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.

rv roof replacement

Back in July I told you that we were going to replace a roof on a 32 foor Layton RV. I said we would give you more information about the install and product. It has been a long hot summer so we have putting it off. Well it is now almost fall and we are ready. We have recieved our RV roofing kit. We purchased it from rv-roof-top-com and had it delievered to our home. This kit was their 35 foot kit which has everything we need to replace the old roof. I will begin this work within the next two weeks and will keep you up to date on how the installation is going.

roofing maintance

I have just returned from the annual RV Show in Hershey Pa. This is one of the largest RV shows in the country. There were over 900 RVs on display. There were also over 100 venders that supplied the RV market. If you are looking for a RV this is a great show to see so many different models of RVs. One thing I learned while at this show was the misinformation concerning RV roofs. Most RVs have a EPDM Rubber Roof or one that is smooth fiberglass. Most of the misinfromaiton is about the EPDM roofs. I don't think this wrong information is intentional but never the less it is out there. Over the next couple of weeks I will talk about the proper way to care and repair a EPDM rubber roof. I know we have talked about this before but I was shocked by the information I recieved about caring for your EPDM roof. One of the biggest concerns I had was with all of the people telling RV owners to wash their roofs each year. To understand why this is not a good idea we will have to deal with the manufacturers sugguestions and care for their products. To begin with there are only two different manufactures of White on Black EPDM roofing in the United States. There are Carlisle and Firestone. This may supprise you, since you never hear their name associated with the roofs on RVs. They only make the membrane and sell it to different distrubitors who sell to dealers and then to the public. The EPDM roofing product was developed for the commerical roofing market. It was sold in two colors black and white. These roofing products were sold all over the country and there are billions of square feet of EPDM roofing on roofs today. The warrantys varied from ten to twenty years. The black EPDM dominates the commerical roofintg market today but is not used in the RV market because of heat related issues. So we will deal specifically with the white EPDM roofing. White EPDM roofing tends to chalk. What I mean by this is that you will notice in a few years streaks running down the side of your camper. This occurs because the sunlight and UV rays shine on the membrane and causes this to happen. This will happen to almost any white rubber product when exposed to direct sunlight. So don't be to alarmed when you see this happen. The manufactures of this membrane have never recommended to clean it yearly. There is a reason for this. When you clean this membrane you are washing off the material that has chalked and crased. This exposed a new layer to direct sunlight and it will also chalk. In a round about way you are washing away some of your roof. I know that dealers say wash your roof and then coat it. We will deal with this in next post.