Mobile Home Skirting Installation & Repair in Yuma

The short answer

Skirting is the panel run that closes the gap between your home and the ground. In Yuma it does four jobs that matter: it keeps animals out, it shades the underside, it protects your plumbing and belly wrap, and it stops monsoon wind from getting under the home. We install and repair vinyl, insulated vinyl, metal and block skirting, vented correctly for desert heat. Call us for a free measure and quote.

What skirting is actually for

Most people think of it as the thing that makes the home look finished. It does, and if you are in a park your manager has opinions about it. But the real work is underneath:

• Keeping things out. Under your home is the nicest real estate on the property if you are a rodent — shaded, sheltered, full of insulation to nest in and ductwork to chew. Once they are in your belly wrap, you have a vapor barrier problem and a cooling bill problem. Skirting is the first line.
• Shade. At 107 degrees, keeping direct sun off the underside of your floor and your plumbing is not a small thing.
• Protecting the underside. Your water lines, drain lines and belly wrap are down there. Sun and blowing grit destroy all three over time.
• Wind. This is the one people miss. Skirting keeps monsoon wind from getting under and lifting at your home. It works with your anchors and tie-downs, not instead of them.

Your material options

The part that gets done wrong: ventilation

Skirting has to breathe. A crawl space sealed up tight in this climate traps heat and moisture against the underside of your floor — and moisture under a manufactured home is how you get rot, mold and rodents. Every proper skirting job includes vents, spaced around the perimeter, sized to the home, and left unobstructed.

The two failures we see constantly: skirting installed with no vents at all, and vents that got buried behind landscaping rock or a flowerbed years after the fact. Both cause the exact problems the skirting was installed to prevent. If yours has no vents, that is worth fixing on its own.

The other part that gets done wrong: how it is attached

Skirting lives in a top track fastened to the home and a bottom track staked into the ground. When it is done right, wind pushes against a panel that has nowhere to go. When it is done cheap — screwed straight to the siding, or with a bottom rail just resting on the dirt — monsoon wind gets a finger under one panel and peels the whole run off like a zipper.

If your skirting comes off every summer, the panels are not the problem. Adding more panels to a bad track is buying the same failure again.

When buckled skirting is telling you something else

Here is the thing worth knowing before you spend money: skirting that suddenly buckles or gaps is often reporting a leveling problem, not a skirting problem. The panels are squeezed between your home and the ground. When piers settle, that gap changes, and the skirting deforms because it has nowhere to go.

So if your skirting buckled and, now that you think about it, the bedroom door has been sticking — do not re-skirt yet. Get the level checked first. Re-skirting a home that is still settling means doing it twice, and we would rather tell you that up front than take the job today and the same job again next year.

In Arizona, the people who level, anchor, set and structurally repair manufactured homes are licensed by the Arizona Department of Housing, Office of Manufactured Housing — not by the contractor board that covers stick-built homes. Ask any company you call for their license, and ask whether the work needs an installation permit. A real outfit will answer both without flinching.