A very old stray {The Old Fella Story}

SGTJOE wrote:
Hey Burch, if the leak only seems to occur when your slide is out do you have covers that come out with the slide? Is the leak on top or along one of the sides?

I went over to the motorhome during lunch today to check and it was dry so it only seems to leak when the slide is extended. The slide does have slide toppers installed so it should only be getting a little water on top of the slide roof during a blowing rain. The leak is in the corner of the slide ceiling. The water is coming in on the corner and was staining the corner of the valance cover over the slide window. If we really had a lot of rain, not only was the valance cover getting wet but I believe the water is draining down onto the top of the window frame and then running out the top of the window. Here are a couple of pictures.



In this picture, we have taken down the valance and the blinds. This is the front corner of the slide. I have a paper towel with a q-tip shoved into the hole from where one of the screws went that holds up the valance. The other screw holes where dry. This hole was really wet and the paper towel got saturated and started dripping. My wife tapped some tin foil on the window to make a gutter to catch the drips from the paper towel. We replaced the paper towels several times to soak up the water from the ceiling. You will notice there is a small piece of blue tape on the window about a foot or so to the left of the paper towel and tin foil. After a day or two of rain, water will also start coming out of the the top of the window frame where the blue tape is. I believe once the front valance area gets soaked, the water is finding it's way to on top of the window frame and starts running down the top of the frame until it finds a small crack in the frame and then starts dripping onto the window.



In this picture, we put some small cardboard pieces between the ceiling and the valance. The two cardboard pieces were up against the front screw that holds up the valance. We put this up the day we arrived at the RV park because we knew there was a good chance of rain that night. If you look at the right corner of the valance, you can see the water stains from previous leaks.

That night, we got a pretty good rain. When we got up the next morning, we pulled out the cardboard and the following picture is how it looked.



You can see the water that got on the cardboard. We replaced the cardboard a couple of times that day and each time we took it out, it was wet. The next night we got a heavy rain. Not only was the replaced cardboard wet, we also had water dripping out of the top of the window frame.



We tapped a paper towel to the window to catch the dripping water. So you can see that the leak seems to start in the corner and then work it's way a foot and a half or so to the left and come out the top of the window frame. We don't always get enough rain for it to come out the window frame.

Over the weekend, I calked and sealed everything I could see in the corner of the slide roof. I also caulked around the screws where the slide topper is bolted to the outside of the slide. That area is very close to where it appears the water is coming in inside.

Sorry for the long post but any suggestions would be appreciated!

Burch