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For 11 years, Man­dala  Homes has been design­ing and build­ing pre-fabricated round and rec­tan­gu­lar home pack­ages in Nel­son, BC and dis­trib­ut­ing all over the globe, with Canada and US being their main mar­ket.  Along with pre-fabricated home pack­ages, they also sell deck­ing, floor­ing, trim pack­ages, pre stained cedar sid­ing, tim­ber frame com­po­nents and wood win­dow & door pack­ages.   Man­dala Homes with its triple-bottom line busi­ness model makes its busi­ness deci­sion by tak­ing into account the finan­cial, social, and envi­ron­men­tal impact.

Man­dala Homes is the only round home builder in Canada and one of only a few in North Amer­ica.  Round homes use less build­ing sur­face to enclose the same square footage as a rec­tan­gu­lar build­ing result­ing in less BTUs needed to heat than a con­ven­tional home. Man­dala Homes’ inno­v­a­tive air tight­ness design pro­vides a strong bar­rier from the ele­ments, lim­it­ing air leak­age and vastly cut­ting down on heat­ing and cool­ing costs.

They are ded­i­cated to cre­at­ing pos­i­tive change in the world through inno­v­a­tive green tech­nol­ogy and a focus on using safe, healthy, and sus­tain­able build­ing prod­ucts. Man­dala Homes incor­po­rates a Smart Waste Pro­gram in their pro­duc­tion facil­ity which min­i­mizes the amount of mate­r­ial end­ing up in a land fill.  The fac­tory is pow­ered by a wind­mill farm in North­ern BC and is heated by a high effi­ciency wood burn­ing stove; left­over wood cut­offs are burned instead of thrown into the dump­ster.  They also use sus­tain­able and renew­able prod­ucts and low VOC or non-toxic mate­ri­als.   Man­dala Homes also has a LEED Accred­ited Pro­fes­sional (AP) Designer and Engi­neer avail­able for any LEED projects.  One of their projects in 2010, a health food store in Fort Nel­son, won the Best BC Green Busi­ness of the Year award.

One of the strongest ben­e­fits of a round/faceted struc­ture is its nat­ural resis­tance to strong winds and seis­mic activ­ity.  The round design allows the wind to wrap around rather than push against it and the con­i­cal roof pre­vents roof lift­ing due to neg­a­tive pres­sures over the lee side of the house.  The inter­de­pen­dence of all the build­ing com­po­nents makes it easy to engi­neer con­nec­tors to tie the build­ing to the foun­da­tion sys­tem for areas that expe­ri­ence earth­quake activity.

Through their com­mit­ment to inno­v­a­tive green tech­nol­ogy, they cre­ated The Com­fort Wall Sys­tem.  With this sys­tem, they have moved from the stan­dard R20 insu­la­tion rat­ing to R34 in the wall and R66 in the roof.  They use Roxul min­eral wool insu­la­tion which is cre­ated from recy­cled min­eral.   The insu­la­tion is fire resis­tant; repels water so the R-value is not affected; com­pletely resis­tant to rot, mildew, mold, and bac­te­r­ial growth; and absorbs sound.  To limit ther­mal bridg­ing a blan­ket of Roxul Board is used on out­side of the wall, along with the air bar­rier, cre­at­ing an air tight seal around the com­plete build­ing enve­lope.  Stay tuned to their Face­book page on when they are com­ing out with this new technology.

Along with their ded­i­ca­tion to the envi­ron­ment, Man­dala Homes also give back to their com­mu­nity. For exam­ple, they sup­port Habondia’s Women in Sus­tain­able Hous­ing (WISH) project.   This 30 month pilot project’s goal is to sup­port women sur­vivors of vio­lence and senior women in increas­ing their money man­age­ment skills and improv­ing their eco­nomic secu­rity through obtain­ing or main­tain­ing sus­tain­able housing.

When it comes to social media, Man­dala Homes is quite suc­cess­ful. With over 5,000 Face­book fans and up to a 75% engage­ment rate, they have an edge up in the indus­try.  With a post almost every day, Man­dala Homes is keep­ing their fans engaged and informed on the top­ics of energy effi­ciency, sus­tain­able build­ing prac­tices, com­pany projects and the soul of the home.  This activ­ity strength­ens their brand awareness.