This Old Mobile Home, part 3
When you’re working on houses, little things that you don’t notice (or try not to notice) are important. My wife and I thought, for instance, that we had made a pretty good assessment of the Redman when we decided to keep it and make it our home. We thought we were being hardheaded and realistic.
It was going to cost a bunch of money.
Basically, it needed just about everything. Yes, the roof was good. But the wiring had been vandalized, perhaps by its last renter. That was over seven years ago. We were pretty sure it needed a new heating system. Let’s not talk about the aging plastic water pipes. On top of all that, it wasn’t one of the high finish-out manufactured homes you can buy today.
It was a low-end, 1990 Redman, one of those board-and-batten units with a lot of stuff held together by staples. It had also had what some would call “a hard life.” Purchased out of a repo pool in 2000, it had been trucked to its current location and put in service as a rental.
That didn’t go well either, so it had been sitting in the open, unoccupied and untended for years. Only the mice appreciated it.
As manufactured homes go, it was kind of a foster child, moved from place to place but never loved.
So when you’re looking at tearing out and virtually starting over, you might miss a few things.
To wit: It sagged.
The sag wasn’t bad or perilous. I’ve seen houses where it would be dangerous to put anything that could roll on the floor. You probably have, too. No, it was modest and consistent: The floor bowed. Throughout the 75-foot length of the unit, the floor dropped slightly toward the outer walls. It wasn’t a lot, but it was enough to get your attention when the place was cleared and swept.
More important, it was enough that installing cabinets and built-ins could get comical, requiring an entire forest of shims to make, say, a kitchen countertop or bathroom vanity cabinet level. (Shims, in case you’ve led a sheltered life, are those slender, wedge-shaped pieces of pine or cedar that carpenters use to foster the illusion that your house is plumb and level.)
What caused the sag?
The way manufactured homes are built. They’re on a kind of trestle, a single beam that runs their length. In the center. To support the actual building, the beam has metal arms that reach out. But the structure isn’t supported around its full perimeter. It’s just suspended on those metal fingers.
Over time, the weight of the structure can cause the bowed middle that we were seeing. It didn’t help matters that the exterior of the Redman wasn’t thin sheets of aluminum. No, it was Hardie board, stuff that doesn’t rot (good news!) but is heavy because it’s basically concrete.
The Redman needed to be set right. I did that with a call to ProLevel Foundation Solutions and reached the owner, Jeremiah Brian. A few days later, Jeremiah and his helper, Jesus, dropped by. They pulled the skirting off in a few places and worked their way down the length of the Redman.
Jeremiah’s recommendation: new supports along the perimeter. Twenty-six of them to be precise. Thirteen on each side. Two days later he returned with Jesus and a trailer filled with cinder blocks. His wife and father came along to help. The work was done by late afternoon.
The sag has pretty much disappeared and I can now stomp around the floor.
A tree hid — and caused — another problem that we didn’t notice. Three trees stood near the Redman. One, a gigantic heritage live oak, dominated the scene. We love it, but it’s too big to hug. A peach tree in front needed to be trimmed back so you could walk up the stairs. So we trimmed it. Another tree, at a corner, was hardly noticed.
But the sewer pipe noticed it.
The long, white plastic pipe ran the length of the Redman with a downward tilt, cutting ground level as it emerged from the building. A handy cleanout stood up from the pipe and then it wanted to go underground to the septic tank about a hundred feet away.
But the tree wouldn’t let it.
Instead, as the tree had grown, a large root had crossed under the pipe and pushed it upward. Not a lot, but enough to impede the flow and violate the Prime Directive of Plumbing.
Those in the trade have a more colloquial way of expressing the Prime Directive, but I will state it more politely here:
Peristalsis Occurs and Gravity Prevails*
The only rule more important for plumbers is that you shouldn’t chew your fingernails.
That problem is, as they say, “a work in progress.” The tree is gone, but the stump remains. And the root remains — chopped at, and reduced — but still proudly supporting the sewer pipe.
This is going to become a kind of archeological dig, an excavation done slowly and with great care so as not to damage the precious artifact. In this case it’s a pipe no one wants to break.
*shit happens and it runs downhill
Related columns:
Scott Burns, “This Old Mobile Home: Raze or Save?” 1/12/2019
Scott Burns, “This Old Mobile Home: The Joy of Tear-Out,” 2/25/2019
This information is distributed for education purposes, and it is not to be construed as an offer, solicitation, recommendation, or endorsement of any particular security, product, or service.
Photo: Scott Burns/ Jeremiah Brian with his wife, father and helper Jesus at Found Oaks. (The obscuring finger is mine…)
(c) Scott Burns, 2019