Quote:
Originally Posted by Tbos
How do I determine if my awning is auto dumping?
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A photo would be better but I don't have one handy. Of course the owners manual should also say, but...
The arms holding it up will typically extend on their own because they have springs inside. If you push on them at their elbow, they'll allow the awning to move downward if the little wheel/screw isn't tightened up so they can't move.
What happens in heavy rain is the water will eventually move to one side or the other of the canvas and start to weigh it down into a "U" shape. One end will inevitably get heavier, and the spring on the arm will give way, allowing that end of the awning to be lower. Water will come pouring off of the top of the canvas, and the weight of the water will be gone, so the arm will spring back up.
This cycle will repeat forever in heavy rain and no wind. Heavy wind will mess with it, possibly blowing up from the underside of the canvas making it an upward "U" shape which will dump all the water away from the trailer, or blowing the water itself to the other end and making that side "collapse" and dump.
Folks are mentioning that if you screw down only one arm, and there's no wind or little wind, and your unit is reasonably level, that will force the other side to collapse it's arm first, and dump water over there instead of the arm you "screwed tight".
(Most of these arms you can't fully tighten them 100% anyway. The awning manufacturers don't want you to make a mistake and screw down both and have water pile up in the canvas so heavy in the "downward U" shape that it rips the canvas off of the reel or the side of the unit, so most of the screw stops will never completely tighten hard. They'll "give" if you push hard enough on the arm.
In general... Very general... If the arm has an elbow and goes up with spring pressure, that's "auto emptying". If it latches solid such that it can't move at all, it's not.
And most folks shouldn't leave them up in wind, no matter how sturdy they look. That'll just tear canvas and make the trip a sad one, eventually.
A buddy lost one with a tornado that came by too close for comfort last year. He went the $ route and called a local mobile RV repair place to come fix it on-site and he never broke camp. I wasn't there the day he lost the awning, but the repairs were underway the day after I arrived.
Some mobile RV repair techs really do nice work. Tech showed up with a new awning, properly prepped the unit, laid the new awning across a couple of foldable ladders he had, had one of us help him lift the thing up into place after redoing brackets and sealing and what not, and it was a done deal. But it wasn't super cheap... I think my buddy had some sort of insurance that was covering some/all of the storm damage repair.