Pier and Pad Repair Under North Port Mobile Homes

Every mobile home rests on lines of piers under its steel beams: a pad on the ground, concrete blocks stacked on the pad, a cap on top and wood shims between the cap and the beam. When a pad sinks, a block cracks or a stack leans, that pier stops carrying its share and the frame above it sags. We find the failed piers and rebuild them from the pad up. Reshimming a pier typically runs $75 to $150, rebuilding one typically runs $150 to $400, and most multi-pier repairs land between $500 and $2,500 all in.

Why piers fail around North Port

The soils across North Port are mostly poorly and very poorly drained flatwood sands: EauGallie, Myakka, Holopaw and Pineda. For part of the year the water table can be within 6 to 18 inches of the surface, and the ponded Holopaw phases can hold standing water in low spots. A pad sitting in wet sand can have less support than one on dry ground, and Florida Rule 15C-1 assumes a bearing of 1,000 pounds per square foot when no one has tested the soil. Concentrate the weight of a home on a few pads in a wet spot, and those pads can sink.

Heavy rain adds to it. Ian dropped roughly 13 to 21 inches on North Port gauges in 2022, and Big Slough, which feeds the Myakkahatchee Creek, reached its highest flow on record two days after landfall. The City lists the creek, the Myakka River and the canals as its flood-prone areas.

What a failed pier looks like

• A split or crushed cap
• Blocks cracked through, chipped at the corners or shifted off each other
• A stack leaning so it no longer sits square under the beam
• A pad tipped on edge or sunk into the sand
• A gap between the top of the pier and the beam
• A tall stack of loose shims, a sign of a home that has been chased level more than once

How we rebuild

1. Support the frame. Jacks go on solid cribbing beside the pier we are replacing, and the beam is taken up just enough to unload it.
2. Take the pier out. Old blocks, cap and shims come out, and we look at the pad and the ground under it.
3. Fix the base. If the pad has tipped or sunk, we lift it, firm up the sand under it and set it back level, or put in a new pad.
4. Restack. New blocks go on square and plumb, then a new cap and tight wood shims to the beam.
5. Check against the rest. The rebuilt pier has to match the frame line, so we read it against the neighbouring piers before moving on.

Pier work often goes with a full relevel, because the piers next to a failed one may have been carrying extra load. If water ponds under the home, we tell you before we start, since a new pad set in the same wet hollow can sink again.

Straps, permits and the licence

When the frame moves, the straps attached to it can loosen, so we check them as part of any pier job: see tie-downs and anchors. In Sarasota County, tie-down work needs a building permit and a licensed installer; inside the City of North Port, ask the City’s Building Division. Ask whoever does the work for their FLHSMV mobile home installer licence number and look it up. Every typical range is on our pricing page.