Doors sticking and windows binding: the first sign of settling

A door that drags on its jamb is the first thing almost anyone notices, and it is the most reliable early symptom a manufactured home gives you. In Hidalgo County it comes with a twist: on the clay half of the county the same door can stick in one season and free itself in the next.

What is actually happening

A manufactured home sits on rows of block piers under two steel I-beams. When those piers move unevenly, the chassis twists a small amount, and everything built on it twists with it. Door and window openings stop being rectangles.

A door is built for a rectangle. Rack the opening by a fraction of an inch and the door catches at a corner, drags on the jamb, or will not latch. Movement invisible to the eye is very visible to a door, which is why doors go first, before cracks, before floors, and long before anything dramatic.

If your home is a site-built house on wood sills and concrete piers rather than a manufactured home on a steel chassis, the symptom is identical and the fix is different; see house leveling.

Settling, or just Valley humidity?

Worth separating, because one of these costs nothing.

Probably humidity if: one door only, it sticks through the summer and frees up in the cooler months, the problem is at the top or the latch edge, and nothing else in the home has changed. A strike plate moved a sixteenth of an inch often settles it permanently.

Probably settling if: more than one door does it, it does not reverse with the season, it is getting worse year on year, a door swings open or closed on its own when left halfway, windows have started binding too, or cracks are opening at wall and ceiling joints, especially over doorways.

Almost certainly settling if: on a doublewide, the seam down the center of the ceiling or floor has started to gap. That means the two halves are no longer at the same height. See marriage-line gap.

Settling on clay if: the sticking moves. Doors on the south side bind in October, free up by spring, and doors on the north side bind in August. That pattern is the ground swelling and shrinking under different piers at different times.

The two-minute confirmation

The marble test. Set a marble on the floor in three different rooms. If it rolls the same direction every time, the frame is low on that side. If one room goes its own way, that is a local problem, usually a lost pier or a soft subfloor.

The door swing test. Open every interior door halfway and let go. Doors that drift open or closed on their own are telling you the frame has racked.

Why homes do this here

Hidalgo County is two kinds of ground, and which one you are on decides how your doors behave.

On the uplands around Edinburg, north McAllen, and north Mission the NRCS maps Hidalgo sandy clay loam, the county’s most extensive soil at roughly 191,000 acres, well drained with a low shrink-swell rating. Piers on it settle the way most people picture: a footing presses into ground that has been wet, usually after a crawl floods, and the home goes down on that side and stays down.

South of Business 83 toward Pharr, Alamo, San Juan, Donna, and Weslaco the map turns to Harlingen, Mercedes, Raymondville, and Runn clays. Harlingen clay is 60 to 75 percent clay and its cracks stay open 150 to 210 days in most years. Raymondville clay loam cracks three-quarters of an inch to two inches wide and 30 to 40 inches deep when dry. That ground swells when it is wet and shrinks when it is dry, and the Valley gives it both every year. The McAllen normals put the wettest month in September at 4.61 inches of a 24.17-inch year, and the August high at 99.6 degrees. A wet fall heaves the piers on the side that got the water; a dry summer drops them. The frame racks one way, then the other, and the doors follow.

Floods reset everything. The June 2018 storm put 18.31 inches on a gauge west of Mission and flooded an estimated 2,700 homes and businesses in Mission and McAllen; Hanna in July 2020 dropped 14.40 inches northwest of Mission and left 18 inches to four feet of water standing east of Edinburg. Ground that wet loses bearing under every pier at once, and the doors that stick afterward are the frame finding its new low points.

What the work involves

The home is measured pier by pier with a water level so the readings say where it actually sits, not where it looks like it sits. Then it is brought back to plane in small lifts across several jack stations: piers reshimmed inside the state’s one-inch shim limit, rebuilt where they have moved further, footings enlarged where the ground has proved soft. The skirting comes off for access and goes back afterward, and the anchor straps are re-tensioned because raising the home changes their tension.

Doors and windows usually free themselves once the openings are square again. Where a door has been forced or a jamb damaged while it was binding, it may need adjusting afterward, and the crew will say so before the work rather than after.

What it costs

Published on the pricing page, and the cost calculator gives you a range now.

While somebody is under there

Anchoring. Straps slacken as a home settles, so a home that needs leveling usually has tie-downs that have lost tension. Re-tensioning is included with a relevel. See loose or rusted tie-downs.

The underbelly. Tears let water and animals at the insulation, the ducts, and the subfloor. Patching runs $300 to $800 and it is far cheaper done while everything is open.

Moisture on clay. If the home is on the clay side of the county, the crew will look at where the water goes around the perimeter, because keeping the clay at an even moisture is what lengthens the interval between relevels.

What to expect on the call

How many doors are affected, whether it reverses with the season or moves from one side of the house to the other, what the marble test showed, whether the marriage line has gapped on a doublewide, and roughly when the home was last leveled. The level check is free and takes about half an hour.

We cover Edinburg, McAllen, Mission, Pharr, San Juan, Alamo, Donna, and Weslaco.