How To Repair A Hole In Camper Roof

Do you have a pop up camper with a water damaged roof? Unfortunately, the roof of the camper we bought was beyond repair and rotting away. We figured out how to fix it by removing all of the water damaged wood, and then rebuilding the roof structure and reattaching the aluminum skin.

When we purchased our 1993 pop-upward camper, I knew there was water damage to the roof. What I didn't know, still, was how extensive the harm actually was. We were able to rebuild the roof and now take a like-new camper, merely the amount of fourth dimension it took to complete made it quite the project.

After figuring out how bad the damage was on our camper, I searched the net for videos and posts on how to set up water damaged roofs, and although I found some helpful videos, I struggled finding detailed posts that walked through the process on how to completely rebuild parts of the roof. Hopefully this mail service volition exist helpful for others that find themselves overwhelmed by the process of fixing a rotting roof on a camper similar I did!

Part 1: Removing the Pop Upwards Camper Roof and Assessing the Water Damage (you are here)

Remove the Exterior Trim to Assess Damage
Detach the Canvas and Remove the Roof
Remove Rotted and H2o Damaged Wood

Part 2: Rebuilding/Repairing the Roof and Making information technology Water Tight

Rebuild Roof Structure with New Woods
Reattach Roof and Sail to Camper
Seal Up Holes and Seams to Prevent Time to come Leaks
Cosmetically Repair the Ceiling

Remove the Outside Trim to Appraise Impairment

In guild to unscrew the trim, the first step is to accept out the vinyl trim insert that covers the screws. If your camper looks annihilation like mine, the vinyl trim is probably cracked, broken, moldy, or all of the higher up. This trim should just popular out every bit yous pull on information technology.

And then, it's time to remove the screws. Equally I was taking out the screws, this gave me a skillful idea of where the water harm was on the camper. Some of the screws came out rusted, and in some cases, completely rotted away, which signaled that area of wood was probably rotting away as well.

For the screws that were completed rotted, the screwdriver obviously didn't take anything to take hold of on to, and so I ended up using a combination of a pry bar, pliers, and some swearing to get the spiral pieces out.

Subsequently all of the screws were removed, I used a metal putty pocketknife/scraper to remove all the old, gunky, gummy butyl tape. This process was boring, to say the least. Later on most of the putty tape was removed, I used mineral spirits and a fine mesh steel wool to remove the backlog gunk.

At this point, y'all can easily lift up the skin to run across the condition of the wood of the roof. As I unscrewed the trim screws, some of our camper roof just started falling apart because the whole perimeter, and virtually of the top frame, was rotting away.

You tin can get a better view of the corporeality of h2o harm in this video. I have the finished camper reveal, likewise as the other steps in my roof rebuild process, over on my You Tube aqueduct. I'd love for you lot to head on over, bank check them out, and fifty-fifty subscribe if you lot'd like to see other pop-up camper projects in the future!

Disassemble the Sail and Remove the Roof

If y'all find, like we did, that yous'll need to supplant a good amount of the wood on your pop upward roof, it's time to detach the canvas and and then remove the roof in club to rebuild information technology. If your water harm is minimal and the wood is still structurally sound, y'all might be able to skip alee to Part 2 – Seal Up the Roof to Forbid Future Water Harm.

Patently, in that location was non a chance nosotros could salvage some of the wood on our roof, so we set up up our plan to rebuild it, which required us to remove the roof.

First, we unscrewed the canvas from the inside of the camper. Basically, the canvass is attached to metal strips that are then screwed into the sides of the roof. I made sure to take pictures of the brackets effectually the entire inside perimeter of the roof so when it was time to put everything back together, I had a visual model to help me.

Later on the canvas was detached, I unscrewed the four lifting brackets from the sides of the roof frame. Ours were attached with bolts and nuts on the within of the camper, so they were easy to remove. Nosotros used 2 ten 4s to hold the roof in place while nosotros detached the other lifting brackets.

Afterward everything was disconnected from the main body of the camper, we took off the roof and put it on top of two sawhorses correct next to the camper.

For a better look at our deconstructed roof, scout the video below.

Remove Rotted and Water Damaged Forest

In the video above, you probably saw but how rotted away some of the wood on our camper was. This thing had clearly been taking a lot of h2o for a long fourth dimension. We opted to completely remove all four sides of our roof, every bit well as replace the outside edge of 1 10 2″ framing.

At this indicate, if the water damage is extensive enough, you take the option of completely removing the peel, the cream, and all of the framing lumber and rebuilding it from scratch. (If yous need to go this route to rebuild your roof, I'd recommend checking out The Pop Up Princess, and they but rebuilt a popular up camper roof and decided to supervene upon everything.)

If I had remembered to take a motion-picture show of the roof turned upside down before we started to repair it, hither's what it would accept looked like.

We decided that instead of completely taking autonomously the entire roof and replacing all the foam and framing, we would just supersede the pieces of woods that had taken water and were no longer structurally sound. In the video, I mentioned that nosotros thought we were going to proceed some of the 1 x 2″ frame, but instead we decided to just replace all the 1 10 2s along the border. Thankfully, we didn't need to supplant the interior one x 2″ frame, and therefore we could keep the skin and foam attached.

To remove the 1 x 2 pieces that were yet attached, I used a small, 4-1/ii″ compact circular saw to cut from the bottom correct along the border of the 1 x 2. The just thing that was holding those pieces in place was that the interior ceiling was however attached to them. It's important to make certain you don't saw deep enough to become correct through the aluminum skin! This volition add together a lot more work to repair the pare in order to keep out those water leaks.

More on how nosotros rebuilt the roof frame and sides in the next pace, which you'll find in the 2nd postal service in this series.

Part two: Steps to Repair and Rebuild a H2o Damaged Popular Upward Camper Roof and Make it Water Tight

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