*Warning - Trailer Park Language*
Posted on 10/27/2014 3:02:31 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
There is more rigid piping in them than you know. The PEX is a cheaper installed product, and is why they use it.
Not if you have the earthquake codes like in Washington state. Put a double wide on a two acre lot in Goldbar, WA. and followed all the new codes. Two years latter I sold it at a $80,000 profit. Went through inspection with no problem and the new owner got a loan with no problem. I really don’t see what all the fuss is about.
And some pre-fabricated home can be quite luxurious, modern and roomy and ingeniously designed. Some pre-fabricated home are “stick” built and rather traditionally built and designed and some built with even more sturdy metal framing, but since the manufacturing or building of the sections take place in a climate controlled factory, in some factories with precision automation and with many the basic module components the same or very similar for many of the finished end designs, they can be built more quickly and more efficiently and without bad weather delays and at a lower overall per sq. ft. cost.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ze9cSRznI4Q
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=inyjfMkq_VA
FWIW, many, many years ago my uncle purchased a lot two blocks off the beach in the Surf City area of Long Beach Island New Jersey when land was still pretty cheap. In the late 1970’s (1979 IIRC) he decided to finally build on the lot, a vacation home and a home for his my aunt’s later retirement years. He decided to go with a pre-fabricated home as conventional construction costs on the island were quite high even back then. He had the home delivered on several tractor trailers and the modules erected on pilings as to protect it from flooding and at least moderate storm surges and secured together. My father who was a master carpenter came down for a week after the pre-fabricated home was delivered, placed on the pilings and the modules secured in order to finish some of the interior work like installing the interior moldings, hanging some interior doors, and a very minimal amount of drywall left, and some interior painting, and overseeing the final electrical and plumbing connections, etc. but the home was basically complete on delivery.
I spent many weekends during the summer over the years at that home and if I didn’t know better, I would have never guessed it was a factory built home.
When my uncle finally did retire and sold his house in NY, while he wanted to retire to the beach house, his wife, my aunt balked because the house, while a nice size – three bedroom and a large open living, dining and kitchen area, it wouldn’t fit all the furniture she had collected over the years, mostly her big dining room and bedroom set from their main house and he sold it and they purchased a small home but one bigger than the beach house in a retirement community (something he later told me he regretted doing). And when he sold it back around 2000, he sold it for about 9 times the cost of the original land purchase plus the original cost of the home.
And when my niece last visited LBI, not long after Hurricane Sandy, that house was still standing and with no visible damage. The new owner had closed in part of the lower level (under the pilings) to make a garage and an enclosed entrance area, but otherwise the pictures she sent me the house looked just the same as I remembered.
*Warning - Trailer Park Language*
IT used to be that you cold locate a trailer on a lot and put it on piers, skirt it and you were good to go.
These days the require a concrete slab the size of the unit.
The reason was that piers and skirted didn’t sufficiently improve the property (i.e. put the wheels back on it and drag it off and the land is essentially unimproved) so the taxes never went up sufficiently for the municipality
I have this problem with a pole barn (48’ X 64”) that I put up on my own land... I desperately want a concrete floor, but have compacted crushed stone because the concrete improves the lot too much to justify the increase in taxes. (take the pole barn down and the land is unimproved). With the floor there, the building is deemed permanent and the taxes triple.
***they can be real nice at the upper end.***
And a dump at the lower end. I lived in one 40 years ago and thought I would freeze that winter! Then I found the trailer I was in was made for Southern Texas, and not insulated for Northern New Mexico!
The walls consisted of one sheet of aluminum, one sheet of 1 inch thick fiberglass, one sheet of paneling. Nothing to keep the wind out and the wind did blow! Pipes froze, heater did not work and when it did it could not overcome the cold coming in around the paneling.
Haven’t lived in one since.
That’s what a lot of people on the Gulf Coast do.
Another name for Trailer park =TORNADO MAGNET.
There are different “zones” they are built to and as you say, you were in the wrong kind. The ones built for North Dakota are very different than the South Florida models.
Carlyle Group (probably the most politically well connected private equity boys with HQ in Wash DC) is buying trailer parks.
That tells you how the smart money views the medium term future of America.
There was a company that built trailer houses just north of here in Missouri. They were junk. One day a big ice storm came through and collapsed the factory roofs.
They were never rebuilt.
I have been told that a lot of people are having problems with PEX because to mice, the tubing tastes like cheese.
I lived in one for 10 years. Enjoyed my neighbors very much. Of course, we were very fortunate to have excellent park management.
All new codes and CMU blocks are not part of the new code. The park you are talking about was a “o” property line park and it worked like a apartment building. Witnessed a 65 unit apartment burn to the ground because of a grill on a wood deck.
There are many ways to secure a MH or trailer to a foundation. Some are no better than no tie down at all. But the most secure I have seen (and installed) was one done to FHA loan standard (I think that was the standard, one of the gov;t agencies) Anyway, it looked like a solid spiderweb of cross bracing and tie downs under there. A dog couldn’t run through it very easily. If an earthquake knocked it off, it would have been the last structure in the area to fail, stick builts would have long since failed.
We had a guy pull in a trailer house just about 100 yards from our home. It was a mess, real trailer trash! No water, no gas, no sewer.
One day the cops raided it and found the biggest meth lab in the county. They also found that for a restroom, they had cut a hole in a large chair and pooped through it onto the floor. The ground was so contaminated that I saw a cleanup crew scooping up the dirt and putting it in big blue barrels for disposal.
It is all gone now and looks much better.
The trailer house itself was then partially dismantled, but was still so contaminated that they abandoned it for about five years before scrappers got rid of the rest.
Rodent damage?
***They are literally money-printing machines.***
I knew a man who put three in a mile from us. One day I went by and noticed they all were empty, so I stopped to look around.
One tenant had used the other two trailer houses as targets as they were completely full of bullet holes. I later went by and saw him in the front yard shooting at a tree with an SKS. A few weeks later the tree was shot so much it fell over. This was a thick tree.
The tenant-poacher in now in prison on drug charges.
I knew a woman who also had several trailers on her farm over in Oklahoma. She had to get rid of all of them as the tenants stole everything that was not tied down and turned the trailers into meth labs.
For some reason trailers do not attract decent renters.
I do know that mice will chew the plastic coating on data cabling wire, so I am not surprised some might go after PEX.
It is in a lot of houses, and most folks never have anhy problem, It is just a personal preference for me.
Like I will not put an elect wire anywhere in the house smaller than 12 gauge , but most houses are fine with most circuits on 14 gauge.
You would be surprised how many South Texas trailers managed to slip into Northern New Mexico! Ever been to Taos in winter?
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