Slide out awning

As stated in previous post there are as many opinions on this subject as what truck to buy. I personally recommend the slide awnings. not only do I know myself well enough to know I'm not going to clean the slides every time I pull them in, when the wife and I were looking at used TTs several years ago and again this past year while looking at TCs we found that the majority of the RVs without slide awnings had water damage around the slide while most with the awnings did not. I attribute it to as much the problem you had, pulling the slide in during the rain or just puddled water on it. I have been told by dealers as well as other RVs that the awnings have nothing to do with stopping water damage but I can only comment with what I saw while looking at many used RVs. the TT we bought new in 2009 and had awnings installed on both slides, don't remember the cost but the wife thinks it was around $1200 for both installed, the TC already had one installed.