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Sunday, September 6, 2009

RV Vents

Well we're once again sitting out another Holiday storm here on the Oregon Coast. The wind is howling, trees are whipping around and every now and then buckets of rain begin dumping down on our rig. We're using our old 93 Komfort at the moment. We came over to the Oregon Coast to enjoy our 40 year class reunion and it was wonderful time. We had planned to be back to our other rig in NE Oregon by now but events, I call them "sequences" have prevented that for the time being.

Late last night as this storm hit I went out and began to "button things up" for the blow. I put the awning in, folded all the chairs and placed them under the fifth wheel overhang and generally checked to be sure all would be well. This trailer has a couple of leaks I am chasing so while I am concerned and looking for these, I will just need to hope for the best now. Not much needs to be done inside the rig. Just lower the two vents and the windows need to be closed.

We had both vents down when the storm hit but one of them was not quite all the way down tight. When the full force of the storm hit, it seemed to be mostly in the form of strong wind gusts and heavy showers of short duration. As I sat inside and listened to the storm I could hear the vent cover over the tub rattle so got up to check it out. I found that the vent was closed but that the crank that lifted it didn't work. I could turn the handle freely but the lid didn't move. It was about 11:00 oclock PM by then and I made a note to check it again in daylight, and went to bed. In less than five minutes a very strong gust of wind hit the trailer from the rear. It literally ripped the that lid off the vent and blew it away. I later found it in three pieces about 30 feet from the rig. The mechanism that lifts and lowers the lid is nowhere to be found.

As I grumbled and cussed my luck I began trying to figure out how I could temporarily patch this 16 inch hole in my roof and at least try to retain some of the heat inside the rig. Since the hole is over the shower tub, the rain coming in wouldn't really hurt anything while I worked on it.

The rim around the vent hole is not very condusive to tying things to and since everything is wet my duct tape won't work either. And I needed something to cover the hole with that I could somehow fasten in place. That's when I remembered that I had a roll of heavy plastic in a box in one of the storage compartments.

I don't recall where this plastic came from or how long I've had it. Every time I saw it as I was digging around for whatever, I wondered about it.

I used the one piece of the original lid I still had as a guide and I cut a piece of this plastic large enough to cover the vent hole. Then I remembered that I had a small spool of really strong nylon string in one of my tool bags. I carry a heavy nylon rain poncho behind the seat in my truck for emergencies like this too. I put this on, collected my plastic and my string and climbed up on the roof. The rain and wind had eased a little but I was careful not to let the wind grab my plastic. I couldn't hold my flashlight and use both hands for this project so I had to make do with the light coming up from inside the rig. It took me about 15 minutes to finally get the plastic tied in place so it would hold until morning.

I'll need to fix this well enough so I can travel and eventually replace it. My plan is to tape the three pieces of the original lid together then tape them in place over my plastic as a protective barrier to the wind. I don't know if it will work or not but it's all I can do for now. Today is Sunday of Labor Day weekend and I doubt that much outside help is available. I'll add photo's of this in my next post.

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