Skirting around a trailer hitch
The last gasp of warmth (high of 41) before the cold hit seemed like a good time to continue my skirting project,
which is now moving around to the west side of the trailer. This area
is home to the hitch --- the big metal thing that connects to a truck
when a mobile home is being hauled to a new location. As a result of the
hitch, I ended up having to do a bit of piecework with the insulation,
but hopefully it will still mostly do its job.
Meanwhile, since our
trailer is set atop slanted ground, the downhill part of the west face
of the trailer presented yet another obstacle --- the flashing is no
longer wide enough to reach from the walls to the ground. I overlapped
two pieces of flashing and sealed the seam with that metal tape you use
to seal ductwork (not duct tape --- or perhaps this is real
duct tape?). Only time will tell whether the little bit of rain this
area gets beneath its large overhang will be sufficient to work the tape
loose, but since I only taped the seam for aesthetic purposes, we can
live with untaped seams if they occur.
Next step will be
mounding soil up around the base of the skirting the way I did on the
southwest end of the trailer. I let Mark be the final deciding vote on
planting this area and he chose grapes, so the cuttings I started
will end up in this area come spring. And, in the meantime, I'll keep
plugging away at skirting as weather permits. Next up is the soggy north
face of the trailer, where I hope to include an access door just in
case we someday need to crawl beneath our mobile home.
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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ever considered removing the hitch? You inspired me to get a used doublewide instead of building from scratch. The delivery guys unbolted the hitches and placed them underneath the house in case we ever need them.
Now, if only my many DIY skills were worth any good with construction/home repair, my mobile would be at least as good as yours was in the beginning.
I am not living mine because it has a bunch of simple things to fix, like the area where the halves meet needs to be finished and covered up, plumbing needs to be connected, siding needs to be reinstalled, etc. I managed to put electricity to it with my wife, but doing drywall work or any finish work absolutely TERRIFIES me.
I know - its such a stupid fear, from a guy that does all his own auto repairs (from repairing an engine to fixing fuel injection issues), fixes appliances, etc, and I had a pretty good garden going this summer...
Anyway, I just wanted to figure out why you have not removed the hitch from your home.
pedro --- We didn't remove the hitch because in old models like ours (from the sixties), the hitch usually would have to be cut off, rather than unbolted. That sounded hard....
Good luck with your project! If you haven't already, you might want to pick up Trailersteading, which is free today.