Weird water issue and it's driving me crazy

[Lost_Traveller]

Hello all. We have a 2002 Fleetwood Prowler fifth wheel. We bought it last year and it's our first RV. We have used it several times since we bought it and have had no issues. Except one...When it rains, and it has to be a hard enough rain with the wind blowing the right way, we will end up with a water spot right in the middle of either night stand at the sides of our bed. It just depends which way we have the RV parked.
We can find no evidence of water coming in anywhere. The walls, ceiling, a path on the nightstand leading to the spot. I mean no where.
I would swear it's a mouse peeing, but it's always in the same place.
Has anyone ever had this sort of issue? It's driving us nuts.

thanks for any help.
Lost Traveller

[Diesel_Camper]

Is this a fiberglass or metal sided trailer? I know there are some on here that say it is impossible for water to leak through the seams of the interlocking metal siding, but I have seen it with my own eyes. I spent three years trying to track down a leak in my 19' Terry. One day I couldn't take it anymore so I pulled the mirror in the bathroom off and cut a big hole in the wall, pulled out the insulation and saw a steady stream of water coming from the back of one of the seams. If there is dirt/crud in the seam or if it is bowed out a bit due to old staples coming loose you can get a capillary draw that will pull water through those seams. I used some OSI Quad down the length of the seam and no more leak. If I had it to do again I think I'd use some clear Dyanflex 230 because it is much easier to work with and holds up very well. Both are available at home depot.

[bigdon68]

Had a similar problem and it ended up being the corner caps (outside) on the slide. If you have them you will need to take them off, caulk it very well and put them back on. You may as well caulk other areas around since you have the caulk out.
Good luck. It took me (2) seasons to find our leak.

bidgon68

[majorgator]

Of all oddities, we had a similar problem on our old Coachman TT. There was a corner cabinet with TV shelf in the front corner of the bedroom. No adjacent slides or windows. The spot was about 16" from the ceiling. There was no conceivable place the leak could be coming from. There wasn't more than silver-dollar size puddle at any time. Had me baffled. But when I began using a true fan-powered dehumidifier in the TT, the spot never came back.

Moral of the story, the only thing I could ever come up with was that the puddle was related to air moisture, heat buildup in that corner, excess humidity, or something of the like.

[Lost_Traveller]

I meant the comment by Puttin. Sorry about getting the names wrong.

Bruce and Connie

[Lost_Traveller]

I want to thank everybody for their comments. The bedroom is not a slide out and the more we look, it looks like it could be coming from the window as described by Paul G.. We're going to do some caulking and watching when the next big windy rain come in and see what happens.

Bruce and Connie

[azrving]

My old TT was leaking around the boot on the antenna cable. You could hardly notice that it wasn't tight on the cable yet in a heavy rain it would run across the ceiling and out of the light fixture

I had looked at everything and all the caulking was perfect. You may even have the smallest caulking imperfection causing it.

[bgum]

Your slide is leaking. Find it and get it fixed fast before it causes major damage.

[Paul_G_]

We had a similar problem with our 2003 Cardinal 5th wheel. Ours would also leak, mostly dependent on wind direction, but ours was at the bottom of the bedroom slide, usually just on one side of the slide out.

I battled this for over a year before I found the cause. One day when it was raining fairly good, I put on my raincoat and went outside just to observe and see if I could determine what was going on.

I looked up and down, mostly up because I figured it was at least staring at the top of the slide.

As I was standing there in the rain, I looked at the trim piece which runs horizontally along the bottom of the slide out, outside wall and I noticed a fleck of dirt traveling in the trim piece and it was traveling at a pretty good rate, going towards the side of the camper.

Long story short, that is where the water was entering. I put painters tape to cover the trim piece, the leak stopped. I later used caulk in place of the tape, haven't had a leak since.

I hope this was not too hard to understand.

Paul...

[Puttin]

Yes, I have....I had small windows beside each of the nightstands and when the wind blowed hard along with rain I would end up with a quater-sized drop of water on the nightstand- right about where you describe. I finally figured out it was coming from inside the window frame. No amount of temporarily taping up the weep holes on the outside made any difference. This only happened twice in the four years we owned it ('04 Jamboree 31-M). I just quit trying to fix it since it hardly ever happened but it only leaked when there was very strong wind driven rain against that side of the rig. I'll still bet it's something within the window frame that's not tight. In order to actually trace where the water came in- I had to take a flashlight and point it right at the bottom of the frame and then I could see a very small water trace coming from the bottom and traveling onto the nightstand. I never did this but you could try to caulk all the way around the outside of the window frame and then see what happens.

[Leonandlisa]

Pictures of the area where the water shows up inside and outside the trailer would be very helpful.

IS there a slide in this area, windows, outdoor access panel?