And the Hits Just Keep on Coming

     I met the owner of my mobile home park the other day. He gave me a thorough lesson on plumbing, which was actually super interesting. He also seemed shocked and appalled by how much I was charged for the repair of my very old pipe, which he is sure is the original pipe from the 60's. And he would know. All that the plumber did was rehang the original pipe that fell off my house. And it was a very expensive job. The first I learned of this fancy new pipe was from my landlord. I wasn't even offered it as an option from Mr. Rooter. And when I called the company to find out why, the guy in the office was super condescending. I also never actually got an answer. 

        In general, living in a mobile home is pretty cost effective. But when you need repairs you sometimes end up paying a lot more than if you live in a traditional stick built house. Not everyone wants to work on a mobile home, or even knows how. So you often end up paying a premium price for potentially sub-standard work. It's frustrating. And recently I have had a variety of necessary repairs pop up unexpectedly. Not only did I have to pay quite a lot to have the lake of sewage cleaned up from under my place, but I paid a lot for the main pipe to the sewer to be rehung. And then I found it it was actually the sewer that was the issue, which likely caused the pipe to fall, and caused me to have a lake of sewage under my house. And the lake, though small, was back. I was super upset about that as you could probably imagine. 

        And that is actually how I finally met the guy that owns the park. The day after the maintenance guy came with an industrial snake and cleared a hairball of tree roots out of the sewer, the park owner came to do the cleanup himself. Wow. The water had sunk into the ground so the cleanup wasn't as tricky as the first round. They put a LOT of lime down, so no bacteria should survive that. And now the sewer is cleared out, so hopefully I won't have any more plumbing issues. 

     The next issue I have is that there is a lot of damage to the underbelly of my trailer. Some of it may have been caused by the water issue, but some of it might just have been from tome. The skirting on most of one side is off and the framing that holds it up is rotted or broken. Did I mention how hard it is to find anyone to work on a mobile home? Well I got a tip from the maintenance guy about a man that was working on one of my neighbor's places. The maintenance guy got me the contact info and I gave him a call. 

    So I met Bud and I got a quote for the work I need done. While I am sure it is entirely fair, it is still scarily expensive. Especially after all of the other expensive repairs I have had to do lately. I am going to try to sell things, though I have already sold bunches of things at a variety of different times, so I don't even really have that much left to sell. No matter what, it still won't be enough to cover the expenses. It is a pretty rough spot I am in at the moment. But, similar to when the studio flooded, I am choosing to look on the bright side of this. I found someone who works on mobile homes, and he does beautiful work. He is willing to work on the underbelly, he knows what he is doing, and I really need to get it done. Once the work is done I will have a much more energy efficient home so it will save me money. And I will have access doors into the skirting so I can continuously look underneath to ease my paranoia. Because I will now be paranoid about water forever. 

     People often say that bad things come in 3's. I had the studio flood, the drain pipe to the sewer fall and cause the sewage flood, and now the expensive repairs to the underbelly. I should be past the the bad now. I hope so. I really need for things to get easier.