No. (Sorry!) We appreciate trees so much that we like to save them … a lot. We post relevant information on our Web site for easy reference, easy updating, and easy-on-the-environment reasons. You are welcome to print out pages for your reference or to share with friends. Our on-line gallery has the most up-to-date photographs of our projects.

The weeHouse was inspired by sustainable design principles such as building small and efficiently. We hope to offset the suburban trend towards overbuilding by instilling value in modern yet efficient living. By producing weeHouses in carefully chosen, environmentally concerned factories, we are able to greatly reduce construction waste compared to conventional construction procedures. As production of weeHouses increases, we hope to be able to include more low-VOC and green-certified materials into the process. Our architects can customize your weeHouse with even greener materials and systems using active solar, geothermal, green roofs and other solutions as applicable.

We call designs that use 3 or more modules (excluding our ‘towers’) not-so-weeHouses. We offer standardized plans for not-so-weeHouses that address lifestyle needs that go beyond our standard line of 1- and 2-module houses.

WeeHouse is actually a trademarked name for a contemporary, prefabricated structure originally designed by Geoffrey Warner, principal of Alchemy LLC. The standard weeHouse has evolved into a line of structures used as homes, offices, penthouses, and studios. From the iconic Arado weeHouse (now called weeHouse “studio”) to four+ module dwellings, a weeHouse project has many shapes and elements (including being not-so-wee), but all of them are prefabricated and then “set” on site … basically ready to move-in!

Custom weeHouses are a hybrid between custom architecture and mass prefabrication. They typically cost more and take longer than our standard weeHouses, however, they also cost approximately 10-20% less than a comparable custom site-built house.

A custom or site-built project can actually follow the same design as a weeHouse, or it can take on its own elegant style. We use a different pricing structure for custom projects, and we are not able to estimate those costs until we’ve had a significant conversation with you about the scope of the project. Please email us with details, or call us during regular business hours when you have specifics ready.

Occasionally, built weeHouse projects are available for public viewing via home tours, exhibitions (Dwell Conference 2007), special events (did you know a weeHouse was in Times Square? ), or in an appointment with a client’s approval. At this time, there are no weeHouses ‘on parade’ but stay in touch with us via weeMail. For obvious reasons, we try to keep our clients’ privacy intact as much as possible.

Alchemy is an architecture firm, and as such, does the design work of the weeHouse. We work with independent factories that produce modular homes in addition to the weeHouse. Respecting their business environment, safety guidelines, and timelines, we do not organize tours or visits during production. Occasionally, during production, factories are open to the weeHouse owner.

Yes, you need them! The weeHouse is permitted similar to a site-built home. You will need to acquire local zoning permits; we take care of the state-mandated permitting. You won’t run into any issues as long as you follow the zoning requirements for your city/neighborhood/county. Most cities post permit information on their city/county web sites.

Yes. weeHouses are designed and inspected to comply with the International Residential Code (IRC) and International Building Code (IBC). Prior to fabrication, we provide you with a full set of weeHouse documentation drawings for your local building inspections process. Local inspections are needed for granting permits and the inspections are done per local municipality requests. Most of these inspections happen at the factory, so you should only have to pay reduced building permit costs to cover site-specific work: foundation and basement walls, drainage, heating, plumbing, electrical hookup, and certificate of occupancy.

Some things to consider include:

• the costs of your site to be cleared and/or prepared for the weeHouse move-in
• the foundation. You have options, and we’re happy to work with you to make suggestions
• electrical, water, and sewer hookups (weeHouses come ready-to-hook-in)
• road access (no tight twists and turns!), and an open area large enough for the crane to ‘be’ while it’s lifting your ‘wee’

Realtors may be able to help you address general site restrictions in your area. Please be sure to ask! Actually, we recommend you ask a lot of questions and that you get recommendations from “locals” to find contractors that can help. If you’re unfamiliar with construction, we strongly recommend working with a reliable general contractor, even if your up-front costs seem slightly higher. We believe that in the long run, a great contractor saves money.

While photographs, surveys, and sketches are useful to describe the site, a site visit allows us to interact directly with you and the land. We do a rough survey of the site and flag for the house if possible, thus being able to address some of the more subtle parts of the building(s) in the landscape. We do bill for site visits using day (or half-day) rates, plus expenses. We think it’s a good investment on the larger scope of your project.

Continental United States and Canada: Our Delivery Map illustrates our current capabilities for placing a prefabricated weeHouse by state/province. We are working on establishing delivery to every state/province and we’ll update you via weeMail on these changes. If we can't send you a prefab weeHouse, we certainly could do a site-built weeHouse. Although it wouldn't be prefab, it would still be fabulous!

Alaska and Hawaii: Yes! We can ship a weeHouse, but as you can imagine, there are additional shipping fees (literally … shipping on the ship fees). Plan on an extra $8 to $10K for the ocean leg of the journey.

Europe ... and other parts of the not-so-weeWorld: Mon dieu! We do not have a way to ship a prefab wee across the “pond” at this time. weeHouses are too big for standard shipping containers and would require a specialty shipping arrangement—most likely at a very high cost. We do offer a panelized option for our one box wee's. Keep in mind, however, that you'd need local labor to build your weeHouse, and we recommend as always, an excellent local general contractor to help you through the process from foundation to finish.

Yes! The Phillips Garden weeHouse is a roof-topper (built on an exsisting auto-repair garage). You just need a structural engineer to verify that your building can hold wee's weight (approximately 600 pounds per lineal foot). The Arado weeHouse was built on stilts—not the kind you used when you were a kid—but on concrete piers and steel beams, and quite a few weeHouses since have used that foundation option.

We have designed a weeHouse BOAT along with a houseboat manufacturer in Florida. Please email us for details as wee is looking for a first-time buyer!

Alchemy LLC is a privately owned company (see employee profiles for more information about each of us. We are not franchised, nor traded on the stock exchange. The best way to invest is to initiate weeHouse developments. Prefabrication is especially cost effective when like-houses are produced in quantity. We pass this savings benefit on to you. When we design developments of 10 or more weeHouses, we can even deliver to areas not included in our standard weeHouse delivery map. Please contact us for more details.

Modular financing has advantages because it reduces short-term, high-rate construction lending as you often do not pay for the bulk of the house until it is delivered from the factory.

We encourage you to ask your local lender about a new home construction loan, or a "systems-built" or "factory-built" modular financing option. As a point of reference, however, Alchemy clients have used M&T Bank-Mortgage Division, M&I Bank's Mortgage Program, Land Home and Countrywide Home Loans with positive results,

For more about the modular home business, and how financing differs from traditional home mortgages, we suggest you visit the many online Blogs and Web sites that document prefab building. M&T Bank goes into significant detail on their site and The Homestore has an excerpt/article from "The Modular Home" book that addresses modular financing.

One thing to be clear about: weeHouses are modular homes, not manufactured housing, and when you're looking for financing that's an important distinction to make. The National Modular Housing Council's Web site offers these definitions:

Many types of structures are built in the factory and designed for long-term residential use. It may surprise you to learn that almost all homes built today are comprised of some type of "factory-built" component. The differences in the types of factory-built housing can be summarized as follows:

Modular Homes: These homes are built in a factory as modules that meet the state or local building code where the home will be located. Modules are transported to the site, installed on foundations, and completed. A modular home is comprised of two or more modules.

Panelized Homes: These are homes in which panels - a whole wall with windows, doors, wiring and outside siding - are transported to the site and assembled. The homes must meet state or local building codes where they are sited.

Pre-Cut Homes: This is the name for homes in which building materials are factory-cut to design specifications, transported to the site and assembled. Pre-cut homes include kit, log and dome homes. These homes must meet local, state or regional building codes.

Manufactured Homes: These are homes built entirely in the factory under a federal building code administered by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Manufactured homes may be single- or multi-section and are transported to the site and installed.

Each standard weeHouse comes ready-made: just add water. And a few other 21st Century realities like electricity! weeHouse standard floors are 1x4 tongue and groove bamboo (light or dark finish available); all interior walls are white gypsum board. We have integrated a curtain track into the perimeter ceiling as a standard feature that allows for privacy curtains or wall texture panels. Standard weeHouse bathrooms have tile floors and showers. .

Each weeHouse also includes floor-to-ceiling glass doors, container siding (cement fiberboard with vertical battens), EPDM cold roof, tongue and groove bamboo flooring, primed gypsum board ceilings and walls, electrical and plumbing systems, fixtures, bathroom tile, cabinets, and the kitchen sink.

We’ve designed the weeHouse to meet IBC (International Building Code and IRC (International Residential Code) standards. Regarding insulation: nominal ‘R’ values are: Walls R19, Floor R35, Ceiling R44.

Yes! With the standard weeHouses, we do include high-quality modern appliances in the cost.  However, we can also design and spec for these recommended appliances (refrigerators, stoves, dishwashers, etc.), but you have to purchase them locally. See the weeHouse options sheet for details.

Yes! Included in the price of your weeHouse is a permit set of drawings for standard weeHouses and standard not-so-weeHouses that illustrates the foundation plan, floor plans, elevations, and typical construction details.

The weeHouse is engineered to provide the coolest design and fabulous flexibility at the most accessible prices using materials that optimize the benefits of the structure and the build process. Sometimes the standard weeHouse isn’t exactly what you’d like to live in. That’s not a problem, but it does mean that for some details, we have to go ‘back to the drawing board’ … literally!

We schedule customizing weeHouses on a case-by-case basis, and hope that, in general, our standard designs suit your needs. Custom projects do take longer, and can add significant changes to your costs. When you customize a standard weeHouse (there are some limitations to factory-built homes, but we are always happy to work with you to design in elements that you believe to be ‘must-haves’), Alchemy offers our design services at a reasonable hourly rate. These design services may be used for changes to the kitchens, baths, porches, accessibility modifications, or material changes.

Yes, but we don’t necessarily recommend it. It is possible to purchase a standard weeHouse as a finished ‘shell’ without the built-in cabinets or other small fixtures. The final price really won’t change much, if at all. Because the factory works so efficiently, it’s always been (to-date) more cost-effective to have the weeHouse delivered with as many details and finishes in place as possible.

For permitting reasons, we need to finish interior and exterior walls and have the plumbing and electrical in place.

We’ve designed the weeHouse to meet IBC (International Building Code and IRC standards. The weeHouse is actually stronger than a site-built structure in many cases. To withstand the stresses of being moved, we reinforce all corners of the frame, doors, and windows, and glue and screw the subfloor and sheetrock to the frame. weeHouses are fully insulated with 2x6 walls and 12" floor trusses for the floors and ceilings. Nominal R values are: Walls R19, Floor R35, Ceiling R44. Vented roofs assist in tempering the house in extreme heat or cold.

Your weeHouse will last as long as any other quality-built structure … especially since we assume you’ll treat your ‘wee’ with care!

Although it appears flat, the hipped roof of the weeHouse contains a 1/4” per foot slope. It is a cold roof (ventilated underside) covered in EPDM. (The Ethylene Propylene Diene Monomer sheet provides very good resistance to weathering, ozone and UV exposure and it is highly recommended for applications where there is excessive exposure to the environment.) wee keeps you covered.

A unique aspect of the weeHouse system is a porch that we call the tube porch. These porches may be 3' to 10' long and are placed on the exterior walls that have full glass access. They may be added to the module at one or both ends, but the finished module must be shorter than 62'. The porches are finished similar to the exterior finish. Cedar or ipe decking is standard.

Our standard widths are 14' to deal with roadway requirements.  Custom weeHouses can be made up to 16' wide, but for wider houses, we often recommend adding a module to the side and opening up a wall between them.

Depending on your climate, you have the option of adding in-floor hydronic heat, wood or gas stoves, forced air, and split wall air conditioning with remote compressors. When choosing in-floor heat the same boiler will also supply your domestic hot water needs. We offer a small, powerful, and efficient on-demand gas water heater that can be hidden within the back of a cabinet.

The standard weeHouse exterior siding is Alchemy designed Container Siding, made of highly durable cement fiberboard panels (sometimes referred to as Hardie Panels) with vertical battens. This exterior may be painted any color however we do have some standard recommendations. An oxidized paint finish in steel is available as a modest upgrade. We also offer Alchemy-designed Corncrib Siding, a horizontal rough-sawn pine rain screen siding finished with solid or semi-transparent stain as an upgrade. If you are considering separate modules, each module can have different colors or materials.

Anywhere you’d like! (Kidding, kidding.) We can design a garage to go with your house. It would be site-built or panelized depending on what works best for the project. Garages are considered as an additional service, therefore billed and scheduled separately. Our clients have also integrated garage(s) into their foundation plans . Carports and creative outdoor shelters have also been designed.

If you’re considering a weeHouse development, we’d be happy to talk with you. Prefabrication is especially cost effective when weeHouses are produced in quantity. We pass this savings benefit on to you. When we design developments of 10 or more weeHouses, we can even deliver to areas not included in our standard weeHouse delivery map. Please contact us for more details.

weeHouse pricing varies by geographic region and by chosen options. West coast standard weeHouse pricing ranges from $79,000 to $245,000. You may see lower price references on blogs and Web sites. Please call us if you have questions on why our prices are different (usually, the information is simply outdated).

See our delivery map.

One truckload is approximately 62' of module, so combinations of modules that add up to 62' and less will save on shipping expenses. Transportation from the factory runs approx. $5-7 per truck/per mile for current factory locations).

You need an 18' wide path for the loaded truck. Since the weeHouse sits on either a full foundation or piers, if you can get a concrete truck to your site, chances are you can get a weeHouse on a semi thru there, too.

If the semi ‘fits’, most likely the crane can get on site as well. The size of the crane you will need depends on the size of the modules and the distance from the crane to the foundation. Not that we’ve actually weighed-a-wee, but adding up materials, we know that modules weigh roughly 600 pounds per lineal foot. The ground must be firm enough to support the weight of the loaded crane (thus a few of those snowing installation and set photos on our site!) and there must be adequate area for the crane’s stabilizations arms.

Crane costs will vary, but are generally billed hourly on a round-trip basis from the crane company to your site. We suggest you budget between $500-$2500 for approximately 4-8 hours of crane time including the trip charge. Look under “crane service” or “boom trucks” to find services. A set crew from the factory will facilitate the bolting of the weeHouse to its foundation.

Standard weeHouses (and not-so-weeHouses) are pre-designed with options to accommodate many needs and sites. Delivery runs nominally 6-9 months from signed contract, design fees are minimal, and costs based on the project’s location are given up front.

Custom weeHouses are possible based on adaptations of our standard weeHouses and basic details to create more customized solutions for a wider variety of needs. Timelines run nominally 9 or more months from signed contract. Upfront design fees are based on the size of the project, and costs are quoted within a reasonable range.

Custom Architecture is, well, custom. We are open to a wide realm of project types and creative production methods. Longer timelines and more uncertain costs are typical.

Please sign-up for weeMail to keep updated on news, changes, and innovations from Alchemy. We don’t share/sell information we collect. We promise to only send out interesting updates and timely information.

We love google.com (!) mostly because google is such a cool word, but also because it’s paperless, too. Google.com lets you find the latest blog entries, Web sites, articles, and even international news about prefabs and architecture in general.

Articles that highlight our work are listed in the PRESS area of our Web site, but here are a few links to some favorites:
NYTimes: Before Buying a Prefab by Amy Gunderson
MN Public Radio: The weeHouse comes to Linden Hills by Roseanne Pereira
Marketwatch.com: Right Chemistry-Prefab weeHouse combines utility, modern esthetic by Rachel Koning Beals

Please visit your library to peruse these books that we’ve found extremely helpful including:
The Modular Home by Andrew Gianino
Prefabulous by Sheri Koones, foreword by Sarah Susanka

Do you have a budding architect in your family who’d like to read some cool books on architecture? Here are Alchemy staff favorites!
Roberto the Insect Architect by Nina Laden
Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel by Virginia Lee Burton
The Little House by Virginia Lee Burton
The House in the Mail by Rosemary Wells
Need a House? Call Ms. Mouse by George Mendoza

The Alchemy Staff has moments where taking a break from the drawing table is much appreciated. Usually we eat, or we bar-b-que and then eat. But sometimes we talk, too, and all kinds of free-association starts happening. That’s when we think of clever t-shirts (available soon) sayings, too, including:

• To weeHouse or not-too-weeHouse?
• weeCasa es suCasa
• wee-the-people!

We also employ a non-architect (although she does have an M.S. in Design) who’s the Chief Propagandist. Email her with any issues you have about this site (including grammar and copy errors as we wanna look good and be well read)!