The leak that might not be a leak...?

[trueweb]

I'll post some pictures soon, but I'll try to describe it first. My efforts to fix the leak in the slide have been a success. After two good rains and some water testing the floor in the slide has remained dry.

The floor in the main area, not so much.

Finally did an extended test... attached a sprayer to the ladder and let it rain on the slide roof.

Everything appears to be working fine.

The sweeps hold off most of the water. Some water sneaks in behind the side sweeps at the gaps where the side trim pushes it out. I imagine this is pretty normal and most of it runs straight down.

Problem is some of it manages to wick across the sweep and get into the channel between the sweep and the inner bulb seal that the fascia of the slide smashes against when it's open, more of a weather seal than a water seal. It's not really a problem, its still all rubber and plastic.

As it runs down these seals to the bottom if falls into a black plastic "cup/cover" for lack of a better description (which I will post pictures of). It's held on by 3 bolts and doesn't appear to have any weep holes in it. There was a slow drip from this cover at the inner most corner (under the floor insulation area).

I could imagine in a long extended rain that the volume of rain getting dripping from the bottom of the sweep and bulb seal might exceed the rate the cup can drain. If this happened, the cup is nearly level with the floor, the carpet could soak up water and distribute it across the floor. We've never had it that bad, but the carpet got pretty wet in this last rain.

This would not affect the RV while the slide is in because the outer bulb seals are doing their job of shedding water before it even gets in.

Take a look under your slide, are there plastic corner pieces under the the trim?

What do you think?

[Wes Tausend]

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Trueweb,

From your description, I think you may have one of the combo sweep/bulb type systems. Mine has a separate rubber sweep near the outer part of the TT wall and a separate inner bulb seal attached to the inside surface perimeter of my inside flange. That bulb in turn, seals against a large inner angle-metal edge that serves as a back-up support to the wood trim moulding/flange on the inside.

Your theory on water following a bulb-seal makes sense. I kind of wonder if water doesn't bead up, and roll as droplets straight down, on wax-like siding, but stick to and run downhill as sheets on rubber, even sideways. An outa the box solution, but maybe waxing the rubber to repel water would help.

I think we had a contrived small "bulb" leak when I recently partially retracted my slide trying to avoid wind-blown rain. Partially retracting it tilted the entire slide as the inside edge of the slide floor rose to clear the static TT floor. My plan was that copious rain, apparently inadvertently following the folded u-channel in my failed and wandering sweep, would then run straight down the slide sidewall before getting in. But it seemed there was still a small dribble coming off the end of the now tilted, gapped and uncompressed vertical bulb perhaps because some rain was still blowing against it near the top.

Sometimes I think the only really good seal would be a continuous inflatable ring(s), after the slide was parked in place, either in or out.

I looked under my older 2004 TT slide and I don't see the plastic cups of which you speak. However there are some sheet metal formed cup-like "covers" at the bottom. They seem to extend under the area that should have the end of my inner vertical bulb seals located above them. Are we talking of a similar purpose? What purpose?

I think my "slide cups" might be purposed to close a gap to easy insect intrusion rather than catch water for instance. I do get a little lost as to what exact exterior location corresponds to an ajacent interior part. I would love to see an entire slide removal to understand this precise relationship.

On another note, I completed my top sweep (wiper) replacement that I mentioned earlier. Instead of ferreting out an exact rare rubber wiper with a spring-loaded "U" shaped edge to attach over a flange, I bought the ordinary flat rubber wiper with pre-mounted adhesive strip and adhered/screwed it to the outer face of the top flange using two 6' x 1/2" x 1/16" aluminum strips that I picked up at Menards. The metal strip serves as a continuous "washer" to keep the bolt heads from pulling through and I screwed it every 6" with stainless #8 x 3/4 panhead sheet metal screws. It looks good (in dry weather).

Wes
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