Mobile Home Metal Roofs: Not Fondly Remembered
Albert Hammond said it himself: “It never rains in Southern California.” However, the lyrics to this song are somewhat misleading because it does, in fact, rain in Southern California — just not very often. In the few times that it does rain, the good people in this part of the country have a difficult time coping with this phenomenon. Automobile drivers have little experience navigating rain slick streets and freeways resulting in a multitude of traffic jams and lots of accidents. Streets are flooded due to lack of drainage and small urban streams overflow. Homeowners seem to forget that it does sometimes rain, but never consider preparing for such an unusual event as rain, which results in home roof and window leaks. I, myself, was amongst those that failed to prepare for rain.
In the early 1970s I was employed as a sales manager for a mobile home factory in Long Beach, California. The company announced that they were closing this plant and I would become unemployed. The production manager for the company approached one day and advised that he was putting a crew together of factory employees and had plans to become a mobile home installer and asked me to become his partner. This did not appeal to me in the least, as I did not have much mechanical knowledge and it sounded like a lot of physical work. In addition, I considered myself a salesperson not a setup man, and my ultimate goal was to become a mobile home dealer. After expressing this, we came to the perfect solution (and combination): I would sell the mobile homes and he would install them. It wasn’t long after, however, that we discovered that we didn’t know much about installing a mobile home.
I opened my first mobile home dealership in Orange County, California, in February 1976. Initially, I was not only the owner, but also the only salesman, and the customer service coordinator because of limited finances. Business was fantastic! I was selling and delivering 15 to 20 new mobile homes per month to happy home buyers. My buddy who owned the set-up company was installing the homes I sold, as well as installing mobile homes for my competitors.
I took great pride in providing good customer service and, as a result, I was selling a lot of mobile homes because of customer referrals. Almost all of the homes sold that first year were double wides with metal roofs. It seemed the only customer complaints were “metal roof rumblings” during the periodic Santa Ana winds.
(As a teenager my family lived in the south and was always curious when I would see a mobile home with the wheels and tires removed and stored on the roofs of mobile homes. I later learned that the tires were placed on the roof to prevent roof rumble).
The factory would install the sheet metal roofs with one continuous sheet of metal that was attached to the perimeter of the roof only. When the wind would blow downward on the roof it would produce a loud rumble, much like the sound of thunder, which the mobile homeowner found extremely disturbing. The factory warranty did not cover “roof rumble,” so with much determination, i set out to have the rumble problem corrected by hiring someone to screw the metal roof to the home rafters. It went well, and as a result, customers were very appreciative of my attention to the problem.
After almost a year past without any rain, it started to rain and rain for days and nights. My, heretofore, happy customers began to call to report that their roofs were leaking. It seemed as though every one of the homes I sold for that first year were leaking. The leaks were not only leaking as a result of the screws installed to prevent roof rumble, but also through the metal roof cap used to cover where the home sections joined. It was obvious that the set-up company never thought to seal the cap against rain.
To make a long story short, I hired most every mobile home handy man in the county and purchased untold gallons of sealer to repair the leaks, removed the screws from the roofs on the homes that I had installed and replaced those with screws with neoprene washers and sealant, and finally, replaced damaged ceiling panels and/or bleached water stains on those panels that did not require replacement. In the few homes with heavier leaks, we also replaced some damaged wallboard, wooden cabinetry, carpeting, and window drapery.
The net result of my negligence to the rain possibility was that my profits from the sales of about 200 mobile homes were virtually eliminated for my first year in the mobile home business. Eventually, however, my customers were happy with me again.
Fast forward 35 years: Today’s manufactured homes bare little resemblance to the mobile homes of the past. Roofs are usually composition shingles, and roof leakage is virtually nonexistent. Manufactured homes are built to a stringent federal code to withstand severe weather equal or superior to comparable stick-built homes. Installers must comply with detailed installation procedures per installation manual supplied by manufacturer and inspected by regulators at site of installation.
The only similarity remaining between the mobile home of yesteryear and the modern day manufactured home is the affordability. Anybody that would tell you differently “is all wet.”
