The first time I inspected our fifth wheel camper I noticed a soft area on the roof around the TV antenna which I would have to repair. We didn’t have a TV in the camper and we never raised the antenna. We had even camped in some pretty hard rains and never noticed any signs of water damage .
I didn’t even know the roof had a leak until a week after it leaked. When I was showing my mother our new camper, she looked in the bedroom and said “you need to wash your sheets”.
My mother isn’t really that demanding or overburdening that she would tell me to wash my sheets or even make my bed so I figured I better take a look.
When I did i saw that the bed was covered in brown water which had obviously come from the roof.
The repair process
In order to start fixing the roof . I needed to gather my supplies first. I had to guess out how much wood I was going to replace . In order to buy enough materials to fix the roof .
To get the supplies i needed I went to my local RV dealer who has some EDPM roof scraps that they sold me . If I remember correctly I bought a piece that was 8’x8′ . Then I went to a local roofing company that had seam tape for rubber roof as well as the solvent to prep the roof for the seam tape.
To repair the damage,I first removed the antenna from the inside. Once the antenna was out I cut away the rubber roof until i could see where the rotted wood stopped. After the demo of the rotten wood out I had about a 2’x2′ section which I replaced.
In hindsight I wish I would have taken more pictures to show how I repaired everything but this is all I have. I used plywood to reinforce the water damaged truss. Once this stayed open for a few hours everything dried up . I also used a piece of plywood to reinforce where the antenna mounts to the ceiling.
Finished
Here is the finished product before patching the rubber roof back on and installing the antenna. Once again there is solid wood to hold the antenna and to adhere the roofing to.
While it probably wasn’t necessary , I used Dicor 501LSW-1 Epdm Self-Leveling Lap Sealant-10.3 Oz. Tube, White, 10.3 Fluid_Ounces around the edges to make it look nicer and as an extra layer of security.
The antenna I used to replace the old one is a KING OA8500 Jack HDTV Directional Over-the-Air Antenna with Mount and Signal Finder – White, It was easy to install and is simple to operate.
To prevent roof leaks read: http://rvlifehacks.com/repairs/