Around here even the house isn't exempt from issues and flaws and gremlins. The cars have their own group of issues that we have to deal with often but the house, being a trailer house, or mobile home for those who want the name to sound less "redneck", has its own group of issues that regular houses don't. First, because this house is a trailer house, its construction is regulated under a different set of rules compared to regular houses. It's for all intents, under the same classification as camper trailers and RV's. That means its construction is more lax compared to a house. You don't have the same level of building codes to go by, or so it seems. Instead of the walls being studs with plywood on the inside and whatever drywall or paneling to make for the skin, the inside is just plain 1/4" drywall tacked to the studs. On the outside instead of plywood and a protective skin like brick or siding, its just simple corrugated metal attached to the outside of the studded wall. Basically the walls are a thin sandwich of sheet metal, studs with insulation and thin drywall. The R value of the house can't be as good as a standard house due to this light construction, let alone the sturdiness of the house with this light construction. And here lies the problem. Because of this light construction, it doesn't take long before things start to degrade to the point where the house needs attention. Because its just sheet metal tacked to the studs with nothing really sealing things well, it doesn't take long before shit shifts enough to allow for gaps in the sheet metal that will allow for water to seep through and start collecting in spots where it can cause damage. Since we have window AC units, we had to take extra measures to seal the windows. The side covers had to be secured in place with wood screws or in the case of one unit, boards made to cover the openings on either side of the AC unit, On top of that caulking had to be applied liberally to seal the windows. Now because the windows are of lightweight construction, the weight of the AC units on the base of the window frames is causing some distortion, enough so that we have to constantly apply more caulk to reseal the damn things. If you haven't figured this out already, these are points of leakage. When it rains heavily, it really leaks at times. Because of this random leakage that happens which prompts me to reseal everything, one spot has become rather shitty as far as decay is concerned. One spot in particular that I've had a problem with is in the living room. It seems like no matter how much I seal the damned window it still leaks some with a heavy rain. This has caused the wood right under the window to decay as well as the drywall get weak. Another flaw with trailer houses is the outlets that are used. To keep things cheap, builders use an outlet that is self contained in its own box, with Romex cable running into the box and the wires locked in place. The outside of the outlet has tabs that turn outwards via screws to hold the whole box in place in the hole cut into the drywall. This all seems fine until something like the problem I have shows up. When the drywall got weak, the outlet no longer stayed in place and ended up needing to be pulled out from the wall. Later on I ended up just removing a large chunk of the bad drywall to expose the studs. My plan was to get a blue plastic outlet box from Lowes and install a regular outlet in place after securing the outlet box right to one of the studs. In the process of doing this, I also discovered that the floor right under the window was rotted over an area about 2ft x 1ft. That and the stud that went under the middle of the window was also rotted enough that I could pull it free. The bottom 2x4 of the stud wall was also rotted for about 2ft under the window. I ended up having to just cut out that section of 2x4 and a section of the floor. Luckily the supporting floor joists, which look like 2x10 boards, were still pretty good. Well I didn't waste time getting the outlet issue resolved as I didn't want a loose outlet flopping around. I secured the outlet box to the stud and installed the two Romex cables through the knockouts in the sides of the box and attached them to the outlet and secured everything in place, including an outlet cover. With the outlet issue out of the way I turned my attention to the floor. In order to remedy this problem I would have to cut and secure extra pieces of 2x4's to the sides of the floor joists to create a spot where the pieces of plywood that will serve as patches can evenly meet with the edge of the original floor boards. I made a U shaped section of 2x4's that provided the cross piece linking the floor joists to provide that extra support needed for the plywood patches. I managed to put a patch down for starters but I will have to do some extra patching where the studded wall 2x4's had rotted. I won't lie, all of this patching will look ugly as hell since it really is some bootleg work that is being done. There's really no good way to fix shit like this, the only solace I can take from this is the idea that it will all be covered up with paneling in place of raw drywall and I'll install laminated flooring on top of the plywood flooring so to the untrained eye they'll never know of the fuckery that exists underneath. Of course I do plan on fixing this issue with the window AC units by installing some of those new wall AC units that only require a couple of small holes for the refrigerant hoses to run through the wall to the evaporator which is mounted on the wall inside the house while the compressor unit mounts outside and hooks to standard 110vac or 220vac power. Such an AC unit would be much easier to set up, freeing up the windows and being easier to seal with standard caulk. These units are reasonably cheap so I plan on getting a couple to install to replace the window units in the house and hopefully stop the leakage issue that exists around the installation of the window AC units. Only time will tell.
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