DIY Mobile Home Skirting Ideas

Mobile home skirting ideas are an essential part of your home. More than just decorative, mobile home vinyl skirting protects the underbelly of your home from critters and weather, both of which can cause damage.

At the same time, it can provide valuable storage space for things you don’t use daily. While not usually insulated, mobile home vinyl skirting still provides some barrier to extreme temperatures, so the home’s insulation can do a better job.

The mobile home’s metal skirting and its framework do not provide any additional structural strength to the mobile home. It is supported by their structure, a pair of I-beams running the length of the metal manufactured home skirting the side of the trailer and sitting on stacks of two cinder blocks below, called piers.

So all the cheap mobile home metal skirting structure needs to be strong enough to support the weight of the mobile home metal skirting ideas and hold it in place through the weather and the vagrancy of life.

Remember that children will run into it with toys, so it has to be pretty intense and rigid to withstand day-to-day use.

Skirting for mobile homes only, sometimes called “underpinning,” is a regulatory requirement. However, not everyone pays attention to that bit of expensive regulation, which is not always enforced.

But if you have purchased a mobile home with a HUD-backed loan, you must skirt your mobile home.

The basic requirements are:

  • The permanent wall enclosing the foundation
  • Must be self-supporting
  • Must rest on a concrete footing
  • Must have an access opening

While necessary, cheap mobile home skirting often doesn’t come as part of a new mobile home purchase and may not even come with a used one when you buy it.

Various companies manufacture used mobile home skirting ideas and manufactured mobile home skirting ideas for options or make kits, but these are expensive, especially the more attractive ones. You can do much better and save considerable money by making your own. Usually, that means making them out of wood.

Mobile home skirting ideas
a lovely blue mobile home with a wooden veranda on a campsite

Ground Vapor Barriers

Installing a ground vapor barrier before using concrete or metal skirting on a mobile home is important. This is not the same as a “belly wrap,” a plastic wall attached under the mobile home’s floor.

The ground vapor barrier is a heavy plastic barrier that rests directly on the ground, keeping ground moisture from reaching the under-flooring of the mobile home. At the same time, it serves to help keep weeds from growing, although that shouldn’t be much of a problem, with the concrete and metal of mobile homes and home skirting and panels blocking out the sunlight.

Properly installed, a ground vapor barrier will extend six inches out from the dimensions of the mobile home all the way around. This means your wood front skirting for your mobile home and the supporting structure will sit at the ground vapor barrier. That’s good news, as it can prevent moisture buildup and protect water resistance material underneath that wood skirting from moisture in the ground.

Ventilation

Even with ground vapor barriers, properly ventilating your mobile home’s front concrete or wood skirting panels is essential. The basic rule of thumb is one square foot of vent for every 150 square feet of the mobile home’s floor space.

If you have a ground vapor barrier, you can use fewer vents, installing one square foot for every 300 square feet of floor space.

Ventilation is needed to keep moisture, specifically in colder climates in the form of humidity, from accumulating underneath your mobile home.

Too much moisture buildup and too much humidity can result in mold growth, including forms of mold that can release spores that are harmful to your health.

Vents should be scattered and are best placed near the corners of the mobile home. This helps with air turbulence and ensures airflow throughout the mobile home, underpinning the entire area underneath the house, and there are no dead zones where there is no air movement.

Materials for the Skirt

Different wood products can be used to make attractive, extremely durable, and practical mobile home skirts. Some of the most popular are plywood, OSB (Oriented Strand Board), and T-111.

There are a few important considerations when using any of these materials, as moisture can cause them to warp or damage.

The most crucial consideration is sealing the edges of each panel. This can be done with paint, but you will get a complete seal using acrylic painter’s caulk. While a somewhat time-consuming process, rubbing the painter’s caulk into the grain on all the panel edges provides a much better and thicker seal, which should last 25 to 30 years.

You also need to paint both sides of the panels. If only the outside is painted, moisture can attack the metal materials on the inner side, causing the panel to warp. By painting the inside as well, you protect both surfaces from moisture.

Any paint can be used for the inside, even interior colors, as it will not be exposed to ultraviolet light. However, you want a couple of heavy coats, not leaving any thin or dry spots.

Framing Your Skirting

Building the trailer skirting for a mobile home itself is a two-step process. First, a framework is the flat metal trailer skirting for mobile that is made, and then the skin is applied.

While it is possible to build panels that combine the framework, flat metal trailer skirting, and skin and then install them in place, you will probably not get as good a finish, as invariably, there will be fit problems due to unexpected irregularities in the footer or the mobile home.

Since we are making the insulated vinyl skirting for mobile out of engineered sheet wood products, it will be necessary to provide some framing; otherwise, there’s a high probability that the vinyl top skirting for mobile will warp and possibly even cup.

This framing should be made of 2″ x 4″ construction lumber. I would recommend using pressure treated 2″ x 4″ s for the bottom rail, but using them for the verticals or the top rail is unnecessary.

Mobile home skirting ideas
Wooden house with two garages and a long staircase to the second floor-the living area

Since the materials we are discussing using come in four-foot by eight-foot sheets, making the frame sections eight feet long makes sense. You are framing it as a short or “stem wall.”

Putting the studs every 16 inches is unnecessary, but I wouldn’t put them farther than every 24 inches apart, even though some people prefer. You also don’t need a double top plate, as generally used for a framed wall. That double top plate is for you to attach the upper edge of the drywall to after installing the ceiling. Since there is no ceiling and no drywall, there is no need for the double top plate.

The individual frame sections should be attached to the underside of faux brick mobile home skirting and panels of the mobile home’s floor framing and attached to the foundation.

You don’t need to go overkill on nailing, as all the structure has to do is stay rigid for the brick mobile home skirting ideas and itself, not provide any additional structural strength. However, you do need to attach it to the mobile home brick skirting well enough that the wind doesn’t cause it to come loose.

Use screws, rather than nails, to attach the framework and permanent foundation, as screws are easier to remove if you ever need to move your home. Even if you don’t push it, screws allow you to return later and retighten them should they loosen as the wood dries out.

You may want to consider adding a layer of Styrofoam insulation behind your mobile home skirting for mobile too. This is not required and only makes a minimal difference, but as most mobile homes offer little in the way of insulation under the skirting on the floor, so adding this extra layer of insulation manufactured to your mobile home skirting for mobile to will help keep the floors from getting quite so cold in the wintertime. The Styrofoam will pay for itself in what it saves you on heating costs during winter months.

Finally, the skin panels can be cut and installed. I recommend staggering the skin pieces rather than aligning the seams with the framework. In this way, the seams for the skin will be halfway built up the brick, the imprinted metal skirting, and down the length of the frame, adding additional structural strength.

However, if you expect to move your mobile home at any time, attaching the skin to align with the ends of flat metal skirting and frame sections would make removing and transporting the metal skirting to the new site easier.

Don’t forget to seal brick faux stone skirting around all the edges and paint the whole faux stone brick skirting and concrete skirting panels and brick faux stone skirting and panels well, to seal it and prevent it from becoming water damaged. A couple of coats with good acrylic-latex paint will work, but it would be even better if you first sealed the skirt with a high-quality sealing primer.

wooden house

Wooden house, Kevin Poh

Alternative Framing

There is an alternative to framing a stem wall; that’s to install only a bottom rail and use the floor joists of the bottom of mobile homes or home underpinning your house or home as your top rail for installing the wood siding.

Some mobile homes and home designs, especially older ones, allow for this by setting the siding into a Z-rail, four to eight inches above the bottom of the mobile home underpinning your house or home. The area below the Z-rail can be used to attach the skirting too. However, you may need to remove a horizontal trim piece to allow this.

In this case, you’ll need to drive stakes into the ground to attach the bottom rail to the manufactured mobile home brick skirting above. To locate these stakes, use 2″ x 4″ s, aligning them flush with actual brick on the side of the concrete skirting of the mobile home and running down to the ground. The stakes should be set back just far enough from recycled bricks where these 2″ x4″ s come down to leave room for a 2″ x 4″ or 1″ x 4″ bottom rail.

Keep in mind that this type of framing won’t be as strong. You don’t want to try nailing your skin to the bottom rail. It’s better to use screws. Driving nails into the bottom rail would pull the stakes loose.

Various Wood Designs

Mobile home skirting ideas
an excellent mobile home with a wooden veranda on a campsite

We’ve talked about simple foam wood and foam skirting used here, which is nothing more than plywood or other engineered wood panels.

You may consider other materials and durable foam wood skirting options here instead of this style of foam wood and foam skirting used here.

One is to use strips of wood, like 1″ x 4″ s, to make rails around the perimeter as your mobile home skirt is, rather than using OSB or T-111 to provide a solid skin. This provides a more rustic look, something like a split-rail fence. These strips can be painted or stained to match the mobile home or accentuate the idea of them looking like a fence.

If you need to save a bit of expensive money, you can make something that looks just like what I just described by cutting pallets and attaching them to form a skirt. Combining the metal slats and open spaces will give the same effect of being a fence.

Lattice board can make a lovely skirt as well. However, you don’t want to use a lattice board by itself. Instead, cut the pieces of lattice board and frame them with 1″ x 4″ s to make skirt panels. These can then be attached to your framework. Painting the lattice one color, with the 1″ x 4″ frames, another color can add a nice visual effect.

House Skirting Panels

Various durable mobile home skirting options and panels are available on the market, many of which are molded plastic, which can provide a different look for your mobile home underpinning.

These mobile home durable skirting options can vary considerably, from looks like a full faux brick or natural stone skirting to vinyl siding.

These plastic or vinyl skirting panels usually come as part of a kit with their installation methods. However, they are considerably weaker than wood skirts. A compromise installation is possible, where the decorative plastic or vinyl panels are installed over a wood skirting made of one of the various materials we mentioned earlier, or just of construction-grade plywood.

Skirting a Shed

The same types of skirting material used for skirting up for mobile homes and manufactured homes will work just as well for a shed, whether one you have made yourself or a purchased one.

Many homemade manufactured sheds are made with a post and beam construction rather than a concrete slab, making them similar to a mobile or manufactured home. This makes it easy to adapt the skirting materials and techniques for skirting up mobile homes and manufactured homes to these sheds.

If you have both a mobile home and a shed, you can skirt them, making them match. In the case of mobile homes using single-layer vinyl skirting panels, buying all of them simultaneously is recommended to ensure that colors, best materials, and vinyl skirting and styles match.