How To Attach A Porch To A Mobile Home

By  Hunker Team

Things Needed

  • Plywood

  • Stud finder

  • Lag bolts

  • 2-by-6 pressure-treated wood

  • Shingles or rolled roofing material

  • Roof flashing

Tip

If you want to have functional outdoor space without the worries of an attached porch, consider building a freestanding deck instead. You can abut the deck to the side of the mobile home without attaching it. For sun and rain cover, a retractable awning can serve the same purpose as a porch roof.

Warning

If your mobile home is not supported by footings buried beneath the frost line, attaching a porch can cause big trouble. As the ground shifts, the mobile home and the porch will shift at different rates, and separation and damage will likely occur.

How to Attach a Porch to a Mobile Home. Adding a porch to your mobile home can give you valuable added square footage, at least during the warm months. Building a porch is a fairly straightforward project for anyone with carpentry experience. Attaching the porch to the mobile home, however, can get a little tricky.

Step 1

Check the building codes for your area. Some cities and counties have codes about what you can and cannot build onto your mobile home and regulations that you must follow. Following the building codes will preserve the value of your home.

Step 2

Determine how your mobile home is supported. To safely attach a porch to a mobile home, that mobile home must be anchored to the ground with footings that are buried beneath the frost line.

Step 3

Build and secure the flooring of the porch first before adding the roof. The flooring of the porch must be supported by footings that are also buried below the frost line. You do not need to attach the flooring of the porch to the exterior wall of the mobile home.

Step 4

Use a stud finder to find the studs in the exterior wall where the porch is located.

Step 5

Build the roof for the porch onto the exterior wall of the mobile home. Attach a 2 x 6 ledger board to the studs on the wall using lag bolts. The ledger board should be about 1 1/2 inches below the roof line of the mobile home.

Step 6

Frame out your roof, working off the ledger board. Hang the roof joists and cover them with plywood.

Step 7

Install flashing along the roof line of the porch to make it waterproof.

Step 8

Shingle the roof or apply a rolled roofing material to finish it off.

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