Palm Harbor Homes Builds First Hurricane-Resistant Modular Houses with IBHS’ FORTIFIED Home™ Building Standards
TAMPA – August 31, 2015 – (RealEstateRama) — The Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety (IBHS) and Palm Harbor Homes announced today Palm Harbor’s manufacturing facility in Plant City, Florida has earned a FORTIFIED Home™ – Hurricane manufacturing plant certification to construct and deliver the first-ever FORTIFIED Home labeled and disaster resistant modular homes in hurricane-prone regions.
The facility is the first factory in the country to receive a FORTIFIED Home – Hurricane certification to produce modular homes. The first three homes have been produced and shipped to South Florida where they will be permanently located. Palm Harbor plans to introduce FORTIFIED Home standards this year with the introduction of the Discovery Florida line of homes and to promote it in all its modular designs.
“By using our FORTIFIED Home – Hurricane building standards, Palm Harbor Homes is raising the bar for the modular home industry. Offering homeowners safer, stronger homes in hurricane-prone areas will significantly reduce their risk of property damage and provide them peace of mind,” said Fred Malik, IBHS FORTIFIED programs manager. “It’s not a matter of if there will be another hurricane to hit the coast, but when. Homeowners and communities must be prepared when Mother Nature strikes.”
For more than 30 years, Palm Harbor Homes has delivered quality, value, and lasting customer satisfaction in beautiful and affordable homes. The company has earned a reputation as an innovator in design, construction and marketing of manufactured and modular homes.
“We are very proud to be the first U.S. manufacturing plant to attain the FORTIFIED certification,” said Mark Kelly, Vice President Sales and Marketing at Palm Harbor Homes. This is consistent with the plant’s history of cutting edge home building. Our homes have a strong history of weathering extreme storms and now we will be the first to offer homeowners in hurricane-prone areas the option to purchase a stronger modular home that will be more disaster resistant. It was an easy decision for us to adopt IBHS’s FORTIFIED Home – Hurricane standards for our modular home manufacturing process.”
Manufactured and modular homes earning the FORTIFIED Home label stand above other homes because they must meet stringent resilient construction requirements set by IBHS based on their extensive building engineering research. The better performance and superior quality built into every FORTIFIED factory built home is inspected by an IBHS certified independent inspector to ensure it meets FORTIFIED Home resilient construction guidelines. Modular homes earning a FORTIFIED Home designation requires the home to be inspected and labeled at the plant as well as inspected in the field by a FORTIFIED Evaluator.
The FORTIFIED Home – Hurricane program is the national standard for resilient construction and provides a uniform, voluntary, superior set of standards to help make homes safer, stronger and more resistant to hurricanes by adding system-specific upgrades to minimum code requirements. IBHS created the program, which is available for both new and existing homes, using its years of scientific laboratory and field research.
More information on FORTIFIED modular homes can be found in the FORTIFIED Home – Hurricane: Manufactured and Modular Home Guidelines brochure. Additional information on FORTIFIED is available here, while more information on Palm Harbor Homes can be found here.
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About the Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety (IBHS)
IBHS is an independent, nonprofit, scientific research and communications organization supported by the property insurance industry. The organization works to reduce the social and economic effects of natural disasters and other risks on residential and commercial property by conducting building science research and advocating improved construction, maintenance and preparedness practices. Visit www.DisasterSafety.org for more information about creating resilient communities and the FORTIFIED Home program.
About Palm Harbor Homes
Palm Harbor Homes is one of the nation’s leading manufacturers and marketers of multi-section manufactured homes. They are part of Cavco Homes, Inc., headquartered in Phoenix, Arizona, which designs and produces factory-built housing products primarily distributed through a network of independent and company-owned retailers. The Company is one of the largest producers of manufactured homes in the United States, For more information on Palm Harbor Homes, please visit www.palmharbor.com.
MEDIA CONTACT: Brent Henzi, (850) 879-0156 (Mobile) or
