Wow its been a year since I have posted information on my blog. I hope to do better in 2013. My interest has been in EPDM rubber roofing and EPDM pond liner. Most of my comments have been about the roofing side. I continue to be involved in projects dealing with this product. I have recently been to a couple of conventions dealing with epdm roofing and pond liners.  The home pond liner market is dominated by epdm membrane. The most used one is Firestones PondGard epdm pond liner. There are a few very interesting things happening in the pond liner market. There are a lot of enviromental concerns present in the United States about water quality and water retention. So Fireston PondGard has spent a lot of time and money researching this market and developing products for it. One is called it's Epic system, this system uses liner, gravel, sand and pipe to convert a landscape or football field into a self-supporting system. The under ground liner holds the water to water the grass or landscape thus doing away with the need to water with sprinklers or hoses. This actually sotres your water on the premises. This systems are not cheap but they are working like they were designed to do. Most of these systems are being used commerically. I hope to give you more details about this system and pricing in the future. The other system Firestone is introducing is their Epic water garden kit. This kit is not your conventional water garden kit. We usually think about a water garden kit as being one that you have water and fish in. This new one is actually designed for the home gardener who rasies vegetables or flowers. This design is very exciteing and will help the homeowner to grow their own produce with-out the hassele of watering. This kit will be out sometime in March and I will let you know more about this product then. Both these products are available at justlilners.com. and flatroofsolutions.com.

We have finially started removing the old rubber membrane off of the camper. We found this to be very difficult because the old membrane was in so bad of shape it tore apart when trying to pull off. Once we removed the membrane we noticed that a lot of the wood decking had rotted and had to be replaced. The support rafters were still ok. On this install instead of removing all of the rotted board we covered it with new one quarter inch thick plywood. then screwed it into the rafters. We then cut all of our vent holes and cut a hole for the air-c0nditionare. We now had our Rv roof ready to install. We opened our box that contained our Roof-Top EPDM rubber membrane and carried it onto the RV roof. We unfolded the rubber roofing and completly covered the wood deck. We had about ten inches extra hanging over the edge, this was ok since we will trim the excess after the rubber membrane is glued down. After the rubber roofing was in place we folded it back in half over itself. We did this length wise not width. Always be carfull when doing this and avoid falling into the holes you have cut into your roof deck for your vents and air-conditionare. Once the membrane was folded back over itself we applied the glue onto the wood deck and membrane. We let dry to touch and then laid the membrane into the glue. Once this is done repeat the proceedure. The easiest way we found to lay the rubber roofing onto the deck was to get two ladders and put them on opposite sides of the RV. Then have a person on each ladder. Each person would grab the rubber roofing and pull into the glue. Try to stay to geather while doing this to keep from getting wrinkles in the roofing. This install went smooth and we are now ready to install the metal end pieces and the metal around the roof. Will do this later.

We have started removing the metal strip on the top side of the camper. This metal strip holds the roofing on the edges to the camper. We first removed the rubber gasket and then started removing the screws. However some of the screws stripped out and could not be unscrewed with a screw driver. We had to get a small blade and cut the screws into to remove. You may also have to use a pry bar to help with the removal of these screws. The metal strip on the top of the roof on the front of the camper was also removed. We had to cut the caulking off to remove these screws. We are now ready to remove all of the old roofing membrane. This will be difficult since the membrane is so deterioated that it is in pieces. We will let you know how this goes.

We have finially strated putting on a new roof on the RV that has been sitting here all fall. The first thing we removed off the old RV roof was the air-conditionare unit. You do this by removing the cover on the top of the air-conditionare. Then you go inside and take off inside cover and remove 4 bolts. This unataches the unit from the camper. You then unplug the wires and the unit is ready to lift off the roof. However on this unit we did have trouble getting it off. There is a foam gasket that attaches to the air-unit between the unit and the roof. On this seal silicone calk was also used. This make it very difficult when we tried to push the unit through the roof. We had to use pry bars to help lossen the seal. Once we broke the seal loose we removed the air-unit. We then started takeing off the vents. Each vent was fastened to the deck with screws going through the metal on the vent into the wood deck. It was then caulked over to prevent leaks. These also gave us a little trouble because of the extra caulking used during installation. We have already found bad deck board that will need to be replaced on the rv roof. We removed the other vents without any problems. We are ready now to remover the metal strip on the front of the trailer. Thats hold the rubber down to the deck. Should have more info tomorrow.

repair rv roof

I was up at the lake winterizing our 36 foot montana camper yesterday and when I got up on the roof to sweep off the leaves, I noticed that where the front roof joined the metal there was a crack in the caulking. This is exactly the area we have talked about in the past. The EPDM rubber roof was glued down to the trailer and the metal was brought over the top and screwed down with a metal bar and then caulk was applied to seal the screws and metal bar. We have discussed before that this is a bad design. The factory could have used 6" cover tape during the original installation and I would not have had roofing problems. All I had with me was a tube of caulk, so I washed the area throughly and applied the caulk. However this is only a tempory repair. Next I am up I will install a new 6" cover strip of tape to make a perment repair. I will finially start the roof replacement on this RV camper. We will be putting a new RV rubber roof on this camper and taking pictures of it.

rv roof repairs

We are just about ready to start our replacement on our RV rubber roof. This epdm rubber roof was leaking in several places. The worst was on the front where the metal joined the rubber roof. This area is usually one of the first places your RV rubber roof will leak. Sometimes you can just repair this area and not have to replace your entire roof. On one of my campers I had to repair this area and the camper was only seven years old. To make a permant repair on this area, I first cleaned with water. I changed rags constantly because the rags were dirty, not with dirt but with a chalk substance comming from the rubber roof. So be sure to keep using clean rags. If you do not clean this area enough your repair tape will not stick correctly. Once you have cleaned the epdm roofing membrane you need to apply a tape primer activator to the roof and the metal where the roof joins. Once you have coated this area with primer let dry then do it again. Then using 6" wide epdm cover tape put three inches on the metal and three on the rubber roof. Then roll with a roller the tape into the primer. This will make a permanent repair. I have been busy the last few weeks and it looks like it will now be the last of October before we do the RV roof replacement.

roofing maintance continued

The last time we talked about rv roofing maintance we discussed why you should wash or not wash your roof. A lot of people in the RV industry tell you to wash your roof yearly and use a coating on your roof. This practice did not come directly from the manufactures. In a commerical application you would simply install the white on black EPDM membrane and leave it alone. Sure you might do a yearly inspection to look for holes or problems, but I can assure you they would never recomend that you wash your roof . This roofing product is made to withstand UV sunlight and exposure to the outside elements. A big concern I have about dealers recommending that roofs be cleaned yearly, is that a large percentage of RV owners are elderly and anytime that you work on a roof, there is a danger of falling. We need to remember the EPDM white on black roofing was designed to be a low maintance product. I own two different RVs with EPDM white on black roofing on them one is 14 years old and the other is 7 years old. I have never washed either roof and they are left outside all of the time. Rember once you start coating a roof it turns into an ongoing project. This could also prove costly over several years.