Mobile home load bearing walls

[DoubleWideDude]

I recently had a flood in the kitchen in a doublewide rental I own. Insurance is paying for new floors and bottom cabinets, and I see this as a chance to make the kitchen a little bigger by moving one of the walls over to accomodate another 18" cabinet, and turn the island 90° to make it longer.
Here's a picture of the kitchen, and the dining room next to it:



I want to take out the half wall with the window in it that separates the dining room from the living room:



and also move the wall between the dining room and kitchen (with the refrigerator in it in the first picture)
over 18", but I'm not sure if they're load bearing.






I've researched double wide framing online, and it seems that the only load bearing point is the marriage line between the two sides, but I want to make doubly sure before I start tearing out walls.
I'm hoping that someone here is familiar with doublewide construction, and can tell me if it's safe to tear out these walls.
Any help is greatly appreciated.

 

[bud16415]

My guess is the same as yours it doesn’t do much. They build the same shell and then offer all kinds of arrangements inside. I remember in school they ran out of classroom space and bought a couple that were 100% open.

The simple solution would be to call the company that built it and ask for a designer to talk to.

 

[DoubleWideDude]

I tried calling Palm Harbor, but can't seem to get someone on the line that has a clue on how their own homes are built.

 

[bud16415]

Haha why doesn’t that surprise me.



I would likely act like I wanted to buy one and then ask in the future if I wanted to take out walls could I.

Honestly there is nothing below the wall under the house it isn’t supporting anything. Is the house on a basement or a crawl space. If it was holding the roof up it would need support below. It is just resting on the sub floor is my guess and just could be taken out.

 

[Snoonyb]

Welcome.
Trailers are basically tubes with partitions added to define selected architectural spaces, and the exterior walls are the structural component.

I think that the elec. and the aesthetics of the ceiling patch, will be the greater challenges.

 

[DoubleWideDude]

Haha why doesn’t that surprise me.



I would likely act like I wanted to buy one and then ask in the future if I wanted to take out walls could I.

Honestly there is nothing below the wall under the house it isn’t supporting anything. Is the house on a basement or a crawl space. If it was holding the roof up it would need support below. It is just resting on the sub floor is my guess and just could be taken out.

They routed me to their production facility, and I left a message, but they never called back. I'm fairly certain, like you say, it's just resting on the sub floor, and isn't really supporting the roof at all. The half wall just deleniates the front living room and dining room (poorly, I might add!). I'll just make sure to build the new kitchen wall first before tearing the old one down to keep support on the roof.

 

[DoubleWideDude]

Welcome.
Trailers are basically tubes with partitions added to define selected architectural spaces, and the exterior walls are the structural component.

I think that the elec. and the aesthetics of the ceiling patch, will be the greater challenges.

I agree.

 

[bud16415]

Yep and welcome to the forum

 

[DoubleWideDude]

Yep and welcome to the forum

Thank you. Good to be here.

 

[DoubleWideDude]

Finally got a hold of Bill, the Palm Harbor production manager down in Austin, and he said the kitchen wall isn't load bearing, but the half wall is a shear wall that helps with high winds or tornados. He said I should be fine to take it down, and move the other, as the winds in my area aren't enough to shear. He said I was correct in assuming that the only load bearing walls are those on the marriage line.
He was a great resource of information for my house, and I asked him numerous other questions about it that he was happy to answer.
Great guy, and Palm Harbor has restored my faith in their homes (even though they're doublewides ).
Thanks for all your help.