Single Level Living: Designing a New Modular Home Around Aging in Place in the Okanagan
Downsizing to a new single level home is usually framed as a lifestyle move. Less yard, less stairs, less maintenance, more time. That is the right reason to do it, and it is not the reason this article exists.
The reason is this: when you buy new, you get to specify the house. A handful of decisions made before the factory builds it cost very little and are effectively free at that stage. The same decisions made in fifteen years, in a finished home, cost thousands and mean tradespeople in the house for a week. Buying new is the one moment when aging in place design is cheap.
Here is what is actually worth specifying, in the order that matters.
The decisions that cost almost nothing now
Door widths
Standard interior doors in a lot of housing are narrow enough that a walker is awkward and a wheelchair does not pass. Wider interior doors, particularly to the primary bedroom and the main bathroom, cost a trivial amount more at build time and cannot be changed later without reframing the wall.
Ask for the clear opening width, not the nominal door size. The clear opening is what a walker actually has to get through, and it is smaller than the door number suggests once the frame and the open door leaf are accounted for.
Hallway width and turning space
A hallway that is comfortable for one person walking is not necessarily comfortable for a person with a walker turning into a bedroom. The turn is what fails, not the straight run. Look at the floor plan and check the approach at each doorway, particularly where a door sits at the end of a hall rather than along it.
Blocking in the bathroom walls
This is the highest value item on the entire list and it costs almost nothing.
Blocking is solid backing installed inside the wall before the drywall goes on, so that a grab bar can be screwed into real material later. Ask for blocking around the toilet, along both walls of the shower, and beside the tub if there is one. You do not have to install grab bars now. You just have to be able to install them in ten minutes when you want them, rather than opening a wall or relying on a fixture anchored into drywall, which is how people get hurt.
Nobody thinks about this and everybody needs it eventually.
Threshold heights
Level or near level transitions at the entry door, at the patio door and at the shower. A 20 millimetre lip is invisible at 60 and is a trip hazard at 85. Exterior thresholds have to manage water, so there is a genuine engineering constraint, but a low profile threshold with proper drainage is a specification choice available at build time.
Electrical placement
Outlets set slightly higher than standard and switches set slightly lower are both easier to reach from a seated position and easier on a back that no longer bends comfortably. This costs nothing if decided before the electrical is roughed in.
While the plan is open: ask for more lighting than you think you need, and ask for it on multiple circuits. Declining vision needs considerably more light, particularly at stairs, in hallways, at the kitchen counter and in the bathroom. Adding lighting to a finished ceiling is a real job. Specifying it now is a line on a drawing.
Lever handles everywhere
Levers instead of round knobs on doors and single lever faucets instead of separate taps. Arthritic hands cannot grip and twist. This one is genuinely free, because it is a hardware selection rather than a construction change, and it is worth simply asking for as standard.
The bathroom is the whole ballgame
If one room gets the attention, make it the main bathroom.
A curbless or low threshold shower rather than a tub, or in addition to one if there is space. Stepping over a tub wall is the most common point at which a home stops working for someone. A curbless shower requires the floor structure to accommodate the drainage fall, which is a factory decision, not a retrofit.
Room to turn, and room for a second person. At some point somebody may be helping. A bathroom sized for exactly one person standing does not allow it.
A comfort height toilet, with clear space beside it rather than boxed between a vanity and a wall.
A shower seat or the blocking for one, and a handheld shower on a slide bar as well as a fixed head.
Slip resistant flooring, which is a tile selection rather than a cost.
The door swinging outward, which is a small plan change with a specific purpose: if someone falls against the inside of the door, an inward opening door cannot be opened.
Kitchen decisions worth making early
Drawers rather than deep low cupboards in the base cabinets. Pulling a drawer out beats kneeling on a hard floor and reaching into the back of a cabinet, and it is a cabinet specification rather than a renovation.
A wall oven or a range with controls at the front, so nobody reaches across hot elements.
A counter section at a lower height, or one that can be adapted, giving a place to work seated.
Task lighting under the upper cabinets. Counters are where kitchen accidents happen and they are usually the worst lit surface in the house.
A tall pantry with pull out shelving rather than high shelves that require a step stool. Step stools are how people in their eighties end up in hospital.
Where the home sits matters as much as how it is built
A perfectly specified single level home in the wrong location does not deliver the outcome.
Approach and grade. Is the walk from where a car parks to the front door level, and is it sheltered? A steep or long approach is a problem in January whatever the interior looks like. Look at the actual lot, in person, not the site plan.
Winter maintenance. Who clears the snow and the ice from the driveway, the walk and the entry. In a community with shared maintenance this is answered. On an owned lot it is your problem, and it is the task that most often becomes unmanageable first.
Distance to what you use. Groceries, a pharmacy, a clinic, and the people you see. The Okanagan has excellent communities that are a 15 minute drive from everything, which is fine until driving is no longer straightforward. Think about whether the location still works when the car goes.
Transit and services. HandyDART style services and community transport exist across the Central Okanagan but coverage varies considerably by area. Worth checking against a specific address rather than assuming.
The community's own rules. If it is a land lease or a manufactured home community, read what the rules say about modifications to the exterior, about ramps, about parking and about visitors and caregivers. These are answerable questions before you buy.
Talking to the builder
New modular and manufactured homes are usually sold as models with defined options, which is what makes them affordable. That means some of the items above are standard, some are an option, and some are a change to the model that the factory may or may not accommodate.
Ask directly, model by model:
- Which of these are standard, which are options, and what does each option cost?
- Which are possible at all in this model, and which would require a plan change?
- What is the deadline for each decision? Factory build sequences have hard cut off points, and blocking, door widths and shower construction lock in early.
- Will you provide the finished electrical and blocking locations in writing so I have them later?
That last one matters more than it sounds. Knowing where the blocking is, five years from now, is the difference between installing a grab bar in an afternoon and hunting for solid material with a stud finder.
Frequently asked questions
Does aging in place design make the home look institutional?
Not any more. Wider doors, better lighting, lever handles, drawers and a curbless shower are all mainstream design choices that read as contemporary rather than clinical. Grab bars have also changed considerably and several are indistinguishable from towel bars.
Is it worth doing if I am only 58 and perfectly mobile?
That is precisely the argument. These decisions are cheap only when made at the factory. You are not building for how you are now. You are avoiding a renovation later, at an age when arranging a renovation is itself the hard part.
Will it help resale?
Single level, accessible homes have a broad buyer pool in this region, which skews older than the provincial average. It is unlikely to hurt.
Can a manufactured or modular home be modified later?
Many things can, but the structural and plumbing items are far harder after the fact than in a site built home, because of how the units are constructed and transported. This is an argument for specifying early rather than assuming flexibility.
What about a second bedroom for a caregiver or family?
Worth thinking through now. A small second bedroom near the primary bedroom, rather than at the far end of the plan, is what makes overnight help practical.
An Okanagan option worth talking to
*Disclosure: Crafted Developments Corp. is a business listed on the Okanagan Trade Directory. The description below comes from their own published information. Their public Google rating is 4.2 across 10 reviews at the time of writing, which is a modest sample, so ask for references from recent buyers.*
Crafted Developments Corp is an Okanagan based modular housing company building net zero ready homes for the BC market. It operates alongside sister brand Crafted Modular Living and is backed by parent company Woodland Crafted Homes. The company lists 8 modular home models ranging from a 350 square foot Dragonfly studio to a 2,016 square foot four bedroom Jackpine, states that its homes are CSA Z240 certified and meet BC Energy Step Code Step 5, or net zero ready, and gives factory build times of 8 to 16 weeks. Its listed active land developments include Deer Meadows Estates in Lake Country and The Views Okanagan in Vernon.
See their Okanagan Trade Directory listing or visit crafteddevelopments.com.
Take this list to the showhome and walk through it room by room with the salesperson. The items that are standard will be answered in seconds, and the ones that produce a pause are the ones to get in writing.