From 5th Wheel to Manufactured Home - It's a Process! - Sunday, July 16, 2017

Many of you know that we have decided to make San Antonio our home base. We chose to do this because we love the community that is Traveler's World RV Resort. It feels like a great big family with many friendly people. Plus, Bob has a good job. We will still travel, just not full-time at this point. 

With that being said, we will be moving into a single-wide manufactured home in the RV park. It will be nice to have a full-size kitchen and more space.

Our new manufactured home was delivered on Friday, July 7. Here are before photos of our site. 

Our empty site

Our site waiting for our home

I'm sorry about the weird colors in the next few paragraphs. I copied and pasted from Facebook and couldn't match the background color.

Our home was delivered without incident at 2:00 p.m., Friday, July 7. Alamo Transport did an awesome job shoe-horning our home into the site. We were very impressed by how quickly they got it done.

We extend our thanks to Brenda Vaupel for working with Sun Communities for permission to put another single wide home in the park.

Special thanks to Terry Vaupel and the maintenance crew for their hard work prepping the site with more gravel and leveling it nicely. Terry oversaw and directed Alamo Transport to get the home safely into Traveler's World RV Resort. And thank you to Denny for using a long pole with a hook to hold the electrical lines out of the way of the roof. The move-in went smoothly.

Titan Factory Direct now has up to two weeks to go through the home to make sure everything is as it should be before they hand the keys over to us. The trailer will be set in place on piers and tied down. The electrical, plumbing, sewer and AC need to be hooked up. Our new home is so near and yet so far. We are having a hard time waiting for the keys so we can get moved in.

Some furniture has been ordered and we still need to pick out a couple of things. We've already had to modify our order at two different furniture stores because we won't have as much room as we thought we would. But it's all exciting. Here are photos of the move.

This is the semi that delivered our home.

Below: The front and entry side of our new home. It has just been delivered and is sitting next to a busy street. They need to change from a semi-truck which pulled it on the freeway to a smaller truck to pull it into the park.

Getting ready to change trucks. This is the front of our home. The kitchen is on the other side of the front windows.

Hooking up the smaller truck to pull the home into the RV park.

The driver just whipped this long manufactured home into the entrance. He only had to back across traffic once to line it up for the next turn into the park.

All straightened out and ready for the next turn.

Heading down the park road

Escape Pod and Rigamarole in the background

This event was like a parade. Terry was in the lead with his golf cart directing the driver down the middle of the road. Then Denny followed with a long pole to lift over-head wires up above the roof line. I was walking alongside taking photos. Dan followed in a golf cart and Diane was walking in the back.

Denny lifting wires out of the way

Beginning to back in - Terry, Denny, and Don
in the shade keeping an eye on the progress

Obstacles: telephone pole and tree

Cranking it hard around the telephone pole. They even used the gravel to skid the rear tires sideways. It was really something to watch. You can see how the cab is almost jackknifed.

Backing in very slowly

Missing everything

At this point, they dropped the trailer and drove the truck around to back it through a pull-through site, then re-hooked it to the trailer to get a straighter shot at backing in.

With the truck lined up, they could back it straight in.

Here it comes

The truck had to angle around a tree in the site across the road, but look how straight this is going back...missing the telephone pole and the tree on our site!

 Below: Just to show you how close everything is to the side of our house.

Just a few more feet

Our home is home. Terry is satisfied.

We are happy homeowners. (Now if we could
just get the keys!!)

Outside our front door...so near and yet so far!

Update on Sunday, July 16:
Monday, July 10, Alamo Transport sent out a crew to put the piers under our home and tie it down to the ground. Terry let the guys know not to put any anchor bolts or tie-downs over the water line or within three feet of it so as not to rupture it or cause future problems. I also told the guys doing the work not to put any anchor lines within three feet of the water line. It seemed like the guy understood, he said Terry had told him that as well. 

Here's what piers, anchor bolts, and tie downs look like:

Our home is now on piers

The piers holding up our home

A pier with wood shim at the top

 The tires and axles have been removed.

Axles out from under the home

Anchor bolt in concrete - this will hold tie-downs

Rebar and anchor bolt in ground

Anchor bolt with tie-down

Underneath our home, you can see the steel base that the manufactured home sits on for stability as well as the piers and tie-downs.

Remember the earlier instructions NOT to put anchor bolts and tie-downs over the water line? Apparently, the worker Terry and I talked to did NOT remember! In the photo below you can barely see the water line spigot in the foreground. You will notice that two pieces of rebar criss-cross over the water line with an anchor bolt right there!! Arrgh. That has to be removed because, in the future if there is ever a problem with that water line, we need to have access to the water line to repair it. Alamo Transport has to fix this. Titan Homes has also been notified because they work closely with Alamo Transport.

Anchor bolt and tie-downs directly over water line.

On Tuesday, an electrician hired by Traveler's World came in to set up 200 amp service to our power pole in the site. All went well and our electricity is live.

No work was done on our home by Alamo Transport from Tuesday, June 10, until Friday, June 15. On Friday, a crew from Alamo Transport came out to hook up the electricity, sewer, and plumbing. About the first thing they did was break a water line so the water had to be turned off to the entire RV park. Uh-oh. 

Long story short, Terry here at Traveler's World and his crew got the water line repaired. Alamo Transport finished hooking up the water, sewer, and electric.

This coming week, the poorly placed anchor bolt and tie-down have to be moved, our AC has to be installed, skirting put on, and stairs and deck built. Once the work is done and Champion Homes has a chance to inspect and do "red carpet treatment," the keys can finally be handed over to us. Fingers crossed we will have keys by Friday, July 21, so we can start moving stuff in!

We go down to our new site every day to look at it, but we can't get in! We'll keep you posted on progress.