Anyone ever have a Family in a Single Wide Trailer

I am afraid there are strict (or more strict) codes when you plan to live in a residence. I mean a permit for a pole barn is one thing...but it might be an act of congress to get a pole barn/temp living quarters past the inspector.

I am not positive though as I cannot find any real specific info on zoning and buidling laws for my area. I might call the county commisions office tomorrow.

We lived in an 8' X 40' trailer with an added-on room (bedroom) for a year or so with three small children. We slept in a tent in the yard sometimes during the summer because we could kill all the mosquitoes in the tent, but couldn't get all of them in the house -- and the tent cooled off quicker. But other than that it was fine. It was an old place, and we gutted it and re-did the inside.

I met a family one time who lived on the road, following the husband's work, with four children. They had a travel trailer and a van; some of them slept in the trailer, some in the van.

Kathleen

Folks in North Idaho have done this for years.

Depends on where you live, but it's a great way to go. Folks up here also live in Pole Barn houses (never paint, never replace the roof, spend a little more on the windows for a good "look" ) and it's also a great way to go.

Camille

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Camille
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We has 7 kids in a 14'x70' for over two years. We built a couple of rooms on after a while. It is a challenge, but really not too bad. Then we graduated to the uptown redneck and hooked two trailers together for a couple of years. When we bought our house it was like a mansion. After we built on we really felt like royalty.
Even so, lived here while we were fixing things up sleeping on mattresses in the kitchen floor, all 9 of us. So actually maybe the trailer was pretty roomy

I rented a single wide for a year or so. I was in my teens and had 4 roommates plus people who spent the night or crashed there for a few days. It was definitely crowded. We spent a lot of time outside on a deck but in the winter it could feel like you were tripping over people. It was difficult since privacy was hard to come by. Even though I had the largest (comparatively speaking) bedroom in the place the walls were so thin you hear everything going on in the other rooms.

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I live in a single wide....When we moved in--no storage but we added a pantry and otehr hidy holes to store things. We have a huge living room and a large bathroom and two bedrooms. Wish we had a second bathroom sometimes LOL but other then that, I like not having a lot of junk around. Keep things a bit mroe simple.

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It's very cozy! We did it for years, then moved to an even smaller log cabin. I was born in a tiny travel travel (well, in a hospital) & my mom, dad, & aunt lived there for about a year before I was born. Then Daddy built a large garage which 5 of lived in for about 7 years. My happiest childhood memories are of those years.

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Bonnie
Opportunity Farm
Northeast Washington

"While we have the opportunity, let us do good to all." Galatians 6:10

I have seen people put up a large garage or pole building and put their travel trailer in the garage / building and live in that. That might be a way around the building codes.

We live in one now and have for over 20 yrs!
Right now we have 2adults, and 2 kids, 8 and 10.
Our place is 60X14.
We do have a basement though, so that tales care of storage.
Outbuildings too help with storage. Thats what we did before this place. Our other one didnt have a basement, so outbuildings did the job of storage.

Its no big deal. No different than a small house.
People can make due without large spaces.
We would never want to live in some big house.
Just more to clean and a waste of space to us.
Plus big fat houses also means more taxes and other expenses. Yuk.

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My site.

We live in a 16 X 90. As Ken said, it's only about 85 feet long. We have a huge bedroom at one of the house with a really nice bathroom. It has a standalone shower, toilet, double bowl sink and jetted whirlpool tub. The boys have a really big bedroom at the other end of the trailer with a bay window. They sleep on bunk beds. There is a third bedroom that will be the new babies room. They have a nice bathroom in the middle. We bought it used that someone traded in on a double wide. It's now only 6 years old. It was less than $9,000 and we paid $4,000 down three years ago and they would only finance the balance for 15 years. We almost don't have a monthly house payment. Our cable bill is more than what we pay for the trailer.

Put a really nice big deck on the front door and a little room off the back door (it's usually near the kitchen) and put your washer/dryer and freezer out there so you can use the laundry space inside the house for storage. Ours has become a really nice walk-in closet. There is wasted space above the water heater that I'm soon to put shelving above. Academy Sports sells some really heavy duty storage bins that we've filled with things that we want to keep but will not be damaged by heat or humidity and have slid them under the trailer. Our bed is up on risers and we have extra blankets and linens hidden under there. The kitchen cabinet is pretty poor but the wire shelves that you can buy to stack things on inside the cabinet have been a life saver.

The best thing you can do is plumb in a pressure regulator to your main water supply line before it attaches to any of the plumbing of the trailer. Ask me why that's important. The flex pipe joints they use will pop if the city increases the pressure in any way.

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I'm back...for now.

We have 5 adults ages 18-42 and 4 dogs,2 of which are german shepards over 100 lbs each,2 cage birds and a hampster in a 16x80.Thats sitting on a one acrea lot with a 16x20 storage shed,3chicken pens which have had over 100 chickens in each at one time,2 more german shepards in the yard and rabbits and ducks and getting 2 goats soon.It's kinda crowded,but you can do it.

WOW 9k, Thanks a good deal. I think we have decided on getting the single wide. Do they tie these down for bad weather or what. I will look into the regulator...sounds like some good advice. Good advice on the washer and dryer outside....I am going to try and find dome pics of someone who has done this for ideas....unless you have a few.
thanks alot. ...Hey! Your a fellow Alabamian! :banana02:

Where in Alabama are you? On Craigslist last week, there was a free 1986 singlewide in Gadsden but it had already been spoken for when I called for my sister. Before we moved here, we were given a singlewide for free. We had to have it moved to a spot on some property my mom owns. The frame broke while moving it but it was jacked up and put on blocks and tied down and we lived in it for five years. My younger brother and his younger wife now lives in it.

A family I know recently paid the fire dept to have one burned on a property they've recently bought not knowing that people would love to be given a trailer to live in.

We bought our current home from Clayton Homes in Moody. Luv Homes in Anniston always has some older trade ins. There were several there that we liked and could afford but my wife wanted this jetted tub that she's only used twice and now houses our pet reptile.

Repos are going to cost more because they need to recoup the costs left on the mortgage. Trade ins cost less because like a used car, there is little equity in a singlewide. Check the Sunday copy of the Birmingham News, or whatever paper they have in Montgomery, Huntsville or Mobile, depending on where you live. There are always listings for trailers. There's currently one in the little freebie B'ham news insert today for a singlewide on Logan Martin lake for $12,000. It comes with porches and storage buildings but it's on a leased waterfront lot. I don't know about the lease but maybe you could pay the $1,000 to have it moved.

When you buy the trailer from a dealership, it will almost always come with a setup package which includes delivery, jacking the trailer up and putting it on blocks and tying it down with augers to help hold it down to the ground. We were responsible for connecting the power and water and the drains to the sewer. When we had all that done, we called the dealership and they sent a guy out and he put vinyl skirting around the underneath.

You'll have either 1/2" or hopefully 3/4" pipe coming from the water meter. Bury the water line underground until you get under the house. Put the regulator under the house and then put a brass cut off between the regulator and the house. Wrap all of this in heavy pipe insulation and cover it with duct tape.

Singlewides almost always come with a cheap metal roof. Go ahead and buy a five gallon bucket of the white elasto roof paint and cover everthing using an old broom, old mop or roller. Slop down alot around any vents that come up out of the roof. If you have a skylight anywhere in the house, slop down alot around that too. I painted right over the top of the one over her jetted tub. It cuts down on the orange glow in our bedroom that came in from our outdoor safety lamp. This white paint will help to waterproof everything and will also help to reflect the heat in the summer.

These things are cheap housing. They only have 4inch thick walls. There's metal sheeting on the outside. Somekind of funny 3inch studs with minimal insulation and either panelling or 1/2" vinyl coated sheetrock on the inside. You'll need to help keep out the heat with shade during the summer. There was a very nice thread earlier this year on how to help keep your singlewide cooler in the summer. Grow a big trellis of gourds or cucumbers on the West facing side of the trailer.

In the winter, you can use just about anything layed on top of the floor vents to help close off vents to bathrooms or unused rooms to help push more hot air into the rooms you do use.

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I'm back...for now.

Not me, but my step-son with his extended family does (live in a long single-wide).

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Thanks for everything

You might go around to mobilehome lots in your area and speak with the manager. Tell them what you are looking for and ask they give your contact point to someone replacing one which needs to be moved off their lot before the new one can be placed. It will cost the owner to have the old one hauled off so they could well give it to you for doing so. They will know mobilehome movers.

We went around looking and it seemed the Mobile home lot dealers are smoking crack . Anything less than 20k looked like the trailer that the above said "crack" might have been sold from........... I never new shag carpet could be put on walls.!

Call me stupid but when I bought my bare land I found a free for the moving 12'x 60' mobile home which I quickly took advantage of. Then a few years later found a 14'x80' for $1000.00 so I have what Amounts to A five bed room mobile home with 3 1/2 baths for less then $3000.00 leave for plenty of mortgage dollars to save for a house.

We rented one for a while: biggest problem we had is that children--then 2 and 3 year old boys--were really, really hard on it. It wasn't as sturdy as a real house. Walls dented, trim came off, stuff like that. It was like the thing was built out of cardboard, the boys were just driving their toy cars and playing, not trying to break things. I think it was a '98 or '99. It also didn't have light fixtures, but that was easy enough to fix: I think there was some sort of floor lamp fad going on or something.
If you put it up on blocks you can store stuff that's weather/animal proof underneath, which helps with the storage issue.

Well I just read your in AL, too bad, my daughter has a SW 3 bd 2 full baths for sale in Central Virginia. For 5500, and I think you could get it cheaper.
But I dont think it would move all the way to AL.

Alice in Virginia

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