How to Brick Mobile Home Skirting
Mobile homes are pre-manufactured homes that come from a factory. Once they are set up and ready to occupy there is usually an open space underneath the mobile home. In a regular home this would be the “crawlspace.” For safety, heating and cooling reasons this space should be “skirted” or covered as soon as possible. Doing it with brick is both sturdy and rust resistant.
Items that you will need:
- Rubber mallet
- Trowel
- 4 foot level
- Striker
- Chalk line
- String line and line clips
- Jointer
- Mortar mix
- Brick
- Footer
- Place a stake at each corner of where your footer is going to be. Basically this should be a straight line from each corner of the mobile home. Use your chalk line and stretch it out between the stakes tightly. Pull it up and let it “snap” back down making a chalk line marking of the outer edge of the footer.
- Mix the mortar to a substance that can hold a shape not unlike workable clay but not that thick.
- Lay down about a 3-foot long line of mortar inside the mark using your trowel. Put mortar on one end of a brick and place it down on the corner. Repeat this with another brick and do both ends with mortar. Lay it up against the first brick. Make sure you have about ½ inch of a mortar joint between the bricks. Use the level as you go to keep the bricks level. Take the mallet and tap the bricks together to help in this process. Do this for about 10 bricks in length.
- Go back to the corner and using the same process, go at a right angle and head for the other corner. Place mortar on top of the bricks and begin moving upward. Do this on each corner until you are about five bricks high.
- Use the striker for removal of any extra mortar and to help give it a “finished” look. Use the jointer to add mortar and use your fingers to push it in if needed. Try and accomplish this prior to the mortar setting up.
- Attach your string line clip now to the first brick from each corner and attach the string line. Once it is stretched align it with the same brick on the other corner for a guide to leveling the bricks. Go up row by row this way.
- Once done fill the top of the skirting with mortar using the jointer. It will make for a neater cleaner looking job to do this from the backside.