Mobile Home Leveling in Fort Mohave, AZ

Fort Mohave sits in the Colorado River valley south of Bullhead City, and the ground under it is the single biggest factor in why homes here need releveling.

Sand is not clay, and it fails differently

Most of what is written about manufactured home settling in Arizona is written about the Phoenix area, where expansive clay swells when it gets wet and shrinks when it dries, lifting and dropping piers on a seasonal cycle. That is not what happens in this valley.

River valley soils here are loose, sandy alluvium that drains fast. They barely swell at all. What they do instead is two things:

They let a pad punch downward. A pier concentrates several thousand pounds onto a footing pad a couple of feet square. On dense ground that load spreads. On loose sand it consolidates, slowly, and the pier goes down with it. That is why settlement here is often uneven in a pattern that has nothing to do with sun exposure or moisture: it follows wherever the fill was least compacted when the home was set.

They let water carry material away. Sand moves. A concentrated stream of water off a roof edge or a neighbour’s downspout will excavate a channel beside a footing in one storm, and once the soil beside a pad is gone, the pad tips.

Monsoon, and the summer nobody is here

Monsoon season runs roughly July through September and delivers rain in short violent bursts rather than steady soaking. That is the worst possible pattern for loose ground: the water arrives faster than it can soak in, runs across the surface, and scours.

The timing is what makes it expensive. Most of the damage happens in the months when the fewest owners are here to see it. A pier that shifted in an August storm goes unnoticed until someone returns in November and finds a door that will not latch, by which time the frame has been carrying a twist for three months.

Two things worth doing before you leave:

• Walk the perimeter and look at where water goes. Any place a roofline concentrates runoff next to a pier is a problem waiting for the next storm. Moving that water is cheap.
• Get a level check before you go, not after you return. It is free, it takes about an hour, and a pier reset at $75 to $150 beats the $450 to $800 full relevel that the same problem becomes if it runs for two more seasons.

What you will notice first

The home tells you before the floor looks obviously wrong:

• A door or window that sticks when it used to close cleanly. The frame is racking, and a door is the most sensitive instrument in the house.
• A soft or bouncy spot in the floor, which often means a pier under that area is no longer carrying its share.
• Skirting that has buckled or pulled away, because the skirting is attached to a home that has moved and to ground that has not.
• Cracks at the corners of interior doorways, or a gap opening along a marriage line in a doublewide.

Heat, and the parts that do not survive it

Fort Mohave summers are as hot as anywhere in the country, and heat is hard on the things under and around a home. Vinyl skirting goes brittle and cracks. The vapor barrier under the belly sags and tears, which matters more than it sounds: once it is open, the insulation above it loses its protection and rodents have a way in. Anchor straps and the hardware at the ground end corrode and lose tension.

Anchoring here is set to Wind Zone I, which is the standard Arizona falls under, and a tie-down that has gone slack is not doing its job regardless of the zone. Straps and anchors run $600 to $3,500 depending on how many the home needs and what is already there.

What it costs

All from the published pricing page, and the cost calculator will price your home without asking for an email.

Book a Fort Mohave level check

Tell us the size of the home, roughly when it was set, what you have noticed, and whether you are here or away. We also cover Mohave Valley, Golden Valley, Kingman, Lake Havasu City, and Bullhead City.