trailer house wall construction

[SDE]

She has at least four areas in her house where there is a hole in the floor where water has gotten in thru the wall and caused the floor to rot. I removed a piece of sheet rock and you can see light at the top of the siding. The siding is not flat and stops about six inches from the top of the wall. Then there is horizontal trim piece that fits up under the drip edge and then down over the top of the siding. The trim piece is flat, and so there are gaps because the siding isn't flat. Is this a form of venting or a bad design? With the sheet rock off the wall, the siding is collecting a lot of condensation. If we put the insulation back in and close it up will the condensation problem go away?
TY
SDE

 

[Stephen Newell]

Can you post a picture. It's difficult to visualize the problem. There certainly shouldn't be any gaps in the siding. If you have removed the rock it sounds like you should be able to make a good fix.

 

[Bret4207]

You need to seal up the outside before trying to fix the inside. You also need to try to get the wet stuff out before sealing.

 

[Pete in Holland MI]

The mobile home I lived in 30 years ago had aluminum siding panels that over lapped each other. They were designed to allow ventilation (and at on time a hive of bees) into the wall cavity looking up into the siding, but everything was overlapped to allow the rain to shed properly.

Was a panel taken off at one time and not properly re-installed ?

 

[old]

Mobile homes are in fact built so the outer sheet metal; can breath so condensation does evaporate off. But if thing get bent or twisted they can also leak plus in high winds and heavy rain they can leak. Back in 1995 I works for a company that hauled mobile homes all over the U.S.A. out of the factory in Boonville MO so I got to see a lot of how they where built.

 

[kcm.MN]

We lost our home to electrical fire just after getting married. Contractors were busy with a local building boom, so we ended up buying what was supposed to be about the top-of-the-line double wide manufactured home (fancy name for 'mobile home'). Ended up being that this house never should have been allowed to leave the factory lot!! Nails going through electrical wiring, wiring hooked up backwards, leaky plumbing.....one end of the house was even 1 1/2" taller than the other half where they joined together. Figure THAT one out!! :shock:

By the time all the factory re-work was done that they would do, paperwork was clean and "officially", that house was basically a work of art, but we were lucky to escape the mess -- at a HUGE loss!! Much of the steel structure under the kitchen didn't even exist anymore. There was always one spot of the roof (about 12' diameter) where snow always melted, though no vents in that area, and no HVAC lines, as they went under the building. It was a mess!

 

[SDE]

I will be at her house tomorrow night. I will try to remember to take some pictures, but what it amounts to is if you took a piece of corrugated steel and then put a second piece cross wise, you would have gaps, because they can not lay flat.
TY
SDE

 

[Stephen Newell]

On corrugated tin they have a rubber weather strip that matches the shape of the metal. They have one that fits the inside and another that fits the outside. I wonder if the trailer had a similar strip that either rotted away or insects chewed it up. If that is the case you would have to tract down the maker of the metal and see if a weather strip is still available. If not you might have to resort to using great stuff expansion foam.

 

[da.bees]

I know exactly what you are talking about. I've owned single wides as rentals and felt sorry for people having to pay to heat and cool the great outdoors. The gap you describe was on all the one's with metal sideing and the only leak I had was caused by the j channel at the junction you are speaking of. If yours is flat roof,look for leaks where roof roll's over and is stapled. While you are looking,have pliers, a cordless screwdriver and #6 galvanized pan heads ready to replace staples that have backed out. If you see a staple backed out any at all,pull it and drive a screw in both holes. When you notice how staples are driven through roof metal,it become's obvious water will seep around staple legs,rust staple,rot wood and alow roof to blow off. As soon as you stop warm moist air from contacting cold metal siding,condensation will stop. If you have sheetrock off above rotted floor and can't tell where water is getting behind siding,run water on roof letting it run over the edge while watching inside. When you find one place you can probably find the others without removing sheetrock.

 

[D beatty]

When we got married we bought a mobile home. The older mobile were hard to repair because a lot of the stuff in them was made just for mobile homes and you couldn't find stuff in hardware store that would work. Ours didn't heat bad but we did skirt and insulate the skirting on our home and sealed all opening, cracks, and around pipes. There is a lot of upkeep to keep one in good shape.

 

[jim buford]

About 20 years ago I moved from our conventional home in town to our farm and since the farm house now belonged to my daughter we bought a double wide. Have added lot onto it but we had a problem because of the short overhang water had enough surface tension to back up under the shingles and rot the decking and come down inside the wall and rot the floor. This is a common problem and many times not confined to double wides. The insurance industry calls this ice dams and is covered by HO but not if allowed to continue over long period of time. I finally put in ice and water shield to prevent that but still have some floor and wall repairs to do once I recover some from recent illness. I got 28x80 (includes tongue), underpinning, setup, sewer system and all for 45k then but if had it to do over would have built a conventional home.