My Essay : 

A House for Me

            Apartment, condominium, bungalow, semi-d, terraced house is the common structure of house we can see in our daily life. But other than these types of commercial houses, there are many other unique structure of building around the world. You can simply compare their advantages and choose the one that matches your heart.           

One of the building structure I found interesting is the shipping container home. It is made up old and new shipping containers. It is getting more and more popular around the globe. For instance a home that is spotted in 5 miles away from the heart of Brisbane, Queensland, Australia is made up of 31 shipping containers. [cited by HomeDSGN(2014)]. Other than that, it is also available in many other places like United State and now even Malaysia have one. First of all, the shipping container home is environment friendly. [cited by 7 Benefits of Shipping Container Home Design(2011)] Most of the company building this unique structure of home offers old shipping container to be build. The ratio of imports and exports on the shipping container in United State is uneven. For example, every hundred containers entering into United State, fifty will be left empty, forty five waiting to carry some shipment while only five of them are reused again. In the other hand, in China where the demands are high, an average of hundred thousand containers are manufactured annually. [cited by container packing]. It’s a waste that containers only spend one-third of their lifespan transporting cargo worldwide, but we can minimize the wastage by modifying to our home.

            Secondly, you can have your own preference from how you want it to be, till where you want it to be.[ cited by 7 Benefits of Shipping Container Home Design(2011)] You can have a simple comfy one level home till a three level luxury bungalow include with swimming pool, sky garden, movie room and more, almost anything you want it to be. Other than that, an interesting fact about this unique home is that you can get them anywhere just by a delivery truck. By just a click of your finger to search in internet for the nearest transporting company in your housing area. You can own your own one and only unique shipping container home as no one will have the exact same design as yours. Also, these shipping container is an ideal material in many ways to build a home. Shipping Container has a high strength, for instance shipping container is mainly build to carry heavy shiploads and to be stacked in high column for transportation.[cited by Container Packing(2014)] And then, shipping container is a heavy duty material as it is design to encounter harsh environment for ocean transport. Shipping container home is easy to have because used shipping containers are available across the globe.

            The other building I found amazing is the manufactured home. Manufactured home is a home that it build in the factory and transport it to the owner. The manufactured home is available in the United State. More than 17 million of Americans live in manufactured home, and now you can imagine how many benefits you can get by owning a manufactured home. The main reason why Americans is obsessed with manufactured home is affordability.[cited by HowStuffWorks "10 Advantages of Manufactured Homes"’(2014)] Manufactured homes cost an average of sixty-two thousand dollars, compared with a site-build home that can cost two million and seventy-two thousand dollars each. Specifically, manufactured homes cost ten to thirty-five percent less per square foot to build compared to site-build homes. Manufactured home is favourite by middle class as the average annual income of theirs are thirty-four thousand seven hundred dollars. Manufactured home can be easily owned.

            Secondly, Manufactured homes nowadays are energy savings.[ cited by HowStuffWorks "10 Advantages of Manufactured Homes"(2014)] Factories designs the homes with energy star appliances. For examples, efficient heating or cooling system, water heaters, high performance windows and many others more. Researchers had conduct an experiments to test the efficiency of the power savings appliances and the result is magnificent with an overall savings of 55% of energy comparing to the one that is not energy efficiency. Another advantages is that, owner will have a nice community. [ cited by HowStuffWorks "10 Advantages of Manufactured Homes"(2014)] For instance, 75% manufactured homes are located in a private property. Homeowners can either rent or own the land which their home lays at. Also, living in manufactured home can cut of the worry about the expenses on lawn maintenance, trash removal, snow-plotting and other on-site repair work.

             As conclusion, shipping container homes is environment friendly, durable and can have your own preference while Manufactured homes are affordable, energy efficiency and with nice communities. For me, I would choose the manufactured homes as I am more concern about the prices where I just graduated. Also it help cut cost on the electricity bills, too. Other than that, I don’t need a designated homes to show or compare with others, I just needed a home to live, sleep and work. Therefore, manufactured homes is my choice of home.