Mobile home leveled wrong: over-shimmed, still out of level, or settling again

A relevel that did not hold usually follows the same story: the home was leveled cheaply, it looked fine for a while, and within months the doors started sticking again. The fix is not a second quick job on top of the first one. It is finding out which piers were done wrong and doing those properly.

Signs the job was not done right

It is out again within months. Mobile homes do settle over time, especially on sandy soil, but a proper relevel should not be undone in a single season.

Doors and windows still stick, or started sticking again soon after. That is the frame telling you it is not sitting evenly. See doors and windows sticking.

What you can see under the home. With a flashlight from the skirting access, look at the tops of the piers:

• tall stacks of shims, or lumber blocks and shims piled together
• shims you can move or pull out by hand
• piers leaning rather than standing plumb
• pads tilted or sunk into the ground
• anchor straps hanging slack

A pier you can rattle by hand is carrying nothing, and its share of the home’s weight has gone to the piers around it.

Why over-shimming causes the problem to come back

Shims are the last small adjustment between a pier cap and the I-beam, driven tight with a hammer until the pier takes full load. They are not a substitute for a pier at the right height.

When a pier has dropped, the proper fix is to rebuild or reset it. The quick fix is to stack shims or wood on top until it touches the beam again. That stack is soft, can compress or slip, and in Florida’s humidity it can rot. Each time it gives, the home drops again at that spot. HUD installation standards (Part 3285) limit how much shim and lumber stack is allowed on top of a pier, and a stack past that limit should come out rather than be topped up.

What fixing it involves

Survey every pier with a water level from a stable reference, so the real low points are measured rather than guessed.

Remove the bad stacks. Over-tall, loose or rotten shim stacks come out.

Rebuild the piers that need it. Blocks re-stacked or replaced, caps swapped, pads reset where they have pressed into the ground. See pier and pad repair.

Reshim the rest tight, re-shoot the whole frame to verify it, and re-tension the anchor straps the settling left slack.

The full process is on the mobile home leveling page.

What it costs

Every figure is from the pricing page, and the leveling cost calculator prices a specific home. The level check tool helps you measure before anyone comes out.

Before you hire anyone again

Florida requires a state mobile home installer license for this work. Ask for the number, and check it: what the installer license means and how to verify it. Ask whether they survey every pier before quoting, and ask what they do when a pier has dropped too far to shim. The answer should be that they rebuild it.

What to expect on the call

Tell us when the home was last leveled, what has come back (doors, floors, cracks), and whether it is a singlewide or doublewide. Photos from the skirting access showing the pier tops help us a lot before we come out. Lakeland, Winter Haven, Auburndale, Bartow, and Plant City are all covered.