RV Rubber Roof Seal
If you plan to do this, take your time and watch your step up there!
Wear a good non-slip shoe.
It has been way too long since I did anything with the roof on my RV.
The rain and wind this year was much worse then previous years and if you see my post about the cover I had, you'll know I had some holes in it.
Water was sitting on the roof and finally started seeping through in a couple of places.
When I got a warm day with no rain I started working on sealing the leaking areas on the roof.
There are some decent videos on-line about sealing the roof joints and that seems to be the easy part.
First you have to determine what the roof material is. There seems to be 2 main types, EPDM and TPO. Fortunately, I found a single sheet about the roof in my owners documentation.
My roof is TPO. Evidently the EPDM has a black underside but I think you have to take off part of an inside ceiling vent fan to see that.
The videos I watched said to clean the existing sealant with "mineral spirits" and the Lowes store near me no longer carries it. I got some Dicor Rubber Roof Cleaner. It's just like a soapy solution you put into a spray bottle. To clean the old sealant (which is now black) it takes a pretty hard bristle brush
or even a fine wire brush. Maybe the mineral spirits cleans it better/faster?
This is what the old sealant looks like before cleaning...
This is what it looks like when you get it cleaned up
If you look closely at the after clean picture above, you can see where the sealant is cracked
and water can get in.
You have to buy the sealant for the type of roof you have. For the TPO you use:
Dicor 502-LSW Self Leveling Lap Sealant (WHITE).
Get it at an RV place or Amazon. I got a good deal on 4 tubes of the sealant at Amazon but one broke open in shipping and they gave me the order for free. It was a mess in the box. You can do just about everything on the Class 3 RV roof with 3 tubes but it doesn't hurt to have the extra one.
Then you just cut the tip off and put in your calking gun.
It's really easy to apply and you shouldn't try to spread it with anything. Just squirt it on and let it dry and settle overnight.
It really does "self level" nicely.
Here are a couple areas I did...
(I have to go back and wash the rest of the roof).
