Trailer and Awnings

This is an old mobilehome (1963 Paramount 12′ wide with two awnings attached the entire 65′ length of both sides), more or less 1200 square feet of living space enclosed, 400 added to the original 800, in a 55 and older Park in Desert Hot Springs. This one had been on the market for six months at $7,500 when we found it. We met other residents of the Park who called it “The Cave.” It was so long that sunlight from the short north end, the kitchen, lit about as far as the middle of the living room space. The rest of about 45′ was completely dark all the time. To make it worse, the former owner had the small windows everywhere completely covered with blinds and dust-covered curtains. As shown in the site plan, the trailer sits on a corner site. Such plentiful yard space in a low cost dwelling underlined its potential for use as an example of sustainable living in a low income environment. The plans to use this potential and to create an eco friendly environment for living in the trailer were presented to the resident manager of The Park early in 2005. They were handwritten (view the handwritten version here), but for the purposes of this web page the links below are to printed duplicates of these handwritten plans. A guide to where each proposal is located on the site can be seen here The plans were presented to the resident manager of The Park early in 2005 and were given approval by the owner of the Park shortly after that. These plans were detailed proposals for how we planned to Upgrade porch area  (Proposal page 1) Create a weather shielded planting area in the west side yard (Proposal page 2) Build a facade with greenhouse along north frontage (Proposal page 3) Add garages  (Proposal page 4)

The Yard
	As shown in the site plan, the yard had potential to become a pandoras box of little nooks and crannies, with such a potential variety of sunshine and shade that, with a well designed planting strategy, it would open up at least two or three micro climates.