How to Make Camper Skirting Out of Foam Board Insulation

Step 2. Arranging the Pieces As You Cut

After we had cut several pieces, we put them where they were going to be used so we could see what we still needed to cut.

Optional: Put foam board on the bottom of your slides.

General, you only skirt the open areas beneath your RV. However, I have found that attaching foam board to the bottom of each slide really helps to reduce heat loss through the floors of my slide-outs and makes the camper feel a lot less drafty. 

If nothing else, I would definitely do this to any slides that won't have skirting around them, like a bedroom slide that is so high up that the skirting won't reach it.

One note: Please learn from my mistakes and DON'T tape the foam board like I did in the above photo. That tape was very difficult to remove and left behind residue. I recommend using foil HVAC tape instead, which is what we used in subsequent years.

Step 3. Placing the Pieces of Foam Board

Once cut and arranged, it's time to place your foam.

If you're using a type of foam board that has a silver reflective material on one side, the silver side goes INSIDE, facing underneath your camper.  This is so that the heat will be reflected back under your camper. If you put the silver side facing outward, it will do nothing except reflect sunlight away from your camper, which is the opposite of what you want.

Step 5. Securing the Skirting Along the Bottom

This side of our camper was sitting in gravel, so following a tip from one of our neighbors, I dug out a trench (using the claw side of a hammer) for the skirting to sit in.

Then I packed the gravel up against the skirting on both sides (I packed it on the back first) to help hold it in place.

Unless you're in a location that gets very high winds, you may not need to do anything more than this to hold the skirting in place along the bottom, but if you are in a very windy area or if you don't have gravel, read on. I'll be sharing some other ideas for how to hold the skirting in place.

On one side of our camper, the ground was dirt instead of gravel, so to hold the foam board in place on this side we pounded tent stakes into the ground on each side of the foam.  This worked very well and also made it easy to remove a single panel if we needed to access the area underneath the RV for some reason.

Here's a photo of one of the tent stakes on the inside:

Step 6. Joining the Seams

Instead of HVAC tape, we used duct tape to join the pieces of foam board to each other and to cover the seams between pieces of foam board because it was sturdier and leaving behind residue was not a concern. 

We chose white duct tape to match the white foam board so that it would look nicer.

Tip: How to Handle Tricky Spots

Here's how we handled a few of the trickier parts of our RV, where a straight-edged piece of foam board would not work.

For the front of our RV beneath the cargo access door, we had to cut the foam at a curve.  This wasn't really too difficult; we just used a marker to mark it first before cutting.

Making a Hole for the Sewage Hose

Here we had to cut out a hole for our sewage hose. 

Going Around the Fenders

I cut the foam to fit around this fender and covered the gaps with HVAC tape to create a seal. 

The height at the top of the wheel well was more than 2 feet, so I cut an additional piece of foam to fit. I attached it with duct tape on the backside of the foam.

My husband had a different approach to skirting the fender area on the other side of the RV.  He simply removed the fender to make it easier to cover.  If you do this, you might want to cover the holes with some HVAC tape to prevent them from rusting. 

We just stashed the fender piece underneath the RV with the screws taped to it so they wouldn't get lost.

Areas with Different Heights

This part of the RV was kind of tricky because it involved different heights. Plus, we wanted to access our water connection (under the corner of the slide) if needed.

Here's what that area looked like after we got it done.

Skirting Around the Steps

The steps can also be challenging to figure out. After installing the foam, I covered the opening behind the steps with a shower curtain.

Step 7: Sealing the Skirting with Tape

After all of the skirting was in place, we taped along the top of all of it using HVAC tape. We did this to create a seal that would prevent heat from escaping and to create a neat, finished look.

The Finished Project

We were happy with how our skirting looked finished, and even happier knowing that we would stay warm without having to worry about our pipes freezing.

I liked this skirting better than our vinyl skirting because once it was finished, it stayed in place. The vinyl skirting sometimes fell down on windy days and had to be rehung.

We decided not to skirt around the front of the RV this time, partly due to the cost of so much foam, and partly due to the hassle of making skirting that would go around the tongue and tripod. 

That part of the RV is where our closet is located, and to help prevent heat loss there I lined our closet with faux wood planks made from foam that provided extra insulation.

In the past we tried making vinyl skirting to go around that part of the RV, but it was really difficult to get it to stay in place and the wind would frequently blow under it.  In the future, I would invest in a commercially made wind skirt like this one that was specifically designed for that purpose and also provided easy access to the storage underneath.

8 Ways to Secure Foam Board Skirting Along the Bottom

As promised, here are some suggestions for ways to secure your foam board skirting so that it stays in place even in high winds.

• Gravel – If you're parked on gravel, dig a trench for your skirting to sit in, then pack the gravel up against the skirting on both sides. This is what we did and it's free!
• Snow – If you are spending winter in a place where snow stays on the ground all winter long, you can pack snow up against the foam board to hold it in place, and this provides extra insulation as well.
• Tent stakes – If you're parked on dirt or grass, you can use tent stakes on each side of the skirting to hold it in place.
• Spray foam – You can run a line of expanding spray foam sealant along the bottom of your skirting on both sides to fill gaps and attach it to the ground. If your camper is sitting on pavement or concrete, you can put down plastic first (a commenter on my YouTube channel suggested Saran Wrap) so you don't end up with the difficult task of scraping up all of the foam later.
• Bricks or rocks – If you don't mind hauling bricks (or buying them only to sell or give away later), you can put bricks on each side of the skirting to hold them in place.  Large rocks would work too—even better if you have a bunch of rocks laying around that you don't have to buy.
• Lumber – Many RVers build a wood frame around the base of their RV to create a structure to attach the foam board to.  If you are handy with tools this might be a good option, especially if you have access to free wood.
• Sandbags – One RVer who was parked on a concrete pad told me he held his vinyl skirting in place using sandbags that he purchased online and filled with play sand. He ended up dumping the sand at the end of winter.
• Gallon jugs of water – One year we used plastic gallon jugs filled with water to weigh our vinyl skirting, and these could be used to help hold foam skirting in place as well.  An added bonus to this is that you'll have water you can melt and use in emergencies, and a second added bonus is that you can tell by whether the water under your camper is liquid or not how effective your skirting is at keeping the temperature above freezing.

Pros and Cons of Using Foam Board to Skirt an RV

Pros:

• The cost.  We spent just $106 on all the materials required to skirt our 38-foot camper.
• The durability.  It stayed in place and we could have used it the following winter if we hadn't sold that RV. We left it on through the summer and stayed nice and cool through the hot summer months.
• Protection from cold. Our vinyl skirting worked just fine for us in temperatures below freezing down to about 0º F, but if I were planning to spend winter in a place where the temperature regularly dipped below zero, I would trust foam board skirting more than I would trust vinyl.

Cons:

• Not environmentally friendly. A big downside for me is that it can't be easily re-used or transported. You may end up throwing it away and replacing it if you plan to move to a different spot each winter. I was hoping to recycle the foam when we removed it, but they wouldn't accept our skirting because it was too dirty.
• It doesn't allow you to move. The main reason we chose vinyl skirting over foam board was that I wanted a type of skirting I could take down and put back up without too much trouble. Our billboard tarp skirting ended up being a bigger hassle to up and take down than I had hoped, especially when it got wet and muddy. It was possible to reuse and could be folded up for transport. Foam board skirting is really intended to be left in place all winter long and would be extremely difficult to transport once cut.

An alternative type of skirting for RVers who move often

If you will be moving a lot during the winter and need a type of skirting that you can quickly take down and put up, I recommend checking out AirSkirts.  This type of skirting didn't exist at the time we were living in our RV, but it's inflatable skirting made from heavy-duty, puncture-resistant vinyl that you inflate with an electric or battery-powered pump (kind of like inflating bounce house at a carnival).

The cool thing about AirSkirts compared to traditional vinyl skirting is that it doesn't actually attach to your RV, so you don't have to drill holes or put anything adhesive on your camper.  As it inflates, it takes shape around the various parts under your RV, and these hold it in place.

Do you have other ideas for securing foam board skirting, or any other tips for skirting an RV to share?  Leave a comment below!

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