RV Life: Our first water leak

Easter week I woke up one morning to find that my pillow was wet! I don't drool that much, do I? No, I quickly found that the headboard is also wet. It had rained overnight and knew we had a leak somewhere on the roof. I wish it had just been my drool because getting water inside your RV is NOT good and can be complicated and expensive to fix if it has gone far enough. After unscrewing the headboard I can see that the water came in through one of the screw holes. That was easy, but I know that water can travel far inside a wall before finding a way in.
I am nervous as I climb up to the roof to see if I can find where it is leaking. The most likely place would be around one of the marker lights high up on the front of the trailer, or in one of the seams somewhere on the roof. I am actually relieved when I find clear cracks in the lap sealant between the front plastic and the rubber roof.

This is the corner where water found a way in.

This is our refrigerator vent showing similar cracks in the lap sealant.

Fortunately, it is not raining anymore and there are several days with no rain in the forecast. We are parked in the driveway of friends outside of Dallas, TX, so it's actually a very good place to be working on the trailer (many campgrounds do not allow self-repairs).

The first step in fixing this was to remove the old sealant and see the extent of the damage at the entry point. The lap sealant is designed to stick to almost anything and create a watertight seal, so it's not an easy task to remove it. After some quick research online I resort to the most common recommendation, patience and lots of elbow grease!

I found that the best tool I had to remove it was the flat head screwdriver.

In the beginning, it was much easier than I thought to remove the old sealant. It came off completely by just gently pulling it off the roof. It would have taken me no more than 30 minutes to finish but the further I got from the leak the harder it became to remove the sealant. I guess that the water that came in through the cracks had softened the bond between the roof and the sealant. After getting the first third done in about 10 minutes I spent several hours painstakingly pulling and prying off the rest. I'm very glad that it is not necessary to completely remove every trace of this stuff.

You can see the line between the wet and dry board in this picture.

I was clear that the only place that water had come in was in the left front corner of the trailer. From there it had traveled two-thirds of the way inside the front wall and come out closer to the right side. Without tearing the wall out I had no good way of determining how much water had come in, and how much damage it had done. I have a moisture meter and it does show slightly elevated levels inside that wall but without getting inside the wall to check I just can't know for sure. The wall does not feel soft or show any signs of water damage so decided to leave it open for a few days to let some of the water dry up and then seal it up and hope for the best.

The resealing was a lot easier than the cleanup! I used Butyl-tape to put under the metal strip to seal the screw holes. Butyl creates a great seal and is much cheaper than the recommended Dicor lap sealant. I still had to put Dicore over the top of it to complete the seal.

Butyl-tape under the metal-strip...

...and over the screws...

...and a final cover with Dicor to complete the seal.

After finishing this I did a more thorough inspection of the roof and found a few more places where there were cracks in the old sealant. I completely redid the refrigerator vent and added some new Dicor over a couple of other minor cracks.

It looks like we have avoided any major water damage to our home and I now know that I have to be more diligent and inspect all possible places for leaks more regularly. I am very thankful for the dry weather we had all winter in southern California and believ that we are ready for a much wetter sommer in the north east.

Thanks for following the journey of me and my family
as we travel and roadschool our kids around the USA.

If you like this post please consider upvoting, following and resteeming!