab, multimodule house was erected here in 1934.

Quentin Twachtman, a construction engineer and son of famed artist John Henry Twachtman, was erecting a modernist prefab home on Riversville Road by July 7, 1934, according to a Greenwich Time story.

The 47-module house was intended to demonstrate the potential of a modern, low-priced home, according to Quentin Twachtman, who worked with his architect brother, J. Alden Twachtman. The house would not be sold or rented, but it was furnished and used to introduce this type of construction to Greenwich.

“When complete, the edifice will be composed of forty-seven different sections,” the story said. “The technical term by which the building is called is ‘pre-fabricated.’ “

The one-story house would have a living room, dining room, kitchen, three bedrooms, two baths, a furnace room and a one-car garage.

“The various sections necessary for the construction are poured, ten at a time in a foundry in East Port Chester,” now Byram, the story said. “When finished, the building will be fireproof and air-conditioned. There will be no radiators but ducts in the floor will supply the necessary heat from the hot-air furnace.”

“A membrane containing electrical wiring will be placed in the flooring between oak and cement walls,” the story said. “The building is composed mainly of cement with an outer veneer of brick.”

The story found the three-quarter-acre lot ideal, with its nearby brook and “thick foliage and shrubbery.”

No information could be found on whether the Twachtman experiment had any success, but the house is no doubt gone by now.

Nearly 12 years later in March 1946, the first postwar prefab house in Greenwich was under way. It was to be a 51Ú2 room bungalow on Ridgeview Avenue in the Rock Ridge section of town.

In December 1943, building had come to a halt because construction materials were devoted to World War II. Only $134,820 in building costs were recorded that year, according to “Greenwich Before 2000.” In the 10 years after 1946, building expenditures totaled $10 million.

Built for Mary Francis by well-known contractor Herbert Nordholm, the Rock Ridge bungalow’s cost was estimated at $10,000.

The bungalow’s basic house modules, called shells, were built by Johnson Homes Inc. in Pemberton, N.J. They included only the four walls and the framework, a form of prefab construction that today would be called panelized. Nordholm finished the rest on site. He had to find hardware, plumbing supplies and some lumber, all still in short supply at the end of the war.

“While the federal government has supported the manufacturers of factory-built houses through special priorities, it is still difficult to obtain the materials to finish such projects on the site,” Greenwich Time said.

In that era, there were 25 pre-fab manufacturers in the country.

In 1947, the Greenwich Housing Authority completed Mianus Village in 44 working days, providing housing for 40 veterans on the old Olmstead property, according to “Greenwich before 2000.” Those homes probably were pre-fabs, too.

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