The intent here is to provide friendly help on the education that roof care along with siding joint care is a must if you want to keep your camper a good long time, rot free. The roof is worse then the siding joints but as the camper gets older, widows, doors and cargo door seals can be a problem too.
Some RV owners never realized what it takes to care for an RV roof until it sadly showed up as a water infection problem. The premise that, since there are no leaks seen in the camper, all must be just fine right? They intuitively think the camper is built like their home roof and that the roof does not need regular maintenance only gets replaced every 25 to 30 years. Well, no a camper that tows down the highway and built with materials that are a lot less costly then how a house roof is built. The is very different as the house that stands still and is built to last a real long time with time proven materials and methods.
The camper water problem by the nature of a slow leak, is a water infection that can be festering for 1 or 2 years in the walls, ceiling or floor rotting the camper away before the leak can be seen inside. And by then, the damage is done. The leak left a trail on the outside, but only if you know where to look for it and how to protect against it. It is all fixable if you have the problem, but can be very costly if it has to be hired out at a large dealership because it can be labor intensive to repair.
Water issues can also happen to folks who know and do roof maintenance but the leak sometimes comes about mid winter and is not discovered until spring if the camper lives outside exposed. However, the folks doing the roof maintenance regularly have much lower odds of water infection.
Point being, when you get the camper and have a little time in the first month or so, check the sealants at all roof penetrations and all door, window and cargo doors. On the roof, look at the sealants at any pipe, vent, edging etc. where the rubber part touches some object, and that goes for the entire perimeter of the rubber where it is attached to the siding of any wall. Don't think that since the dealer prepped the camper for you, that unless you had a specific agreement with them on roof care and water infection, that they did any roof maintenance before delivering a used camper.
On the roof, a special caulk is used that over time the caulk can develop splits that start out as a hair line crack. That hair line crack can be tolerable at the early stages. As time goes on left untouched, that tiny split can turn into a crater and hole to the inside of the camper. The roof also needs to be washed regularly to keep stuff from growing up there pending where it camps and is stored. Your camper by now is old enough it should of had many touch ups in the caulking. Some may be tiny, others larger. If there has been no touche ups, that means the prior owner never knew they where supposed to do roof care and did not do anything. That can be a problem.
See this post for more help and ask away on anything that does not make sense or how to do it.
http://www.sunlineclub.com/forums/f7...1-a-11508.html That post also talks about that your camper most likely does not have the special order direct walk on roof. To service the roof, you have to take precautions with a tarp or something to protect the rubber from abrasion and to use small sheets of plywood to spread out your weight.
I didn't mean to scare you to death on your camper you don't even have yet.... just to give you a heads up on this topic since you are into the details. Here recently we keep bumping into situations that the original owner or the past owner did nothing on roof maintenance and the new owner finds this out after the fact with a leak inside.
Hope this helps.
John
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