THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, April 15, 1995 TAG: 9504130307
SECTION: REAL ESTATE WEEKLY PAGE: 02 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: About the Outer Banks
TYPE: Modular Homes: Week 4
SOURCE: Chris Kidder
LENGTH: Long : 108 lines
On Friday, March 10, Lois Shedlock's house sat in five parts on Hollowell Street in Nags Head. Four of the pieces were modular units constructed by Nationwide Homes in Martinsville, Va.
The fifth was the ground floor and piling foundation for the 3,300-square-foot house, built by Outer Banks building contractor Joe Rhodes.
The modular units had just survived a seven-hour, bone-rattling truck ride from Martinsville. Lifting the units from the truck trailers onto the foundation with a 65-ton crane (called the ``set'') had been scheduled for the previous day, but gusty winds postponed the work.
This day wasn't much better. The temperature hovered just above freezing, with winds steady at nearly 20 mph. Hoisting the 16-ton units with a crane in this much wind was less than ideal. Delaying the set costs time and money. The crane operator warmed up the engine and watched the boom sway in the wind.
Rhodes' crew was on hand by 7 a.m. They pulled the plastic wrapping off each unit and removed sheet goods covering openings where units would join and where sliding glass doors would be installed.
Sliders aren't installed at the factory because they keep openings from ``flexing'' during the ride causing cracks in the dry wall. The crew installed the sliders.
A walk through the open units showed little damage. The double framing of floor and ceiling joists held the unit together well. Rhodes expected some hairline cracks around window and door openings and there are a few. A dry-wall contractor would repair them later.
Nationwide provides a two-man setting crew who stay on site until the house is placed by the crane and secured. Don Ballenger, Nationwide's regional sales manager, and James Hyler, the company's quality control manager, were there, too, in case problems arose. None did.
Rhodes has a four-man crew trained to handle his modular work. Hyler and Ballenger said the crew is one of the best they've seen. ``It's so much easier to work with a crew that knows what they're doing,'' Hyler said.
By 10 a.m., the set was underway. A two-story house normally take a little over three hours. In the high wind or at the hands of an inexperienced crane operator, the work easily takes five.
The real art of the set lies with the crane operators. They work blind through most of the operation, directed by Nationwide's crew through a ballet of hand signals. If the operator doesn't have ``the touch,'' Hyler said, the set can be difficult.
No one wanted to talk about what can go wrong with a set but seeing a 14-by-60-foot section of house dangling in midair leaves little to the imagination.
On this day, the wind added time and tension. Each unit became a box kite as the crew steered it with ropes to within an inch or two of its mark. Once the unit was down, the crew fine-tuned it with crowbars and brute force.
Because the factory completes as much as 90 percent of the dry wall and interior painting, the house must be weatherproofed immediately. As soon as the units were set, Rhodes' crew began drying in.
With this house, drying in meant constructing a section of cathedral ceiling in the great room, adding the ridge cap to the entire roof and installing a prefabricated fireplace inset into the second-story great room exterior wall.
Rhodes hoped to have the Shedlock house finished in two weeks but his crew was busy on other jobs. By the end of March, little visible work has been done inside. Outdoor siding has been installed and most of the decking is built.
A low-pressure septic system had been installed. Shedlock's original plans were for a conventional gravity-flow system. But the house was re-sited on its oceanfront lot to move it out of the high-risk (``V'') flood zone. The move encroached on the septic field.
The Dare County Health Department requires 4,230 square feet for a conventional septic system serving a seven-bedroom house. Lacking the space for that, a homeowner can install a mechanically-pumped system that requires less ground area. A low pressure system costs twice as much as a conventional system, but for this house requires only 2,800 square feet.
Once the septic system was installed, Gary Ballard, a Southern Shores plumber who has worked on all of Rhodes' modular jobs, came on site.
With a factory-built house, Ballard says, everything is already installed. All he has to do is tie together plumbing lines between modular units, hook up the water meter and hook into the septic system. ``The factory gives you a schematic with the house so you know where everything is,'' he explains.
The quality of the factory plumbing is good and exceeds building code requirements, Ballard says: ``They use copper throughout the house, and PCV drain fittings. It's a nice thing.''
Ballard says he usually installs polybutylene tubing instead of copper when the code allows it, because copper is more labor intensive.
Shedlock is having vinyl floor coverings in some of her five bathrooms installed on-site. Ballard will have to make another trip to the house to set the toilets after the floors are finished.
J.C. Outlaw, an electrician from Camden, N.C., has been on the job, too. As with the plumbing, most of the work was done at the factory and detailed drawings are provided.
``I've been doing electrical work for 31 years,'' says Outlaw. ``The factory does darn good wiring.''
Nationwide uses 12-2 wiring throughout the house, he explains, exceeding code requirements. Because it's done in volume and on an assembly line, it's cheaper for them to use the same wire. He says he couldn't afford to do it that way. MEMO: Send comments and questions to Chris Kidder at P.O. Box 10, Nags Head,
N.C. 27959. ILLUSTRATION: Staff photo by DREW WILSON
Workers use a crane to lift a fireplace inset into the Shedlock
cottage at Nags Head. Most of the house parts arrived undamaged
from Martinsville on truck trailers.
by CNB