Thread: Tub Surround Material

Hi:

Is this material suitable for wet location use? It's in a mobile home. It's hard to see from the pic, but the material is the same stuff you see on mobile home interior walls like bedrooms. I call it 1/4 board.
Seller says it came with the mobile home so it must be ok.

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Originally Posted by Joe Arcaro

Hi:

Is this material suitable for wet location use? It's in a mobile home. It's hard to see from the pic, but the material is the same stuff you see on mobile home interior walls like bedrooms. I call it 1/4 board.
Seller says it came with the mobile home so it must be ok.

Your pic doesn't show much and your description is vague. Is it FRP board? Another product that I have seen in manufactured homes as well as homes built around here in the 1970s was a product that we refer to as "Marlite". This product is a hardboard (like Masonite) that has a thin vinyl coating. This certainly has a limited life span and often fails at seams and penetrations.

Manufactured homes conform to HUD standards rather than local building codes which are generally prescriptive. As a result, many products that are not used in site-built homes are used in manufactured housing because of cost as well as their ability to withstand the movement caused by travel.

Some of these products have a baked on paint finish. None of them hold up to regular wetting. You can still buy the stuff and you can still replace it in about a year of daily use.

Manufactured home builders use a lot of sh.. (stuff) that is poor quality. It may be permitted, but if it is tempered hardboard based it will not last a long time.