Manufactured Home: How Do I Repair A Hole In The Floor?
Posted on
November 6th, 2009
by Jerry
I have a double wide manufactured home. It is fully carpeted so I’m not sure of the extent of the damage but there are holes or soft spots in the floor in the front room. When you step on this area your foot goes down further but does not go through.
Would you please tell me if you have come across this yourself?
If you have, would you please tell me in detail, how you repaired it?
Thank you in advance for your time.
Oh Lord more times than you can shake a stick at. To start with you must understand that the carpet is the only thing holding you up. The flooring is a particle board that will crumble to pieces when wet. Is this place by the door or furnace? If so you are going to get upset to see the damage and it will cost major money to have repaired by a professional company. And one note of warning if you live in an area that requires permits and one is pulled you will have to conform to the state standards and can get costly real fast. The cheap way out is to understand what has happened and go in and put a band aid on it. Pull the carpet back and expose the bad spot no remove the old flooring. If you nail on another 2×6 to your flooring joist you created a place to now nail your new piece of flooring into. Cover back over with carpet and forget it. Easy.
Yes, we have encountered this in older manufactured homes and site built homes, as well. Often it is due to the wood that makes up the sub-flooring having some rot. If it were me I would fix this soon. Of course you could place some furniture over the soft spots so the area is avoided, and that would buy you some time to make the fix, but in the long run it will be worthwhile to make repairs. Depending on the location you may be able to remove just a segment around the soft spot, cut out enough of the old sub-floor so that you can place new material in and have good support by the joists underneath. Then you could cover that area with wood or laminate flooring and provide a special non-carpeted area. This might work well if the soft area is near an entryway or by a wood stove or some other defined area. If the soft areas are not at these defined areas you may want to just find a good deal on new carpeting or new wood or laminate flooring and just remove all the old carpeting from the affected area. Then you can do a good job of making repairs to your sub floor before the new floor covering is installed. Understand your problem. It is frustrating, but do not worry – it can be fixed. All the best, Rick
most likely caused by a water leak. check under house for wet spots. where the floor is spongy remove the insulation that covers the underside of the floor joists. sometimes it is possible to raise the floor a bit with a jack and slide a new joist in next to the old on an nail in place.