Covering vents in the winter?

[iafirebuff]

Just curious, we have never covered our vents in the 16 winters we have had our mobile home here in Iowa. I was just thinking about trying that this year. If so, what is a good thing to use? We have vinyl skirting on a 16x70. We have not had any issues as we have heat tape and insulation on our pipes, and we use a lot of water throughout the day and keep the heat going. Any thoughts yay or neigh? TIA!

[Greg]

It can't hurt. If you have any extra skirting sections you could just slide the vented section out and put a solid one in. Greg

[Yanita]

Hi,

If you have the solid vinyl with individual vents you could also cover them with plastic or some other type of wind barrier. In our BOOKS/PARTS link Mark also has some self closing vents, they are great!

Yanita

[Seacoast Sharon]

Hi there,
New to the site as of today. It's nice to know there's a forum I can go to with all my MH questions. I bought a 1980 MH 4 years ago and sure have learned a lot, but still learning. The vent tape is what I learned last year from the MH service company that I had come to do some plumbing work. I was told using the tape helps with the cold air getting underneath reaching the pipes. I found a roll of this particular tape at Home Depot. It looks just like Duct tape and is blue it a weather resistant aluminum tape.

[troyster]

If you want to close yours vents then close them when it reaches freezing and open them at the end of winter when temps reach above freezing. frozen air wont carry moisture but temps above freezing will. vents are needed to get moisture out of your crawl space. I use floor heat registers for my outside vents because I can slide them open or closed, and they are much cheaper than hardware store vents.

[iafirebuff]

THANKS for the advice! We bought our home new in 1992 and have never covered the vents. Our crawlspace area has always been dry (except this past spring with our leaking water main - since corrected and dried out). THe under area looks like it did in 1992. I think I will just leave the vented panels uncovered.

On a side note, I stuck a wireless thermometer under our house. It has been 25 degrees outside that past few days and 41-42 under our house.