Would the corner of this slab be okay to place a home on, or should it be torn up and replaced first?
It should be fine. I inspect mobile homes all the time. Down here they’re just sitting on sand, no concrete at all. What you’ve got should have no issue supporting a home. I might get some good concrete patch and smooth it out a bit
I suspect that’s spalling from the freeze thaw cycle. That looks like a low area and may hold water. I would recommend improving the drainage to stop future spalling.
What part of the country is it located?
Thanks for the advice Coach. This pad is located in West Michigan, so there is definitely a freeze and a thaw.
How would you approach improving drainage? Hire a professional excavator to regrade the area around it?
One easy way to improve drainage is to put in french drains if the soil conditions will allow that. That pic is showing either freeze damage or a bad concrete mix like too much water in the original pour. I assume it is 4" and no footing so you will likely get some frost heave in the winter. Check with your city or county or neighbors for soil conditions.
Jim Allen
Hard to say with just that pic. Maybe a French drain like stated above, more likely a surface drain. There definitely appears to be a drainage issue based on those pics. Depending on the site maybe you could put in a small swale.
Another option would be to just put a 2" cap over top of it. That would help the drainage issue in the back.
The damage is a direct result of the ground on that corner being too high. If it is possible I would rent a skid loader and re-grade that corner to get water away from the slab. Depending on how old the slab is I would use it the way it is. If it is a old slab I would be OK with re grading and keeping the slab, if it is relatively new I would be inclined to redo but extremely hesitant. The issue with redoing the section is that a new section is potentially going to frost heave differently than the rest of the slab.
I agree Greg, but without seeing the full site it’s very hard to determine the drainage plane and how to fix it. That’s why I suggested the possibility of capping the entire pad to raise it up above the standing water. It’d be a lot cheaper to cap instead of tearing out.
We just bought our first park in Michigan, and will have to go through frost heaves (and repairs from them). I have to learn about this feature of operating a MHP.
This may be a stupid question, but which way is downhill? Are the other 3 pads exactly level or sloped, and if so which way?
It looks like the slab was built on a hill (or there is a small hill behind). If something heavy was resting with its weight unevenly distributed on the pad, presumably that end would sink more and rise less than the surrounding soil. The soil would have started to encroach, causing the damp conditions and growth of weeds that broke up the concrete (compared to the other three slabs).
Is this more or less what happened? If so, it seems that at most, you only need to repair the surface on which the next home will be “blocked.”
Thoughts, anyone?
Brandon@Sandell