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What do you guys do with mh’s older than 1976 inside city limits with aluminum wiring? It seams towns/cities won’t allow new electrical service to them due to the wiring hazards. Do you move them into a park outside the city? Do you have to tear out the walls and put in new electric box and conduit/wire to make them safe?
They also don’t seem to want any remodeling done since there are no building codes that apply. My city doesn’t even want new windows or flooring replaced…? They said you could replace a panel here or there but no remodels. Does remodeling just fly under the radar?
Let me know your thoughts, Thx!
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Taylor T, I gather you don’t mind taking on challenges. Here are some of them:Expect to find considerable variety in applicable rules regarding aluminum wiring, whether the early installations were used, whether the later much safer methods and materials were used, whether some or all such installations were grandfathered in or not, whether the circuit design limited such wiring and connectors to single purpose circuits or whether it was used in a multi-purpose circuitry design (which you’d need a qualified inspector to discover).
Expect to find that some insurance companies might hang up the phone on you, some might be willing to handle the later, improved material, better circuit designs while some will probably throw a total fit over anything aluminum — regardless of safety and improvements.
Depending on what a qualified inspector finds, you might encounter some federal agency rules (CPSC) that weigh in.
To do a lot more thorough search than I did, you might pull up DuckDuckGo.com and run a search on this phrase: MOBILE HOME ALUMINUM WIRING
Expect to find a LOT of search hits. One of the better ones was this:
https://inspectapedia.com/aluminum/Aluminum_Wiring_Hazards.php
Technically, what it takes to make an aluminum wiring installation perfectly safe is well understood — even though the early disasters from poorly chosen materials and circuit design trashed that industry’s reputation. Whether some or all of those changes have already been made will take a qualified inspector to determine. But beware of some cities and/or counties whose slavish loyalty is to the local building contractor industry whose motives include making the cost of anything they don’t do either outrageously expensive, or outright illegal.
Whether a safety upgrade is needed or not, whether such might be ridiculously expensive, whether you might be forced to move the MH(s) elsewhere (or sell it/them to buyers who are willing to handle such moving themselves, or whether some prospective deals are no deals at all, you get to determine. (When I sold one many years ago, my buyer moved it out to his deer lease and avoided all the regulatory messes that I knew about — but there was nothing “upscale” about that MH at all. Your likely investment targets will probably have much higher social standards, and have a different class of bureaucrats to cope with.)
Some potential deals you might discover might bring you the best and quickest return by doing a speedy HBS after a qualified inspection report and a detailed report on what legal requirements your buyers would need to follow.
Best of luck on what you may discover.
–Dee
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If you pig tale the main circuit breaker box and all outlets, that is usually enough to satisfy code enforcement in most cities.
But, it’s better to NOT do any repairs to a mobile home – sell as is, where is, with seller financing.
All the pre-1976 mobile homes I sold where sold in the park with seller financing ( not moved) or sold to someone who wanted to move them to a lake lot for a weekend home or to people who moved them to a deer lease.
If you move an older mobile home, there are a lot of challenges. It may not have an axle and you can’t easily find one to fit. The siding will likely fall off during the move even if you secure it. And the floors will probably fall out. It’s not a good idea to move an older mobile homes. I even had one mobile home disappear during the move (unscrupulous mover).
I have also sold older mobile homes to scrap metal places and made $1500 a pop. I
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