Whether your home would be a ranch, cape cod, two or three story it will need to be placed on something.  This page shows examples of a foundation, a basement, and when near the water, pilings. 

Example of a Foundation

Your modular sections are delivered to the building site on carriers that are then returned to the factory to be reused.  The metal frames DO NOT stay on your home as like some other builders do. They're lifted with a crane and set  on a foundation just like any site built house would have. 

After the crane and carriers are gone, no one could tell that your home isn't site built. Except for the fact that when they went to work in the morning there were only sections on your lot and when they got home in the evening there's your house standing there.

A block foundation is the least expensive and most common, brick will cost you a little more and will give a different look to your house.

Your foundation will need to sit on footers, dirt out around the perimeter of the footprint of your house and poured with concrete. 

After the concrete in the footers are dry the masons go to work.  This customer is having a brick foundation. The sill plate straps have been embedded in the mortar and then the sill plate, pressure treated boards, will be installed on the foundation for your house to be secured to.

Example of a Basement

Many sites in our area because of the water table being too high may not accommodate a deep basement.  You can sometimes go with a walkout basement, slightly in the ground to where you can walk out or use the basement for a garage, and be fine.  Basements are a little more expensive than foundations, but for the extra cost you get a lot of extra room and possibly a garage. 

Once the set of the basement is completed the I-Beam, steel beam that looks like the capital letter I, is installed in the center of the basement which runs from one end to the other.  It's now ready for the installation of the sill plate, pressure treated boards,and then the excitement of setting your house. 

Example of Pilings

If you're fortunate enough to be on the water, then pilings are what most people use, kinda gives you that Nags Head look.

Once the lot was cleared and the prep work completed it was time to do some heavy duty pounding.

The pilings, basically treated telephone poles, come in different lengths anywhere from 8' to 50', depending on how deep they need to go in your soil. This is determined by paying some engineer to figure the load bearing capacity of your soil, and how much weight they will bear. 

The difference between a "pole" and a "piling" is that a pole is set with the butt end (big end) in the ground - like a telephone pole or sign pole - and a piling is set with the tip end (small end) in the ground.  Either way they set it up and pound it in the ground.  It feels like Godzilla or King Kong walking around.