Why are Truck Campers so poorly made?
So I bought a new hard side truck camper recently. I'm not going to say which. Before that I had a pop-up, so this is my second camper. I looked at a half dozen more campers before my purchase, but...
Forum Discussion
.....what is the single most influential factor in the deterioration of any RV (passive RV or motorized) ?
A: rain (ie. precipitation, extreme humidity, persistent atmospheric moisture, condensation, evapotranspiration from plants into atmosphere in the jungle-like humid East, flash flooding, hurricane, biblical proportion rain events almost bi-weekly, etc, etc, etc).
Simply remove this factor, et voila, no more rotted, deteriorated, delaminated, rusted out, mold infested, moss-coated, permanently humid RV ! Pretty simple: RVs, whether you perceive some, many or all to be poorly fabricated, will last decades, even if poorly maintained, when they are used, stored, or driven in the Southwest (ie. in Calif-infernia, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico). Introduce 9 months of near incessant rain for 15 days a month, 90 to 100% relative humidity, near permanent cloudforest-like condensing atmospheric moisture, and 3 winter months of incessant freezing rain, wet snow and 75% RH, and virtually NO RV will survive it.
So: RVs bought, driven, used and stored in the furnace-like virtually nil relative humidity of Southwest WILL outlast EVERY RV bought, driven, used and stored in the rest of the country where we live virtually under water 12 months a year.
Have a look at the "Number of Days since Last Rain"; and the "Number of Rain Days in the past 30/90/120 days"; and the "Maximum Consecutive Dry Days in the past 30/90/120 days"; and the hundreds of other precipitation products over at the National Drought Mitigation Center...and it will be evident where an RV will last the longest (ie. will not rot away before your very eyes in 2~3 years from new). I have inorganic materials sitting outside our house with MOSS growing on said materials. It is a fantastic literally bi-daily battle to keep our truck camper, trucks and cars from rotting away just sitting outside here in our neck of the woods, not under cover of a sheltering garage.
As with rust prevention, if you remove just one of the components responsible for rot/rust (water/humidity/condensation), rot and rust will cease to be an issue. Delamination and RV disintegration will pretty well cease to be an issue. I suppose the "Industry" could build their units out of 100% inorganic materials using skilled workforce, or ~~95% automated assembly....?
A: rain (ie. precipitation, extreme humidity, persistent atmospheric moisture, condensation, evapotranspiration from plants into atmosphere in the jungle-like humid East, flash flooding, hurricane, biblical proportion rain events almost bi-weekly, etc, etc, etc).
Simply remove this factor, et voila, no more rotted, deteriorated, delaminated, rusted out, mold infested, moss-coated, permanently humid RV ! Pretty simple: RVs, whether you perceive some, many or all to be poorly fabricated, will last decades, even if poorly maintained, when they are used, stored, or driven in the Southwest (ie. in Calif-infernia, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico). Introduce 9 months of near incessant rain for 15 days a month, 90 to 100% relative humidity, near permanent cloudforest-like condensing atmospheric moisture, and 3 winter months of incessant freezing rain, wet snow and 75% RH, and virtually NO RV will survive it.
So: RVs bought, driven, used and stored in the furnace-like virtually nil relative humidity of Southwest WILL outlast EVERY RV bought, driven, used and stored in the rest of the country where we live virtually under water 12 months a year.
Have a look at the "Number of Days since Last Rain"; and the "Number of Rain Days in the past 30/90/120 days"; and the "Maximum Consecutive Dry Days in the past 30/90/120 days"; and the hundreds of other precipitation products over at the National Drought Mitigation Center...and it will be evident where an RV will last the longest (ie. will not rot away before your very eyes in 2~3 years from new). I have inorganic materials sitting outside our house with MOSS growing on said materials. It is a fantastic literally bi-daily battle to keep our truck camper, trucks and cars from rotting away just sitting outside here in our neck of the woods, not under cover of a sheltering garage.
As with rust prevention, if you remove just one of the components responsible for rot/rust (water/humidity/condensation), rot and rust will cease to be an issue. Delamination and RV disintegration will pretty well cease to be an issue. I suppose the "Industry" could build their units out of 100% inorganic materials using skilled workforce, or ~~95% automated assembly....?
