old leak repair and plastic liner

[mainah]

OK I'm about finished repairing the floor inside the rear compartment of my T1700 what a chore! I replaced all the stringers half lapped the joints and screwed them together to make them pretty level now the question is --- how does one keep the water from laying in the plastic liner? The roof at some point leaked right at the top edge ran down the wall and lay in the plastic bottom and rotted the wood. The walls are fine except where they touched the stringers they of course were quite rotted because they were laying in the water. The floor is filled with fiberglass insulation that did not help either so I'm putting foam back in instead. Has any one put like small boat scuppers under the plastic liner facing rearward to let the water drain if it should leak? The plastic is pretty neat in a perfect world but it sure holds water.

[JohnB]

Hi Mainah

I do not know the year of your camper but I'm thinking your are describing the Darco waterproof membrane that is common on many of the campers, especially the new ones. Looks like this in the pic and is around 0.013" thick


The Darco is a double edged sword. Yes it keeps the water out but once it finds it's way on the back side of the Darco there is no way out... I had this happen on my slide floor. Water made it's way in through exposed holes and once in, no way out. Then it festers and soon the OSB board swells and then the glue goes and the chips fall apart...

I do not know of a drain system. Knowing how the water infection rot situation can happen I have taken the leak prevention route. I Eternabonded all the roof seams as water in the walls or attic is bad news. All DOT lights have Dicor on the top and edges so you do not infect there. I have gutter rail down spouts so the windows and cargo doors do not get soaked with my layout where the original stream of heavy water would directly be soaking the camper wall under those gutter rail ends. The bottom of the camper I made sure there was no holes and I even made enclosed fender areas and just added mud flaps to keep the water while towing from flying up all over the Darco.

If you know of some draining type vent device it is worth a try as long as it is only a one way device and cannot let water in.

Draining is a good thing but stopping it from ever getting in from above is as important if not more so. The best is both if you can create a draining system that will deal with the length and width of where to put it. If you come up with something please post. I would be curious to see.

Good luck

John

[mainah]

I knew it was wet back there when I bought it but did not have a good look till the other day there was a strip in the floor about 4 feet long right on top of a badly rotted stringer one thing lead to another and after I had a large trash can full of rotted wood it's all done. After I had it apart I could see what happend it had been leaking in the back from a poorly sealed roof. Some where a long the line it was repaired it looks like standard roof tar that's the next task. I do have a barn to keep it in so I can have at it at any time and it's not going to get wet! I still am going to see if I can come up with some type of system to let the low spots drain who knows I may do some thing dumb like leave the windows and vents open and it will rain 6".