Today I was up at 7am and outside applying The Solution to the upper one third and crown molding on the passenger side of the coach. I was using my BIL James 12ft ladder. Boy was it heavy but it sure made it easy on this old body. I started on the passenger side as the pad was much more level than the drivers side. I started in the back of the coach working my way around toward the front.
As I got about midship just where our Dometic refrigerator vent is located I saw a huge crack and opening right at the back corner of the vent shroud. Could this be the area where the rain has been entering and traveling back in the ceiling to the bathroom?
The more I process it I finally convinced myself that this could not have been the original entry point. When we applied the Eternabond tape about three weeks ago I would have certainly noticed this as I was rolling the tape with the steel roller all around the vent. I was down on my knees and would surely have seen this large of a crack. So, my speculation is it might have happened in Canton the Tuesday night we had the bad storm with wind gusts to 60 mph. My BIL Mike said he didn't notice this side of the vent since he did not do any sealing there.
While there trying to figure out what I was going to do I noticed one of the four long screws that holds the vent cover down was loose and raised up about inch and a half. Enough that you could pick that corner up and it would rise up placing pressure on the rear of the cover where the shroud was cracked. The vent shroud appears to be brittle. I imagine the exhaust heat of the refrigerator and UV has done a number on it.
Now what to do? We head out to Canton this Friday and we have a 70% chance of a thunderstorm tonight thru tomorrow. The two RV repair centers here certainly would not be able to deal with replacing the shroud without an appointment.
Sooooo I said let's patch the crack with the Eternabond tape until we get a chance to address a more permanent fix. That my friends is exactly what we did. I also dipped the long screw in sealant and reset it. Now we await the storm and the rain. Hope we have not bored you to much with this leaky roof thing we are currently going through.
Until next time. . . .MtnAire Travlers.
Wow! That's quite a crack...glad you found it and have a temporary fix before the rains come.
ReplyDeleteWe lost one of our air conditioner shrouds last year during a heavy rain/wind somewhere in Louisiana. We did a quick fix and actually bought the wrong thing and spent waaaay more than we should. I think the RV dealer saw us coming. LOL
Good luck!