Utility connections for manufactured homes

The scope that controls the calendar

Utility connection is a small amount of work and a large amount of elapsed time, and confusing the two is why infill programmes slip.

The physical connections are a matter of days. The queue — utility appointment, inspection, meter set — is weeks, and none of it is under a contractor's control. Where those queue items run in series rather than in parallel, and where nobody started them until the home was already on the lot, a two-week job becomes a two-month one.

This is the single most useful thing we do differently on an infill programme: utility scheduling starts at scope approval, not at delivery. It costs nothing to start early and it is often what decides when a lot starts earning.

What is at the stub is not knowable in advance

On a lot that has been vacant for years, the honest position is that nobody knows the condition of the existing services until they are exposed.

We price the connection work and carry the stub condition as a separate line, discovered and photographed rather than estimated. Padding every lot for a stub problem most lots do not have is how an infill budget stops being usable.

Electrical sizing, checked before the home is scheduled

A lot that previously held a small single-wide may carry a service that will not support a modern double-wide, particularly one with electric heat.

Discovering that at connection is a multi-week delay: an upgraded service is a utility company timeline, not a contractor timeline. We check the existing service against the incoming home during scoping, which is a fifteen-minute task that routinely saves a month.

Freeze protection and the skirt

In any community that sees hard freezes, exposed water runs under the home need heat tape and insulation, and they need it before the first cold night rather than after the first frozen line.

This connects directly to skirting: the skirt has to be closed for freeze protection to work, and ventilated correctly so that closing it does not create a moisture problem underneath. Those two requirements pull in opposite directions and both have to be satisfied. Doing one without the other is how a community trades frozen lines for rotted bellies.