Now, I’m looking at products that range from vinyl sheeting that goes all the way around and sometimes requires drilling into the RV to plastic and adhesive options and everything in between. Once you take down the skirting, it stays up there and isn’t aesthetically pleasing. Then you put these big giant balloons under the RV and blow them up, which is supposed to block off the air. But those are dumb-looking, and they’re like four thousand dollars.
So, I’ve got an idea. As I said, such as foam insulation boarding and sheathing. They’re four by eight sheets. They come in different thicknesses—half-inch, just under ten dollars, and then the inch-and-a-half, two-inch options, etc. I don’t believe we’ll need anything that size, but let’s look. And before we start, please make sure to hit that thumbs up.
That’s like a noisy cart. You can say air ride on these things. Sometimes, navigating this place is kind of crazy. Where can I find the 4×8 insulation sheathing and the foam? It’s like a four-by-eight foam board. I will use it for skirting around the RV, but it’s made of foam.
Well, we have an issue already. These are the ones that I need that are one inch. They are $15.75 apiece. They said they had 26 of these; there were only five. So, they’re checking. This is the half-inch, and that’s too thin. It’s not too bendy, maybe in a lighter climate, but we’re in the mountains. Ultimately, I would like to do that, but I don’t know. Let’s see if they got it.
It will take roughly 15 sheets to do the whole thing, with some extra just in case. And now, we need to get some all-weather thinking—the cold-weather aluminium tape. That stuff is pretty hearty. As I said, it’s because of the cold weather, so I should not have any problems. Duct tape tends to dissolve and go to crap, especially when it gets wet.
Okay, so the next thing we need is aluminium tape. You know, there’s all that HVAC aluminium foil tape now. Oh, there’s a bunch. But we’re looking for extreme weather. Let me see.
Extreme weather foil tape. There’s 50 yards, 150 feet. It’s suitable for 30-35 degrees Fahrenheit, with a negative 35 up to 260. That’s awesome. Durable bond and harsh weather, permanent airtight. Yeah, that stuff looks good. Let’s take two to be safe. We’ll take two of them. The total right now is $324. Let me see. Those two rolls of tape were $55 for two rolls, but this will work. DIY skirting for your RV—you could spend thousands of dollars or do it yourself. And yeah, let’s get to it.
We’re back at the property, and I’m slightly excited. I’m figuring out what better place to start. Yeah, I’ll start at the beginning. So, yeah, let’s do it. One of the things I’m going to do is—it is five minutes to 12:30, and I’m going to time myself to see how long this takes. But I think I can get it done pretty quickly. I’m not going to rush, but we’re going to do it right; we’re going to get it done, and we’ll be safe for the winter, at least for this part. Cool, let’s do it.
One of the things that I made sure to grab, other than these little plastic putty knives, was to smooth out the tape and get a nice seal. That was a good idea. Other than that, I will only use a razor knife and a tape measure. Let’s do it.
So, I want it to ride up into here a little bit, and they’re four foot by eight foot, so I’ll be good at two feet. I could take two feet, and it’ll wrap up here. I’ll get more material and split it directly down the centre. The majority of the front, the very front, the sides down, and the other side will be about two feet. So, the back starts to go downhill, so the back of the RV is slightly higher. That’ll be an entire portion.
Well, one little part needs to be fixed or finished. This is the part I’m going to have issues with—it’s getting everything to cover up inside of there. Now, I can crawl under, put a piece of board, put a piece underneath, or up against there and draw out the wheel well from the
But that little piece fit in there, cool. And then there is the back. I did dig out a full four-foot sheet. But you see how different—when I built the RV pad, it came back, but I knew the wheels would be way up there. So, it would just be this backside hanging down.
So, as far as all this in between here and around here, I have all of this bark material. You see, down—way down there, there are all those logs, big giants. There’s so much bark down there. But yeah, I think it’s turned out well. I think it’s an excellent investment. Now, you guys could probably—I mean, if you want to, you can fork out the couple thousand dollars for those weird blow-up balloon ones. I mean, it’s like four thousand dollars, or you can get that plastic skirt. But the reality of the situation with that plastic skirt is you have to put some adhesive or something on the outside of your RV, or buttons or whatever. And I think it’s tacky because then you have to go through and… I mean, it’s not very strong and blows in the wind. I don’t know. I think this will be much more efficient if you’re willing to invest the time…
I’ve only spent $374, and I’m guaranteed to take half of those sheets back because I’ve only used one, two, or four sheets. So, there are four sheets total, and I bought 15. I’ve just done the whole side and the back, except the wheel well. But I will bring it back and a thirty-dollar roll of tape. So, let’s finish this thing. Woohoo! Ouch.
We got most of it done, the skirting all around. The only thing I have yet to do is the tyres, but this is the next day. We slept last night, woke up this morning, and even then noticed a significant difference. The temperature dropped to about 38 degrees last night, and wow, what a difference from what I did yesterday.
Again, please take into consideration that I did not cover the wheels. I’m going to work on a different process or a different idea for covering the wheels. But as far as the rest of it, it’s all done. All we have to do right now is spread the bark. Check it out! So, considering this panel right here, I have not taped it up yet. I will use that as a door so I can enter underneath the RV if I need to go check out anything that might be crunched or crawling under. Hopefully, nothing, but who knows? We’re deep into the Cascade Mountains, so you never know. So onward now, it’s nothing but wheelbarrow loads to fix up and finish the rest of this, which I’m going to cover all of this back here—yep, all of that back there—and then obviously the very, very back. But yeah, let’s get to that.
Okay, I’ve finished it officially and am proud of myself now. I have five sheets left, about $16 a piece, plus the $30 roll of aluminium tape that I can bring back, which is pretty awesome. So, without further ado, let’s check it out. They got the table and the chair out there. It’s nice and neat; everything is back where it should be. It looks much better back here with this bark, which I like.
And there you go! So, there you go. I’m pleased with how it turned out, as we worked within a budget under $400 compared to the online products—which I don’t doubt. I mean, if someone’s interested in that, they want to do that, they want to spend all that extra money. Because I didn’t find anything that was less than a thousand dollars. And if you are a DIY kind of person and you want to spend a little bit of time on a project, then this is worth it. I think the material is a lot better than some of the materials that they have online.
As far as this goes, one thing that should be noted is that this is a more semi-permanent to permanent solution. This is not something that you take down or put up quickly and then take down quickly. This is where the RV will be sitting here for a while. Now, one of the s that I didn’t mention is that our RV is waiting to live in this for about a year or so. The reason is that we’re out on the property, and we’re in the process of getting permits to build a house, and that’s the reason why we have this big RV out here. Eventually, once we make the house and I work further on the driveway—because to get it up here, oh, that was such a headache—granted, it is 44 feet, but once we get the driveway taken care of, we’ll be able to hit the road and enjoy that RV for what it was made for: travelling.