Manufactured homes are built according to rigid safety standards, and their floors are capable of handling standard household items.
All the same, they lack a foundation that would guarantee a stable and firm unit.
Owing to the fact that your manufactured home is made up of assembled parts, you are likely to contemplate the floor support before bringing heavy items indoors.
(In this regard) Can You Put Heavy Furniture In A Manufactured Home?
Yes – you can bring heavy furniture into your manufactured home as long as its (furniture) weight does not exceed the limit your floor can support. Manufactured homes are designed to take, on average, a minimum of 40 lbs of live load per square foot. In addition, the floor of an ordinary manufactured home can support at least a 200-pound concentrated load on a one-inch diameter disc.
If you are planning to furnish or refurnish your manufactured home, this article will in depth discuss the weight a manufactured home floor can hold to help you pick the right items to bring indoors.
How Much Weight Can A Manufactured Home Floor Support?
According to 24 CFR § 3280.305 – Structural design requirements, manufactured homes are built on rigid safety standards.
That said, the floor of your manufactured home comes with a 3/4″ or 5/8″ floor decking set on 2×6 floor joists.
At the bare minimum, the floor of a standard manufactured home should support at least 40 pounds of uniform live load per square foot.
Live loads not only refers to people and animals but also movable items, including furniture.
If you are buying heavy furniture, you need to account for other live loads you will likely add to the floor system. Again, planning upfront will ensure that you don’t strain your floor.
Your floor should also be able to hold a concentrated load of at least 200 pounds on a one-inch diameter disc without causing any significant deflection.
Whatever heavy items you are bringing to your home, you should ensure that they don’t cause more than one-eight deflection relative to the floor framing.
With all that in mind, it is worth noting that the exact load your floor can hold depends on the size of floor joists, the distance between adjacent joists, and how far apart support posts are placed.
Shorter gaps between joists and support posts promise better support.
If you’re planning to bring giant pieces of furniture into your manufactured home, make sure to double-check the structural integrity of your floor, even if it is engineered to offer considerable load-bearing ability.
Five Factors To Consider When Shopping For Manufactured Home Furniture
Finding the right furniture for a manufactured home is by no means an easy task.
When furnishing your new house, you want to make it your dream home with high-quality furniture without threatening the home’s structural integrity.
Considering that it is entirely built by assembling parts, you want to be very keen not to bring heavy items home.
Here are things to consider when buying furniture for your manufactured home.
1. Weight (furniture and people)
When shopping for furniture, you want to make sure that individual pieces do not pose any risk to the floor.
The good news is that most heavy pieces of furniture become dead loads in your home because they stay put in one place.
hat said, a typical manufactured home should take a load of most furniture as long as individual pieces aren’t wildly heavy.
When picking furniture, remember to account for the weight of people who will be using the pieces. Remember, an incidence can occur if the minimum live weight limit is exceeded.
2. Flooring
The condition of your floor is another major factor to consider, even if the floor is designed to be very rigid.
Generally, a new manufactured home should take heavy furniture pieces without any issues.
However, if your home is old with a damaged frame structure or prone to moisture encroachment, you should rethink the idea of bringing heavy furniture, or anything heavy, indoors.
3. Other items in your home
Everything that sits on your floor adds some strain on it.
This means that the floor’s structural integrity will be compromised if every one-inch diameter disc supports weight way above the given limit.
To preserve the integrity of your floor and help your manufactured home last longer, bring in furniture whose weight won’t threaten your foundation.
If you are not sure how much load your floor can withstand, always contact the producer or an experienced structural engineer.
4. How often you are likely to move
If you are planning to buy heavy furniture for your manufactured home, it is advisable to keep your home stationary.
Keeping your home stationary (the best) or minimizing your movement reduces or possibly eliminates any issues with the heavy furniture and your floor.
5. Strength of the floor
Before bringing in heavy furniture, you need to be sure that the floor is strong to withstand the cumulative weight.
In this regard, you need to double-check the joists, outriggers, and chassis of your home.
The chassis, usually made from high-quality steel, helps ensure an even distribution of weight over the entire floor space while promising to support heavy items.
On the other hand, the joists support the floor while outriggers help maintain the floor’s integrity when subjected to undue weight.
If you strike a balance among these factors, you will likely get a perfect furniture set that transforms your house into your dream home without presenting any serious risks.
Considering that manufactured home’s floors are naturally delicate, you want to do all that it takes to minimize the likelihood of incidents.
After all, different locations in your manufactured home provide a varying degree of floor strength and protection against floods.
To ensure that your considerably heavy pieces of furniture get ideal support, locate joists and put these pieces right on top of beams.
Ensuring heavy furniture and other heavy items sit right on top of joists can project the floor from bungling under their weight.
Also, placing your heavy furniture such that it spans multiple joists helps spread the weight evenly, which in turn prevents floor deflection.
The edges of a manufactured home floor tend to be firmer than the central section because it is designed with the wall’s support structures. If your floor planning permits, you can place your heavy pieces close to the walls.
How To Strengthen The Floor Of A Manufactured Home
It is perfectly normal for manufactured homeowners to doubt the strength of their floors.
That said, if you own a manufactured home and are fond of buying heavy items, it is good to add support below the joists to preserve the floor’s structural integrity and prepare it to hold your belongings.
Interestingly, adding support to your home’s floor is not the most challenging thing.
A simple and cheaper means that provides a durable solution is supporting your floor from underneath with concrete blocks.
You can also use adjustable floor jacks to support your floor.
Whatever you elect to use in supporting your flooring, it should be firmly installed perpendicularly underneath joists.
It would be best to put more support around the regions where you want to place heavy items.
When adding support to your flooring, it is advisable that you jack up the beams so you can place the concrete block such that when the home is lowered, it remains level.
Conclusion
Manufactured homes are made up of assembled parts, which makes them more susceptible to damage and deflection.
Although you can bring heavy items indoors without experiencing any issues, it is not advisable to do so.
No matter what pieces of furniture are to your liking, the most important thing is to preserve the structural integrity of your manufactured home.