Mobile Home Tie-Down & Anchor Calculator

Use this to get a rough count of the ground anchors and frame ties your home ought to have. Then you can compare it with what is actually under there.

The answer comes back as a band rather than one exact figure. The count that truly governs your home lives in the spacing table of its installation manual, and no calculator can know that table without the manual in hand.

Reading the result

Take a flashlight around the skirting, or ask us to, and tally the straps and anchors you find. If your tally falls under the low end of the band, the home is short. If the count looks fine but the straps hang slack or the anchor heads are crusted with rust, the count does not help you much either.

On our pricing page a complete anchor and strap retrofit or new install runs $600–$3,500. Single anchors and straps get priced one at a time, and re-tensioning straps is frequently folded into a relevel for little or nothing extra.

That makes a relevel the smartest time to fix anchoring. Our crew is already crawling under the home, so the extra labor is small.

Problems we find under older Highlands County homes

Ends with no strap. HUD calls for a tie within two feet of each end, and older installs skip it all the time.
Straps gone slack. Sandy ground lets a home shift and settle, which changes the angles and takes the tension out of the strap. A loose strap holds almost nothing.
Rust where you cannot see it. The section of strap at the frame can look healthy while the part buried in damp sand has mostly eaten away.
Anchors that moved in wet ground. Sand soaked for weeks grips an anchor far less than dry sand. After a rainy summer or a storm, anchors that once held may have crept.
Not enough ties for the footprint. Common on homes that were moved, widened, or given an addition.

Inland does not mean safe

A lot of owners think of tie-downs as something for the coast. Highlands County sits about a hundred miles from either shoreline and is still rated HUD Wind Zone II, designed for 100 mph, because tropical storms keep their strength well past the beaches.

The homes we worry about most here were placed before the 1994 HUD standards took effect. Many are still in local parks on their first set of anchors, and many have never had anyone inspect that hardware, much less upgrade it.

Who is allowed to do this work

Blocking, leveling and anchoring a sited mobile home all count as installation under Florida law, and the state requires a mobile home installer license for it. Get the license number on paper, confirm it is active, and request proof of insurance as a separate document. Our installer licensing page walks through how to look a license up and what other questions to ask.

Two more free tools

Run the settling self-check to score twelve signs you can see without going underneath, and it will say so plainly if your home looks fine. The cost calculator estimates a relevel using our published price table.

Our crew works in Sebring plus Avon Park, Lake Placid, Lorida, Frostproof, and Wauchula.

Wind Zone II planner

How many tie-downs does my home need?

All of Sebring sits in HUD Wind Zone II, rated to 100 mph. This works out the ballpark from your home's size and age so you know whether what is under there now is short.

Home type Length of the home Year the home was built What is under there now?

Frame ties this home likely needs

Get the anchors inspected and quoted →

A planning estimate from the HUD Wind Zone II spacing rules, not a compliance determination. The binding number is the spacing table in this home's installation manual, and in South Carolina the anchoring itself has to be installed by a licensed manufactured home installer.

Frequently Asked Questions

Which HUD wind zone covers Sebring and the rest of Highlands County?

Wind Zone II, the 100 mph design zone that applies across inland Florida. Sitting in the middle of the state is no exemption. Tropical storms cross the county often enough, and any home placed before the 1994 HUD rules went in under weaker anchoring requirements.

What is the planner based on?

24 CFR 3285.402, the federal installation standard. In Wind Zone II the maximum gap between diagonal ties runs somewhere around 4 to 8 feet, driven by how wide the home is and where the strap attaches. Each end of the home needs a strap no more than 2 feet in, and each diagonal tie in this zone is paired with a vertical one.

Does the planner give me the count the law requires?

It does not, and treat any tool or salesman claiming that with suspicion. The count that governs your home is in its own installation manual, where the spacing table factors in width, roof slope, strap height and soil class. What we give you is the band that manual should land in, which is plenty to spot a home that is clearly under-anchored. Florida requires the person doing anchoring work to hold a state mobile home installer license, so ask whoever does the work for the license number, us included.

Our home went in during the 1980s. Should that change anything?

Yes, a lot. Anything placed before the 1994 HUD rules was anchored to an older, lighter standard, and plenty of those homes still sit on the original hardware. If yours is one of them and nobody has touched the anchors since, expect the planner to come up short, and it is worth having us look even if every door still closes.