We bought a Palm Harbor modular home that was delivered and installed on our lot during the last week of September. As of this moment in time (January 6, 2010) we are still at least two weeks away from being able to move in. I had assumed that a modular home could be made user ready faster than a site built home but that does not seem to be the case. Is this a common situation?

Nope....

If the schedule has stretched out that long you need to look towards the planning and execution of the installation by your dealer or general contractor.

The actual erection of a modular home should usually take no longer than 2 days. The foundation and utilities should have been installed prior to delivery. Once the home was installed the finish, site work and utility hook ups should have been on a very short schedule.

If the project has dragged out it is probably due to poor planning.

"There are three types of construction tasks that need to be completed to build a modular home: the site work, the button-up work, and the construction of site-built structures. Someone needs to be in charge of hiring all of the trades people needed for these tasks, coordinating their schedules, and overseeing their work. That is the job of the general contractor, often known simply as the General Contractor....

READ MORE... For the best outline of a General Contractors role and responsibilities read the "Selecting a General Contractor" a brief summary of Chapter 5 (20 pages) in
The Modular Home, by Andrew Gianino,

David Oxhandler
webmaster@mobilehome.com

If your problem is not resolved by now you should try contacting Palm Harbor at [www.palmharbor.com] There is no excuse for this kind of service.

Well, it is now April 4, 2010, we are in the home as of four weeks ago. We paid a third party home inspector to inspect the home and one of the problems that we are having, based on his report and our observations is the fact that the home is a couple of inches lower than it should be for water to drain from under the house. I took a couple of vents off the skirting and there is water standing under the house 2 days after a small rainfall and the rest of the lot is dry.

When they were doing site prep work, the installer had 3 or 4 truck loads of dirt delivered but we had rain for several days afterward and he did not place any of the dirt under the house. The person who installed the house came out two weeks ago to spread the dirt that he left onsite and to cover the trenches that he had dug for drainage when he was pouring the concrete for the foundation. He was a rude SOB and mentioned three times that he does not have time to keep "doing free work". When her arrived, he knocked on the door, rang the doorbell and put his face to the window, using his hands over his forehead to block the glare and started looking inside. I was sitting in the chair about 10 feet away so it only too a fewseconds for me to open the door. As he was leaving he did the same thing only he bounced on the front steps before he knocked on the door and rang the doorbell. He covered the water meter with dirt and left strips of black plastic sheeting mixed in with the dirt that he spread and it is difficult to remove.

Plus we have observed black soot on some of the fixtures in the house when my wife cleans things. It is not in the air conditioner ductwork, we have changed the air filter several times and I took a a vent off and checked the inside with a damp with cloth. Although we bought this new last summer, I wonder if it was actually constructed earlier. Is there any way to find out when it was constructed other then to rely on Palm Harbor.

the data plate you will find stuck to the inside of a cabinet door has a date, this is typically the date of manufacture.