Re-leveling

[Brian]

My wife and I purchased a Pioneer 28x64 home in July of 1999. It was set up on bare ground using concrete pads, concrete blocks and wood shims. As you can imagine the home has sunken badly. The ground under the home holds water and we don't want to spend the money to have it re-leveled until we can solve the water problem.
Does anyone know how we can get the water to drain from under the home?
How can we keep the concrete pads from sinking any more once we do get it re-leveled? Pouring a concrete slab or runners is not a financial option for us.
Any advice on this would be greatly appreciated.

[Roy Bonney]

The introduction of water into the soil, diminishes the soil bearing capacity. This then allows the home to sink into the ground. The first step is to do what is necessary to drain the water from beneath the home. A ditch around the home filled with gravel and perforated drain line, maybe a solution. Concrete footings under the piers will stabilize the home, but these items are throughly covered in the installation manual provided with the home. Read it over, and you will see some other alternatives to alleviated the problems.

[Brian]

Hi Roy,
I have already consulted the instruction manual and it is very vague. Our main limiting factor in all of this is money. We want to do what is right but at the lowest possible cost.

[Bill Fry]

The only sure way to keep this home from sinking is to have poured footers under the piers.Around $1500(+ or -) if done before the home is set up and more then likely more if done after .It would have to be reset which is an added expense plus the difficulty of pouring footers underneth
a preset house.If you plan on staying in the home for any length of time have this down,it will save you money and reduce structural problems in the long term.

[Mac]

The least expensive way to deal with it - may work in the longer term if you do this well:

You need to keep the water from getting under the home in the first place. Hopefully you have a low point where the water can go. If so, as mentioned above, you need to trench around the house and lay perforated plastic pipe. This is about $1 per foot, with a filter sock around it to keep it from clogging. Also, you'll need a dump truck load of drain rock (round rock about 2" in diameter) to cover the pipe with - some may say that's optional if you use the sock, I would do it.

It is good exercise, at least... done my share of it over the years.
Good luck!

[Brian]

Thanks to all for the advice. The lot is high on one side of the house and the water collects in a dip near the center. Hopefully we can figure something out soon!

If only we had looked at the lot after a good rain...

[Lloyd McCracken]

what is under pining and how is it done

[Roy Bonney]

Under pinning and skirting are the same thing. Different parts of the country use different terminology.

[Jim Talon]

The suggestion to trench around the home, lay drain pipe, and back fill with
gravel is a viable option, but it will only partly function properly. I have dealt with this problem already, and the solution that worked for me was to (1) build a
six inch (above the ground) retainer wall extending the full length of the mobilehome set back three feet from the edge of the home, and (2) then do the drainage ditch suggestion as indicated previously, placing same adjacent to the outside skirting of the home.

The reason for this is that the retaining wall will stop/divert the bulk of the
flow of water down the slope, which the drainage ditch will not handle by
itself, and the drainage ditch will accomodate that volume of water which
must be dealt with between the retaining wall and the skirting boundary of
the home.

It is a lot of HARD work, but it is going to be hard work regardless of which
approach is utilized, but if you are renting equipment (trencher, etc) you will
already have the equipment on hand, so do both jobs at the same time. Also,
the drainage ditch works better if you utilize landscape fabric for a liner.