Manufactured homes alert

[CindyOR]

Hi all - this is not a question, but an alert for anyone of you who might own a manufactured home with a forced air electric furnace.

Our MH is 10 years old and a Golden West model. We have been the only owners since the MH was installed on our property.

We had a lot of trouble with quality, getting repairs fixed and all that in the first year, had windows condense in the second through fifth year (but window manufacturer had gone bankrupt, along with Golden West, so no fixes on the windows - warrenty was worthless), but thought we had pretty much everything worked out by the end of the fifth year.

Our house is a super good sense home, and yet, in the winter, there were parts of the MH that never warmed up. The end of the house where the kids bedrooms are froze, along with the bathroom at that end. And the family room was always cold. My husband had checked the duct work underneath, and everything seemed to be operational.

Our furnace started to act up this fall big time. First it would work, then it would not come on at all. There was a couple of times when I would smell burning wire smell. The thermostat seemed to cycle on and off constantly at times, running the furnance for less than a minute each time.
We initially thought the thermostat was malfunctioning, so we replaced that with a programable one. Seemed to fix the problem for about two weeks.

New Years Day, the furnace stopped working. If you took the cover off, you could see it warming the coil, but no fan would come on. Yet the fan would work if you switched it to summer mode. We finally figured out it was the sequencer that had gone out.

We had a repair person come up to fix the furnace. He opened it up to get at where the sequencer was, and I heard a bunch of muttering. He finally called my attention to the furnance and here is also what was wrong, besides just the sequencer being out:

Only one coil of three was wired in to work
Only one area of the house was wired in to be heated
The fan was set to blow at the lowest possible power, so we really were not getting the 'forced air' heat we should have been getting.

But here's the biggy - our fuse wiring was attached so loosely that the repair man was surprised our house had not burned down. He said that he could see sparks as the wires were moved.

So I wanted to give a heads up to anyone out there with a MH to have your furnance professionally checked out to make sure all the wiring and parts are correctly hooked up. This was really scary for us to think that we just missed having our house burn up because someone didn't take the time initially to wire everything properly. And we've been freezing for years because they didn't do a thorough job.

We now have a fantastically warm house. Our programmable thermostat has it toasty at 65 when we come home, and that is warm enough for us. All our rooms are warm unless we have turned the floor registers to closed. The furnace runs like it should and is efficient.

Just wanted to save someone else from either freezing un-necessarily or burning down.

Cindy
Oregon

[nehimama]

What a nightmare! I'm glad it's all figured out, fixed, and working well.

NeHi

[Gercarson]

What a happy ending to a real horror story. I hope everything stays great for you after all that.

[texican]

Please don't take anything I say to be rude.... on second thought, I'll just edit out several paragraphs of all of my experiences with repairing mobile homes.

You're lucky it hasn't burnt down...

[DrippingSprings]

having grown up here in mobile home manufacturing country all you have to do is go apply to be a electrician at these places. kids straight out of school with no experience are wiring trailers all day long.

[DrippingSprings]

and i do mean high school not a tech school

[Coco]

was there just not too long ago a thread on value products and Quality products? I hope you bought insurance, but what I hear most can't insure a mobile home. Sorry you have to go though this though.

[mare]

this is interesting--i have a double wide and one end of the house is alot warmer than the other end. i have had my furnace worked on for various reasons three times in the last ten years. hmmmmmmmmmmm

[js2743]

what is a sequencer?

[Ken Scharabok]

Humm, the furnace should have come as an assembled unit. All the mobilehome manufacturer should have needed to do is set it in place and then connect it. Sounds like shoddy work at the furnace manufacturer - perhaps why they have gone out of business.

But, overall, mobilehomes are largely built with the absolutely cheapest material which will meet the specifications, by the absolutely cheapest labor available. For some reason doublewides seems to be better built than singlewides even from the same manufacturer.

Mine is insured through State Farm. Their only requirements were all steps had to have a secure hand rail and no supplemental heat, such as a kerocene unit or wood burning stove not installed by manufacturer.

Burned an old 80's singlewide a couple of days ago. Aluminum siding had been removed. From match to fully engulped was less than five minutes. After less than an hour pretty well all which remained were the tin room and frame.

[tyusclan]

Originally Posted by js2743

what is a sequencer?

It works similarly to a relay. The thermostat calls for heat, puts power to the coil of the sequencer, and it closes to turn on the heat strips.

[buffalocreek]

Back in '93 I bought a new double wide to put on my place. Two company guys stayed a few days to hook things together, etc. I overheard one of them talking to the other about how he was going to build his own house soon. "A real house, not one of these," he said. Hmmm.

Fast forward a couple months: Found many defects that had to be fixed under warranty, etc. Then one night I started hearing scratching noises coming from the bathroom.

Another night, I awoke suddenly, sure that something furry had just ran across my face and scampered away. The next morning, determined to find out what was going on, I removed a carpeted panel from the side of my "garden" tub and discovered that the entire space around the tub was packed with weeds and other trash! I pulled out all the rubbish and droppings etc., and discovered a hole in the bottom of the floor about the size of a football, that someone had forgotten to cover. And naturally, a family of packrats had discovered a warm nest for the winter, until their hideaway was discovered.

Never again.

[DayBird]

Originally Posted by buffalocreek

I removed a carpeted panel from the side of my "garden" tub and discovered that the entire space around the tub was packed with weeds and other trash! I pulled out all the rubbish and droppings etc., and discovered a hole in the bottom of the floor about the size of a football, that someone had forgotten to cover.

Same thing here, only not packrats but the rats had eaten through one of the water lines and water was spewing everywhere. The "skylight" above the tub leaks. I've tried putting silicone on the crack but it still drips into the tub when it rains. I'll be taking this out and covering over the hole with metal roofing soon.

[tiogacounty]

Originally Posted by DayBird

Same thing here, only not packrats but the rats had eaten through one of the water lines and water was spewing everywhere. The "skylight" above the tub leaks. I've tried putting silicone on the crack but it still drips into the tub when it rains. I'll be taking this out and covering over the hole with metal roofing soon.

If you want to fix it without going to the trouble of removing the skylight and patching the hole, there is a fix that will work. Clean off all the silicone caulk you possibly can. Get the area as clean as possible, then head for your local camper dealer. Ask for a tube of Dycor flowable sealant. This is what the RV industry uses for this application. Now recaulk. The trick is to think of this like you are applying pancake batter. It will flow and seal without needing to be tooled. Give it a shot, a tube is $7.00 and it works. Good luck.

[CindyOR]

This thread should probably be changed to just talk about the overall disappointment with manufactured homes.

We bought our triple wide for a couple of different reasons.
We were in a situation where the MH could be set up on our new property a long time before a stick built house could be built there due to a shortage of contractors at the time.
My husband is diabetic and the MH plan was well suited to future adaptations for a wheelchair.
In 1996 it seemed everyone was saying MH's were now being built to the same standards as stickbuilt - the only difference was that the MH was not built on site.

For those reasons, we went with the MH and the only disappointment has been with the set up crew and the repair crew. My Dad built houses when I was little, and when the MH crew started to repair a door jam frame that had settled with caulking, I had to stop them and explain how it would be done - and it would not be with caulking. When our cats were playing in our living room one morning - leaping around - we thought they were just being playful. No, they were trying to catch the rain drops coming from the roof peak. The roofer had 'forgotten' to put the cap on the top where two sides had joined together.
There are many more of these types of set up and repair stories to tell. Mainly, I did become pretty good at playing hard ball with them to get the repairs done right. I called in my own experts and by the time they were done, the MH place ended up paying for the cost of the experts (electricians , plumbers etc). If they couldn't come out and fix the problem right away (rain coming down from the peak to the carpet and staining the drywall), then I would just tell them to bring new carpet, padding, flooring, drywall etc with them when they could make it out, as they would be replacing it all by then. We had the 'big wigs' of the MH place come up from the corporate office to inspect ceilings and authorize fixes. Pretty much everything was done to our satisfaction except one ceiling fix.

The furnace I never even thought to inspect or have it inspected. I change the filters all the time, but the problems the repair guy found are being another little panel that I didn't ever open. The repair guys said that most electricians might not have spotted the problems - it would take a heating/cooling person. He said that it was really just laziness on the installers part. Nothing that couldn't have been done right the first time.

My husband was livid when he recovered from being sick enough for me to tell him what had happened. He wanted to go back to Golden West and tell them. I figured that would be a big waste of time. They didn't care 10 years ago to do it right, and I don't see them caring now. I may end up dropping a letter to them though, just on principle.

[Ed Norman]

We bought an 80s MH at a sheriff sale for $30. While tearing it apart, I opened the breaker box and tugged on the main incoming power cables where they went into the lugs, and were clamped in by set screws. The whole lug popped out of the breaker box, they had been held in with some kind of adhesive that had dried up. Add in the aluminum wiring, and it was a disaster awaiting.

[Ken Scharabok]

Every couple of years I'll hear scratching in the walls at night. I just go and buy two four-packs of mouse/rat killer, pull away the top of the skirting and toss them at eight places under the singlewide. Scratching goes away within a couple of days.

[MaryE]

Are you guys talking about mobile homes (trailers) or modular homes (built off site and reassembled onsite with a crane)? We had a modular home when we lived in NC, and never had any problems at all - it looked and felt just like a stick-built house.

[BobDFL]

Having lived in stick built and concrete block home most of my life, I was not ready for the differences in living in an MH.

We bought this place 2 years ago with a 1987 double-wide MH on it. After 1.5 years of nothing but one problem after another and the constant battle of keeping critters out from under it, we decided to build a new house on the property (which we hope will be done by March).

A prime example is that the heat hasn't worked the last 2 winters (luckily cold were I am is going down to freezing) and having to have the A/C fixed 5 times (with 95 degrees and 95% humidity A/C is more important than heat). We've also found that the place leaked (air wise) like a sieve. I've spent more time and money just trying to seal the place up. The MH is 1600 sqft and costs me an average of $350 a month in electric to run. The new house which will be 2900 sqft including the MIL house will only cost me $125 month based on the energy calcs.

I have neighbors who have never had a problem with their MH's but I wouldn't own another one here in FL. Just the fact that they have us evacuate all MH's when a hurricane is coming is enough to scare the DW and kids (the new house is being built to be hurricane resistant and could be used as a neighborhood shelter is needed).

[Ken Scharabok]

Both mobilehomes and manufactured homes are factory built. Difference is mobilehomes are delivered with axels and wheels under them. Manufactured homes are delivered on a trailer and lifted into place with a crane. From what I have seen manufactured homes are built to a higher standard than mobilehomes.