Complaint Review: Clayton Homes

 We bought our very first home, a brand new Clayton manufactured home in June of 2013 through the mobile home park where we now live. We had a 1 year warranty through Clayton Homes. As soon as we moved in, we started having a lot of thumps and squeaks coming from the floor, and then we noticed just how cheaply put together our home is. The carpet was worn down and matted after only 2 months, one of the windows was crooked and we were unable to lock it, there was no caulking around the windows, there were gaps in the interior trim and you could see inside the wall (was covered by the ugly pre-installed curtains), cuts in the very thin linoleum and edges were curling up, window and door jambs are not square so doors hang crooked. Clayton Homes sent a "local" contractor to deal with the floor and the crooked window. He was able to straighten the window enough that we could lock it and caulked around all the windows, but when it came to the floor he didn't have a clue. Our floor problem got worse and started to spread further through our home. Clayton Homes sent two of their own contractors (from out of state). They got underneath and said they were using "sqeak-enders". The next day, the sqeak and thump sounds were back and had spread even further. We were told to wait for weather change to see if it helped. It did not. In the meantime, we started smelling sewer gas coming from both bathrooms. Didn't matter if we had just flushed, used the sink, or neither at all. We contacted Clayton Homes about this and the floor yet again, then waited and waited and waited... Then winter had come and we started having trouble with our furnace. We had two different repair men look at it and they kept replacing the igniter that melted each time. One replaced the circuit board and a faulty switch. Finally, when these two separate repair men were working together, they discovered a bunch of drywall chunks in the air intake. They removed as much as they could. So far, that seems to have solved that issue, except that they both said that there is rust already in the furnace. :( And there is still cold air coming in through the windows. Finally, Clayton Homes sent their contractors back to deal with our floors and the sewer gas. They were not at all happy to be back and it was quite evident. But they told us it was the sewer pipe vents under the sinks, that sometimes the little flapper thing gets stuck so we have to pull it off and "thump it". Then they "fixed" our floors, which went back to our original problem again the very next day. As for our sewer vent issue, we've had to pull off the vent everyday, sometimes more than once to "thump them". Today (9/16/2014) I tried to replace them myself, but no one carries the under sink vents that have female threading! Every place I went to, no on ever heard of one with female threading. I even tried getting adapters (it requires 2 different ones per sink), but there is not enough room under the sinks for both adapters AND the new vent. So our home continually smells like sewer gas, I have a headache all the time, and I am embarrassed to have anyone over. This was our very first home purchase. I am disabled. If we could have afforded something better, we would have, but we also expected that a NEW home would keep us from having problems at least for a while. We were told by the contractors that Clayton Homes, Crest Homes, and Redman Homes are all owned by Warren Buffet. If that is true and he condones this kind of business practice, he should be ashamed. We can't afford all these things going wrong on a 1 year old home that only had a one year warranty.