a deeper dive into roof maintenance

Clicking a pic is not required...but you will feel better if you do.

boondocking in Buena Vista Colorado.

I finished up a few wiring details on the Lance's taillights, and now they are rightly and truly finished and hopefully won't quit on some busy road in a faraway state.

I crawled up on the roof of the Lance today and made a few mental notes of what needs to be done, and it appears that no one has ever redone the factory caulking on the roof, so there are a lot of cracks visible in the self-leveling caulk. But this is a good thing to me, and here's why.

Before I bought the Lance last year, I checked everything thoroughly for any signs of leaks.... After all, this is my sixth RV,  not my first. I found no soft spots in the ceiling or the floor and no water staining anywhere inside the Lance. I have since been in numerous rainstorms in Colorado and Arizona in the last year, and have never seen any area of the Lance where water enters. But if you look at how old the sealants are and the cracks visible in the self-leveling caulk, it's hard to believe it's not leaking... But it's not, and here's what I believe is happening.

Properly installed by the factory, all of the gadgets that need holes in the roof have redundant sealing methods. The vents and everything else requiring a hole in the roof are set in butyl sealant tape. And this alone is enough to keep out the water, including the screws holding the gadgets down. But this butyl sealant tape is susceptible to hardening and deteriorating from the sun's UVs. So the factories put another layer of leak protection on every doo-dad that needs a hole in the roof in the form of self-leveling caulk, which kinda seals up the butyl tape from the elements and seeps and flows into any tiny cracks there may be, hence the name "self-leveling."

But the self-leveling caulk, depending on the weather conditions, tends to deteriorate fairly rapidly, keeping the manufacturer named Dicore endlessly producing caulk to keep ahead of the ever-deteriorating product they make for the RV industry. And amazingly enough, the faster their very expensive caulk deteriorates, the more of this costly caulk RVers have to buy.

As I said before, what I saw on my roof was a good thing, and here's the good part. Since the factory caulking job was unmolested, apparently no one in the past has put great ginormous gobs of self-leveling caulk all over everything. And there's been no leaking taking place, which means the butyl sealant tape is still doing its job of keeping out the rain.

So it looks like all I need to do is put some Eternabond tape on everything, and the Lance will be good to go until the family takes away my truck keys and my camera, puts me in an old geezer home, where I will still be writing this blog and DRAWING pictures of places I wish I could go.

Theboondork

Boondocking in Buena Vista Colorado.

A tiny spider smaller than my little fingernail chowing down on a hapless bug.

Since were all rather large, we don't pay any attention to the tiny world that lives all around us. And it's a good thing because the macro world is a terrifying place to be.