Day Eleven

Today I decided to focus on the outside.  Although I'd been on a roll inside, I can work inside at any time. Today was mild and breezy, so I took advantage of that.  I'd love to be able to make Trixie water tight, so that I can do away with all of the tarps.  Securing her against rain at night is a full 20 minute job.  Then there is the 20 minutes to take the tarps off in the morning.  All in all, it is better for her to be rain resistant on her own.  To that end.....

There are a myriad of opportunities for water to seep into her - the ceiling vent, the J-rail, the roof seams, the windows, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.....  Today I focused on the ceiling vent and the center roof seam.  In the photo below you can see the ceiling vent, which is just sitting in place.  It is not affixed in any way.  To the right of it you see what STILL remains of all of the glob that had been "sealing" the previous ceiling vent.  Tar, glue, caulk, more tar......  As you can see, there is more of it for me to remove before I can start anew.

Looking past the ceiling vent and the 2x4 you'll see that a previous owner had put tar tape over the roof seam.  The edges of the tape are curled up and the tape itself is brittle.  It has to go. Oh joy.

 So here is the ceiling vent hole with the vent removed for now.  What you can't tell from this photo is that the remaining caulk/tar is about 1/8" thick and hard as a rock.  A sharp scraper and mallet should do the trick.

Here is a shot of the tar tape on the port side of the ceiling vent hole.  Ghastly stuff.

Next:

I would have liked to have gotten a full port to starboard side shot, but I am standing on the top of the camper at this point (you can see my toes) and can only get so much in each photo.  But you get the gist of it.

The ceiling vent is now secure, with a gasket AND butyl tape under the flange and sealant in each screw hole.

Look to the left of the vent and you'll see that the tar tape and its goo are gone.  It took the heat gun, Goo Gone, Tar Remover and lots of elbow grease, but it is gone.  There had been no tape or caulk on the seam to the right of the vent at all, so nothing much to see there.

After:

This is what I learned today.  In as much as butyl tape is unforgiving - meaning that it is a mess to take off once you've pressed it down - it is, at least, humanly possible.  Not so much when we are talking about EternaBond.  If Eterna Bond even slightly touches a clean surface, you'd better be darned happy with where it touched, because it isn't ever coming off again. I'm not kidding.  No way, Jose.

You can see here that I put EternaBond on the roof seams and around the ceiling vent.  It isn't perfectly smooth in all places and that bugs me, but I'm going to have to learn to accept it (see paragraph above).  I know that doing this completely voids the vintage rules, but I think that I can live with that.  It's the roof for goodness sake.  No one will see it.  And no water rot would be a good thing.

I also made the mistake of using Goo Gone to try removing excess EternaBond sticky and sealant from the ceiling vent cover, but it removed the finish.  I suppose I'll just have to be OK with a little gunk on the vent.

NEXT!

The next waterproofing element is the J-rail.  On this starboard side, it is an awning rail.  In a perfect world, I'd replace this badly beaten up rail with new, but this will need to suffice for this season.  Strictly speaking, there should never be any need to use caulk.  We'll see how this goes.

The awning rail had been removed up to the middle of the roof to allow me to remove the outer skin on the rear.  You can see here the butyl tape between the under skin and the outer skin (dark gray glop).  Now I need to get butyl tape between the outer skin and the awning rail.

Ta da!  Done.  First, where the seam hits, the EternaBond goes fully around the edge from the roof to the end of the top skin.  Then butyl tape, then the awning rail.  You can see where we have good squishage of butyl tape once the awning rail screws were back in.

I'm concentrating very hard on taking photos from the top of the ladder without ending up face down on the sidewalk below.  You can see here where the awning rail is now back in place down the starboard side.  I remain skeptical about not needing caulk.

At this point, it turns back into J-rail.  What you are looking at here is the butyl tape with the paper backing still on it.  I have that pressed onto the side of the camper, just in case it sprinkles tonight.  I don't want rain seeping in now!  You can also see the lighting fixture.  I need to scrape off that old putty tape, replace it with butyl and get it back into place.

And the last photo of the day is to show you what the butyl tape looks like still on the roll.  I've run it half of the way down the starboard side.  Tomorrow I'll put the J-rail back on over this line of tape.

That's it for now, Campers.  The dryer buzzer is hollering at me.  I must go fold laundry now.