Posted by Richard Carrington I have a Fleetwood home. There are so many deficiencies it's hard to know where to start but here goes. The biggest one is that I develop throat irritation when the home is not kept ventilated to the outside air so I can’t keep the home closed up. Because of this I can only use my heater and A/C for short periods. The floors are extremely “lumpy” – probably due to Fleetwood using green lumber for floor joists. Fleetwood’s service people “repaired” the worst of the lumps but there were so many others that it wasn’t practical to fix them all. They corrected the worst lumps. The bottom shelf of all cabinets (kitchen, bathrooms, laundry room) have no strength and when items are placed on them the shelf bows in. The bottom shelf consists of what I think is tile board which is only an eight of an inch or so thick. Many of the doors do not latch properly due to warping or poor adjustment of the door latch. The gap at the bottom of the doors is a couple of inches – unusual to say the least. The master bath tub/shower has insufficient support under it which caused the bottom to crack when I stepped in the “wrong place”. I bought the house foundation ready. This allows the structure to be bolted down to a perimeter foundation however the floor insulation is so poorly supported it sags down from the floor joists and covers up the crawlspace ventilation screens. The exterior siding has poor mechanical properties which causes cracks if the house settles on the foundation. That has occurred to my house around one of the front windows. Fleetwood’s Service Department Website does answer their email requests for service - period. All bathroom sink drains require frequent rootering. I do this myself so it doesn’t cost anything but it’s annoying none the less. The sink vents in the bathrooms are not vented through the roof. Once when a toilet got clogged I used a plunger and the vent backed up under the sink. It was not pleasant. In short I would not buy another Fleetwood home. In fact after this experience I would be extremely hesitant to purchase any manufactured home. There are other alternatives to consider one of which is panelized homes, e.g., http://www.endeavorhomesales.com/. This is a Northern California company so it probably won’t help you out but it’ll give you an idea of this type of affordable housing. Best of luck to you and I hope my experience with Fleetwood ensures that you don’t make the same mistake I did. If anyone else has some Fleetwood horror stories I’d love to hear them. My email id is ripc94526@aol.com.
on 12/2/2004, 4:06 pm, in reply to "fleetwood"
146.27.122.21
Dear Joe,
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