Mobile homes

Oak Point, Waterview Village, Southmeadow Village, Cranberry Village, Town & Country Estates, Matfield Woods, High Pond Estates, you name them we’ve worked in these communities.
Modular, Mobile Homes and Trailers are built similar to, but different than your traditional stick built house. And almost all are built out of state and then shipped to Massachusetts.

The problem with this is that many are built to different standards that may or may not meet the codes here in Massachusetts.

The biggest issue we have encountered from all our work on mobile homes and trailers, is that the roofing assembly is not installed correctly and does not meet Massachusetts roofing code.

These roofs are low pitch, which require entire coverage of Ice and Water Shield, but what we have found is that almost all have only 3′ of Ice and Water Shield if any. Come winter when ice dams form the water backs up and causes significant interior damage.

The below photo is a prime example of what we normally find on these homes. No Ice and Water shield or even paper whatsoever. By code anything between a 2 and 4 pitch, MUST be fully covered with Ice and Water Shield, which you can see in the second photo.

From our experience we have seen many other roofers only install 6′ of Ice and Water shield. Either they do not fully understand the building code requirements or more likely trying to save money at your expense as the Ice and Water shield is the most expensive component of any roof job!

Properly Installed Ice & Water Shield

The below roof is a 2.8 pitch, which by code requires full coverage of Ice and Water Shield. Make sure your roof is installed correctly!

In every instance where we had to remove and replace siding, we found that NO underlayment such as Tyvek, which is used as a moisture barrier was ever installed by the manufacturer. (see photo below)

Most of the skylights installed by mobile home manufacturers tend to be non-insulated bubble skylights. These are made of a thin polycarbonate plastic, offer no insulation whatsoever, and eventually crack and leak. (see below photo)

Since almost every mobile home roof is low in pitch, a Velux Curb mounted skylight, which lifts the skylight up off the roof deck, is required.

Most trailers have 2×3 framing instead of the traditional 2×4 framing. One must be aware of this when installing new doors and windows with extension jambs so that they can be installed properly. We must also take into account the weight of Bay windows for example.

In the below photo it shows a trailer with an old Bay window. From the inside you could easily see that due to the weight it had sagged almost 2″ from it’s original position! The 2×3 framing was insufficient to support a window of such large size.

We removed the old heavy bay and installed a flush mount mulled unit with 2 Double Hung windows and a central Picture Window.