Cover or not to cover-no shed/garage.- Snow country!

Snow load is not a concern unless you have many feet of snow on top of the RV. The roof is sufficiently strong to carry the load (or, if it isn't, you really shouldn't be using the RV anyhow).

I leave mine uncovered.

MsLaurie wrote:
We are located at the bottom of a canyon so wind is rarely and issue.
Just wondering about snow load. We can get lots of snow here in the northwest.

There are tons of RV dealerships around our area with hundreds of motorhomes and we don't see any of them going out and getting the snow off the Motorhomes/trailers etc. In the Winter.

So I guess ours would be fine for snow load...

That sure seems like you don't need to worry about a cover.

I did all those snow load calculations for my old '94 Bounder and it turned out the engineers knew what they were doing. Snow load has to do with how much snow falls, how dry it is, and helps you decide whether you're going to shovel it off, or let it melt off.

As an aside, up in Alaska I had 2 feet of snow on my roof and the RV handled it just fine. And the calculations showed the roof was more than able to handle it. The low moisture content of Fairbanks snow helped keep the weight of that snow load down. What you can do, is cut out a 1' X 1' X 1' foot cube of snow and melt it. Measure it as a liquid, convert to gallons, multiply that by 8 lbs/gallon and there ya go. Snow load per square foot. It was all kind of fun figuring all that stuff. Hardest part was finding the rating of the roof...and as I recall, it was 270 lbs per square foot snow load rating.

But I didn't want to have that much melt water on the roof even though I knew there weren't any leaks...so I climbed up there with a cell phone, broom, and a snow shovel and pushed and scraped off 1.5 feet of snow as spring approached.

No damage was done so basically, no cover was needed. Imagine if I'd wanted to go camping and had to scrape off tons of snow, AND roll a 100 lb cover off too.

But, you do what's best for you.

Five years of covering the trailer and we've never experienced any damage to the trailer by the cover. It's a little bit of work putting the cover on and taking it off but I'd much rather dealing with that then cleaning the accumulated dirt, leaves, bird droppings and other stuff off the trailer at the start of camping season.

For previous posts on this timely subject search this Forum for `RV Cover' and read on and on. We cover ours with a Sunshield tarp as previously posted.

Wears ago we covered our TT. One day we decided to take off and it took 2 days to thaw and remove the snow and ice so we could remove the cover. No more cover, if we want to go I can push off some loose snow and be gone in an hrs.

you could always hire someone to move the snow off if it gets too deep. two things for them to watch out for. falling off and putting a hole in
one of the vents

Cover it. Brush the snow off.

We are located at the bottom of a canyon so wind is rarely and issue.
Just wondering about snow load. We can get lots of snow here in the northwest.

There are tons of RV dealerships around our area with hundreds of motorhomes and we don't see any of them going out and getting the snow off the Motorhomes/trailers etc. In the Winter.

So I guess ours would be fine for snow load...

I,d cover it ,anything protecting it from the eliments is a plus. the darn things develope enough problems all by themselves.

If you get the right size cover and keep it snug it will not cause any wind damage.
I think many people don't know how to install a cover or don't take the time to install them properly.
I've covered our 96 Southwind for years and never had any damage from the cover. And, we get a lot of winter wind in our area.