Water under the home: leak, runoff or wet ground?

Water under a mobile home comes from one of three places: the home’s own plumbing, water running onto the lot from above, or the ground itself. Each one can soften the soil under a footing and soak the underbelly. Underbelly patches typically run $300 to $800, and each pier rebuilt on a new footing typically runs $150 to $400. We find the source before we fix anything.

Check this first

• Is it raining? If the wet patch only appears after rain, look uphill. A roof with no gutters, or a slope above the lot draining toward the home, is a common source.
• Is it dry weather? Water that shows up in a dry week usually means plumbing: a supply line, a drain fitting or the water heater.
• Smell. A sewage smell means a drain leak. Turn off what you can and call a plumber.
• Look at the belly. A sagging, stained section of bottom board often sits below a leak, though the water can run along the frame first.
• Time of year. If the ground is wet from winter into late spring and dries in summer, it may be the soil.

Causes and fixes

Why water matters around Hot Springs

NOAA’s Hot Springs station averages about 58 inches of rain a year. May is the wettest month at about 6.5 inches, and March through May together bring about 18 inches. Much of the ground near town is shallow soil over shale and sandstone on slopes, and on a hillside lot that water has to go somewhere.

Some soils hold it. Mazarn silt loam, mapped in bottoms near Piney and Royal, is somewhat poorly drained, with “A perched, seasonally high water table … within 1 to 2 feet of the soil surface during the months of December through May most years.” Toward Mount Ida, NRCS says Littlefir soils are saturated above the bedrock for a month or more most years. Carnasaw soils, toward Piney and Jessieville, are rated well drained but slowly permeable.

A footing sitting in wet ground for months is the one we check first. The state’s specifications want footings on undisturbed or at least 90% compacted soil “of uniform density and thickness”, and an installation that does not contribute to ponding.

In a floodplain

If your home is in a mapped floodplain in unincorporated Garland County, the county’s Floodplain Department permits development there, and its rules say manufactured homes in the floodplain must be elevated and anchored against flotation, collapse and lateral movement. Ask the county before major work.

When to call us

Call when water stands under the home for days, when the belly is sagging and wet, or when doors start sticking at the wet end. We check the footings, the belly and the tie-downs, and the quote says what we found.

Related: vapor barrier and underbelly, pier and footing repair and doors and windows sticking. Ask whoever does the work for their Arkansas Manufactured Home Commission license number and check it.