The Manufactured Housing Forums

We would like to put a room addition on to the back of our home. We have a Hart home built in 1998 sitting on our own land (18 acres). The room we are considering adding would be like a great room & want it built out of log. We also have thought about adding wood siding to the home to give it a log home look. Wondering if this would be possible or if it would cause some type of problems? Also our home is on a perm. foundation & of course if adding a room on it would be built on a perm foundation, will this change the way the home is classified or taxed?

When selling a MF HUD home you may run into problems if you make structural changes to it.Even though the addition it is done correctly and to local code lendors sometimes throw out the red flag as it no longer meets HUD code.Food for thought if you may sell ot done the road.

What about just refinancing it? Would that also cause problems?

When placing an addition onto a manufactured home can affect the performance of the home. You may construct the addition, however, try to make the addition self supportive. Do not attempt to make the home carry the addtional load. Manufactured homes are built to the minimum and cannot carry the extra loads. Also, If any damage or performance problems are caused by the addition, the manufacturer cannot be held responsible.

It has nothing to do with being built to the minimum! There is no building on the face of the earth built to carry unanticipated loads. No matter what a building is made of or who built it, if it sustains unanticipated loads it is just dumb luck.

Well, not really .I can build a second floor addition on a 2 by 4 16" oc stick built house thats on a slab or conventional l foundation..Theres no way I could do that on a MF home.Why?because it has no reduncy in the structure.Its built to handle its own load and a the wind,snow code its in and thats about it.So in other words most MF homes are built to minimun standards.

You hope you can. Any building designed by an engineer is designed for a specific load. Old buildings designed by builders are sometimes overbuilt and sometimes under built. That is why old houses have saggy floors and doors that bind.

Doors that are out of plumb and sagging floors are almost always caused by foundations or parts of them failingThe only reason I bring that up is because almost all problems in MF homes stem from bad sets(ie founfation planning)Any building is going to fail if its built on a bad foundation.

Exactly. The point is site built is not superior. Some are, and some are not. Any good builder making an addition to any kind of house either makes it self supporting or has an engineer determine what kinds of loads the building will sustain. And that is what hud requires. The manufacturer says self supporting because they don't want to be responsible for what someons else does to the home, just like any site builder. I guarantee that an addition imposing loads on the house will void the warrantee you get from the likes of Pulte, Centex or David Weekly.

FROM: Inman News http://www.topproducer.com/news/42962.html


Manufactured home in Port Charlotte, Fla., survived Hurricane Charley with little damage earlier this month. (Photo courtesy of The Partnership for Advancing Technology in Housing)

One week before Hurricane Charley slammed into Florida's Gulf Coast, three homeless families in Port Charlotte moved into new manufactured homes built with the latest technologies to resist storm damage. With the exception of minor roof damage in two of homes caused by falling trees, all three homes survived Charley intact while others homes in the neighborhood were seriously damaged, the Department of Housing and Urban Development announced today.

HUD Assistant Secretaries Dennis Shea and John C.Weicher today joined representatives from the National Association of Home Builders and the Manufactured Housing Institute to showcase the home at 3405 Douglas Road in Port Charlotte as an example of how advanced building technologies can create safer, more durable and energy-efficient housing.

"Today we see the proof that HUD's new construction standards for manufactured housing are creating better and safer homes," Shea said. "Working closely with our industry partners, we can say that properly installed manufactured housing is as safe and storm resistant as any other new home."

Following Hurricane Andrew in 1994, HUD developed new construction standards to significantly increase the wind resistance and structural integrity of manufactured homes. Today, these new standards along with new technologies such as "structural insulated panels" and "fiber cement sheathing" aim to improve the wind and impact resistance of manufactured housing.

Meanwhile, HUD continues to study the performance of newly installed manufactured homes in real-world conditions. Homes fitted with impact-resistant windows, reinforced garage doors and hurricane shutters weathered the recent storms particularly well, HUD reported. In addition, the Department is studying how to better improve the performance of roofs. Over the next few years, HUD will study new roof systems in an effort to make roofing more disaster resistant, durable and energy efficient.

HUD is a federal agency that implements housing policy.