Skirting damaged, buckled, or missing: what it does and what it costs

Skirting is the most visible part of a manufactured home and the least understood. It is not trim. It does four jobs, and when it fails, it is usually telling you about something else.

What skirting actually does

Keeps animals out. Raccoons, possums, rats, and armadillos will all happily live under a home. An animal under there will also tear the underbelly open, which is how a skirting problem becomes a vapor barrier problem.

Keeps blowing rain off the underside. Storms drive rain sideways, and nearly half of Charleston’s annual rain falls from June through September. Skirting takes most of it.

Reduces wind under the floor. Not structural in itself, but it matters.

Protects the ductwork and plumbing that run in and under the belly.

And it is usually required by park rules, which is the reason most people call about it.

Why it buckles, and what that means

Skirting is cut to fit the gap between the frame and the ground at the moment it is installed. When a home settles, that gap changes, and the skirting has nowhere to go.

So it buckles in the middle, pops loose at the top rail, or opens a gap along the bottom. Buckled skirting is frequently the first visible sign of settling, showing up before anybody notices a sticking door, which is exactly why it appears on the settling self-check.

That is also why the order matters. Replacing skirting on a home that is still settling means cutting panels to a gap that is going to change again. Level first, then skirt.

What else damages it here

Materials, honestly

Vinyl is the common choice: least expensive, widely available in matching panels, easy to replace one section at a time. Its weakness is UV. Sun makes vinyl brittle over years, and brittle vinyl cracks the first time a trimmer or a football finds it.

Insulated vinyl costs more and adds some thermal and impact resistance.

Metal is more durable against impact and animals and handles sun better, at a higher cost and with its own corrosion considerations in damp ground.

Simulated block or stone panels look substantially better and cost substantially more. Popular on homes being prepared for sale.

Whatever the material, the details are what decide whether it lasts: a proper top rail fastened to the home, a bottom track or ground channel, panels overlapped in the right direction, and vents at the rate the installation requires so the space underneath can breathe.

That last one matters more on a shallow water table than almost anywhere. Sealing a crawl space tight under a home on damp ground traps moisture against the underbelly, and a wet belly is a rot problem and a mould problem at once.

The access point people miss

Skirting has to come off for anyone to work underneath, which means every relevel, pier repair, anchor retrofit, and belly repair involves removing and refitting some of it.

Two practical consequences:

Bundle the work. If the home needs levelling and the skirting needs attention, doing both on one visit is meaningfully cheaper than two.

Leave a real access panel. A proper removable access door in the skirting, in a sensible place, saves money on every future visit and lets you look underneath yourself once a year. A great many homes have skirting with no access at all, which means cutting it every time.

What it costs

Published on the pricing page, and the cost calculator prices levelling work.

What to expect on the call

Photos of the damaged sections and one of the whole side of the home, whether the panels have buckled or been broken, whether there is a gap at the top or the bottom, and whether anything in the home has started sticking. That last question matters, because it decides whether this is a skirting job or a levelling job wearing skirting as a symptom.

We take skirting and leveling requests from Charleston, Summerville, Goose Creek, Moncks Corner, North Charleston, St. George, and Walterboro.