When I bought this camper I knew almost nothing – all right nothing – about evaluating the quality and needs of an RV. I walked around it, I looked at the appliances – good lord I didn’t even drive it! Needless to say I have been busy over the years paying for that lack of knowledge.
It turns out the roof was not in good condition and I have patched and taped and gooped it for five years trying to stay dry, with modest success. The time has finally arrived to fix the roof!
Mostly the seams along the edge needed to be fixed but a major eight foot by eight foot section needed complete replacement because the A/C has leaked for years and rotted the roof, support and ceiling. It sagged at that spot and water would pool on the roof until it found some way into my home.
This is what the roof looked like as I prepared to replace it. Click on the images for larger photos. I removed all of the skylights, solar, vents, and A/C. I left the A/C on the roof since it was so heavy.
Here I have started to peel off the old rubber roof, exposing the rot. I did other things for a couple of days to let it dry out.
View from the inside after removing everything that needed to go.
I replaced some of the structure and also added some so that it would be stronger. Originally it had 1/8″ luan as the decking – I replaced it with 3/8″ plywood.
The back eight feet of the roof was still in good shape so I didn’t replace the decking. I used some transition pieces to reduce the step down. You can see it in the last photo. The hole in the foreground was cut larger to accommodate a new two foot by three foot clear skylight in the bedroom. We can lay in bed and watch the stars.
Here is the roof ready for the Vinyl. Each night I placed the roof items over the holes because with the exception of 3 nights we still lived in it. Notice also that the vent for the refrigerator is gone. We replaced the two way frig with a domestic apartment frig that didn’t need venting.
Here is the finished roof. It has a few wrinkles in it but in general I am very pleased with the result. In the foreground it looks very bumpy – that is actually on the surface. I rolled it back some to get rid of bubbles and the glue underneath got on the top and collected some dirt. It is VERY sticky. Oh well it still works great.
Overall the project was easier and turned out better than I expected. The total was about $2,000 and that included a new skylight fan and skylight in bedroom.
