Fascia separating from eaves (photos)

[Greg Booth]

The replies since my previous post have been thoughtful and show insight on the part of the folks responding--the very thing that I admire about the group on TIJ. Properly sited and installed, and maintained, HUD codes function well and are durable.

My entire career of 40+ years has been in the construction industry-medical/retail/residential. Owning a 55+ manufactured home community for the past 15 years, prompted me to "get in the business". Seeing the prime issues with home failures as installation related, I trained for, and subsequently operated an installation/service business for 10 years. While I am not blind to the weaknesses within the industry, I have also found quite a bit to admire about manufactured housing.

Because there are disreputable examples of HUD code homes, one should not castigate the entire concept/industry. I would also submit, at the risk of being not PC, there are huge differences demographically which affect the homes that we see in our daily travels. I inspect mfg. homes for owners, dealers, manufacturers and park owners/purchasers. I have actually seen my suggestions to factories, adopted to become part of their SOP!

I have blathered-on long enough. I simply feel, as I believe most TIJ responders do, that we serve our customers best by providing thoughtful, practical observations/suggestions. Meaningless negative commentary does nothing to help the client, foster industry improvement or demonstrate our level of professionalism.

[mgbinspect]

The replies since my previous post have been thoughtful and show insight on the part of the folks responding--the very thing that I admire about the group on TIJ. Properly sited and installed, and maintained, HUD codes function well and are durable.

My entire career of 40+ years has been in the construction industry-medical/retail/residential. Owning a 55+ manufactured home community for the past 15 years, prompted me to "get in the business". Seeing the prime issues with home failures as installation related, I trained for, and subsequently operated an installation/service business for 10 years. While I am not blind to the weaknesses within the industry, I have also found quite a bit to admire about manufactured housing.

Because there are disreputable examples of HUD code homes, one should not castigate the entire concept/industry. I would also submit, at the risk of being not PC, there are huge differences demographically which affect the homes that we see in our daily travels. I inspect mfg. homes for owners, dealers, manufacturers and park owners/purchasers. I have actually seen my suggestions to factories, adopted to become part of their SOP!

I have blathered-on long enough. I simply feel, as I believe most TIJ responders do, that we serve our customers best by providing thoughtful, practical observations/suggestions. Meaningless negative commentary does nothing to help the client, foster industry improvement or demonstrate our level of professionalism.

[:-thumbu]

As Randy Nav so eloquently put it a few months ago here, "Peace n love man.. Peace n love..."

The thing I like about most about TIJ is that reason and cooler heads always quickly prevail here - no big cat fights.

I know that what you say, Gregg, is the truth. I came to quickly realize during my years in disaster restoration work (late 80's and early 90's) that trying to restore a water damaged manufactured home was a real nightmare. Most of them had particle board as a sub-floor, which is worse than useless once it gets wet. It was pretty much impossible, since all of the structural and partition walls were on the particle board to bring one back to original condition.

I'm glad to constantly observe, since those days, real progress in the way they're made. In SOME ways, they're made BETTER than stick built homes. After all, 1. they must be built to survive a trip down the highway to the site and 2. like panelized construction, which I'm a fan of, it's nice when the workers are in a conditioned work environment and have equipment which allows them to cut every component to the perfect length and perfectly square.

I know I'm sticking my neck out here but, if I didn't have the time to be out on the job site to baby sit and harass every worker that put a hand on my new construction home, I'd be tempted to believe it much safer to go with a manufactured home for the sake of quality control. But, that's just me (what do you expect? I like my travel trailer too).

I don't see a lot to write home about regarding the workmanship of new home construction. Building science, yes... Workmanship, no. The custom Design/Build home builder I worked with used to go so far as to end prime and back prime every piece of exterior wood before installing it. We also had every major sub at the table with us during the design and pricing phases. We'd go to the local Parade of Homes and while everyone around us was mesmerized, we were more like horrified. I'm afraid I got spoiled. You just don't see that kind of attention to detail anymore.

I've seen some manufactured homes that I would consider owning.