Mobile Home Skirting
Sometimes mobile home skirting is mistakenly called “underpinning” but the underpinning is the supporting structure of a mobile home.
There are many materials used to skirt a mobile home such as wood, cinder block, brick, fiberglass, metal, plastic, and vinyl. However, the type of material used for your mobile home skirting will depend on your preference as far as appearance, quality of the skirting, your budget, and/or what is available from the company you decide to do business with.
When it comes to the appearance of the skirting there is a wide variety of colors and styles for mobile home skirting to choose from; even more so than just the kind of materials used for skirting but the quality will vary based on the material used and how much you spend. But just because you spend alot of money on mobile home skirting doesn’t mean that it is quality skirting.
As well as keeping animals from under your home, mobile home skirting must be able to assist in keeping pipes from freezing in very cold weather and allow for ventilation under your home. The skirting must allow for ventilation to keep it dry under the mobile home. Moisture can cause a number of problems including wood rot, warping, mold and an unstable base footing for your home.
For the most part, the cheapest and most traditional route for mobile home skirting would be vinyl skirting. On average having vinyl skirting installed on a mobile home costs between $500 and $1000 including the labor.
However, for the $500 to $1000 investment that you invest in skirting your mobile home, you will save on the cost of possible repairs to your home; persons such as children possibly getting hurt as a result of going under your home; save money on heating and cooling your home; and many insurance companies will give you a discount on your home owner’s insurance for having mobile home skirting installed.
The factors that will determine how much your mobile home skirting will cost are the exact skirting that you choose and how much of it you will need to provide skirting for your mobile home.
To know how much skirting you need for your entire mobile home, you would need to measure the perimeter of your mobile home; the length, width, and height.
Mobile home skirting is sold by the panel and panels range in height from 1 foot up to 12 feet and the width of a panel often ranges from 1 foot to about 4 feet. Not only do panels of mobile home skirting have a wide range of sizes but panels also have a wide range in how much each panel can cost thus affecting how much mobile home skirting materials cost.
For example, if the vinyl panels you want for your 14′ x 80′ mobile home, which is 188 linear feet, are 4 feet wide and 1 1/2 feet high (assuming you need the skirting to be 1 1/2 feet high) you would need 47 panels. And if the panels were $10 per panel, you would pay $470 plus whatever shipping charges there would be which are usually pretty reasonable online.
The other just as important factor when it comes to the cost and quality of your mobile home skirting is the person you have installing the skirting. But this is where it gets a bit more complicated and subjective.
However, to make the best decision it’s important to call around and get references from the person you intend to hire. And a good rule of thumb is to choose a person who charges a price that is middle of the road as opposed to whoever is the cheapest or cost the most because cheap usually indicates shoddy work and expensive doesn’t necessarily mean the best it could just mean you’re being overcharged.
The average man-hours for a 14′ x 80′ mobile home installation by 1 person is 6 to 8 hours and for 2 people it’s 3 to 4 hours. Larger mobile homes, or more complicated installations for 1 person would take roughly 15 hours and for 2 people up to 8 hours.
