Fleetwood Manufactured Homes Quality

Page 2: The Fleetwood Manufactured Home Roof The Fleetwood Home roof is: 1x2 trusses. Let's take a look and see what this means. Below is a photo of a 1x2 compared with a penny. As you can see, the 1x2 is about the same size as the penny. If you knew your Fleetwood Home roof trusses were constructed from 1x2's, would you buy it? No, you wouldn't. Nobody would.   What do ya say when you're gettin' ready to do the crappiest job possible? Say "JUST FLEETWOOD IT !!" Yes indeed! "Fleetwood" is now a verb ! Soon to be recognized in Webster's dictionary as a synonym for "shoddy construction". Sort of like the Yugo. When you buy the cheapest Chinese factory-second valves for that house you're building... So What! JUST FLEETWOOD IT! And when you drive a nail straight through a wire in an unprotected stud? So what! Just Fleetwood it! And when you dump a case of empty beer cans in with the ceiling insulation? So what! Just Fleetwood it! And below is a photo of a Fleetwood Home truss I managed to remove mostly intact. It will actually support an average man's weight – but only if he is very careful and doesn't bounce up and down. Does Fleetwood still build 1x2 and kitchen panelling trusses? Probably the only way to find out for sure is to tear into a new one that has their "low load roof." And here you can see what happens with just a little water seepage. The kitchen paneling gets wet and disintegrates, then the staples holding the truss together pull through, and that's the end of any pretense that these trusses are "strong enough." Then your Fleetwood Homes roof gets really soft and squishy. Why is there water seepage? Well the Fleetwod home has a 12x2 roof pitch, which is pretty darned flat. In northern areas of the continental US, a foot of snow on the roof is common. When the snow melts, water will accumulate behind unmelted snow or ice, resulting in little puddles. Water from these puddles then seeps back between the shingles, and eventually it meets wood. If conditions are right, the wood will disintegrate (like this piece of panelling) or begin to rot. So how to fix this puddling and seepage problem? Simple. Just increase the roof pitch to 12x4. If Fleetwood Homes had done this, then no seepage would have happened and the 1x2 roof would have maintained its original questionable strength. But instead it began to decay, and eventually there were many soft spots where, upon investigation, I discovered that the only thing keeping me from falling through the roof was the shingles. So why did and does Fleetwood use the 12x2 roof pitch? Maybe with two extra feet of height, their "homes" won't fit through their shop door. Maybe they live someplace it doesn't rain or snow, so they don't think about this sort of thing. Or, most probably, the 12x2 pitch is the flatest allowed by code, and not coincidentally, the cheapest to build.