we've got our leak all right there is water coming in
or not it was okay so Charity said that she saw it coming in and I was doing the three front
lights here and then the horn and then also this we are Charity Ben Dakota and Trinity
we decided we didn't want to wait for a life of adventure so in 2017 we bought our first RV and
set off to live a life of travel in the USA we've visited over 38 states in three years and have
many more to go follow along to learn all the best places to see RV and travel tips and much more
so in this video we wanted to take an opportunity to show you how to diagnose a water leak
water leaks inside of RVs can be somewhat problematic especially if you have a rig that
is a little bit older it's used maybe you're not sure of the prior maintenance history
so this is not our first rodeo with a water leak we've done this before so we kind of know
what to do at this point it just is a little time involved so stay tuned and we're gonna
show you how you too can diagnose anywhere that you might have water coming into your rv
so that you can get it fixed and get it stopped so what we are going to do and how this works is you
just need a garden hose you don't want anything that's super high pressure you're not going to use
a pressure washer just a garden hose with normal pressure and flow the way this is going to work is
the water leak that we need to figure out right now is near the driver's side door so I'm going
to go inside and while I'm inside ben is going to get up on a ladder and we are going to go
from the front of the RV back and we're going to just hose test one small place to one small place
to one small place and then I'm going to be on the inside once the icy water coming in after ben
has been running the hose in that specific area we'll know that that is our problem area so I'm
going to go ahead and head inside ben's going to grab the hose and head up on the ladder and
we're going to start this process and hopefully we'll be able to pinpoint this sooner versus later
this is a process that sometimes can be a little time involved depending upon where the leak is
coming from and where it's located i'm hoping with this leak and where it's at in the rv that we can
pinpoint it rather quickly but we'll find out so i've got the zero g hose gonna hook this guy up
this is a hundred foot hose so that'll give me plenty of length to work with let's do this
we're going to start up at the air horn here see if it's starting from up here so we'll see
I don't hear any yelling or screaming from charity inside saying that it's uh getting soaked yet so
after we test this front part we'll kind of move down a little bit start from one small area
and move to another so ben's outside with the hose and we're just going section by section here
but um we did kind of the first half of the drip rail and we didn't see anything
now the last time that we did this it took us a while but we were able to pinpoint it and i
was able to just see water completely pouring in so i'm hoping that this time it's not a lot
different than the last time but as of right now um right now we're dry still so we'll keep going
we were wet this morning after the rain last night so it's coming from somewhere it's just a matter
of pinpointing it down okay so there's nothing on that section so what i'm gonna do is test this um
this part right over here and then over the slide awning and then we'll see
if we get any leakage right there so we're just doing really small sections at a time
so we went ahead and brought in this slide so that ben can keep moving down the drip rail
with the hose the front half seems to be okay at the moment but now that we've brought this
in he can get a better view of the drip rail and to test it with the hose too from there
the last leak we had that was in a similar area I mean not the exact same area obviously but in
a similar area it was definitely coming in from a drip rail that had separated from the roof a
little bit so that's kind of really what my gut feeling is but we have to prove that theory out
especially when you're dealing with water leaks you've got to be sure so that's what
we're doing next okay so now we are going to test the middle of the RV on this side so basically the
awning roller arm here and let's see if that is it so far we haven't found a leak all right
so nothing yet we're in the back of the rv right now testing the awning on the back slide
area so nothing yet i'm testing on this whole half side of the rv first i'm pretty positive it's on
it's got to be on this side of the rv so after we test this side we'll move over to the other
side of the rv which isn't likely the case but i mean it could be so we'll find out okay so charity
said that she saw it coming in and I was doing the three front lights here and then the horn
and then also this um so I'm stopped and it stopped pouring in
and now I'm doing just the three uh front lights and seeing if it comes in there I don't hear
her saying anything right now so now I'm gonna try the spotlight okay spotlight spotlight now
okay so i'm gonna test the front awning area right here and see if it comes in here for the
body it's right yeah it's right actually at the body seam in the other front of this yeah and
the side of the awning okay let me know if you see it coming in like flowing in yeah okay we
are a gerd we have our wow we've got our leak all right there is water coming in definitely
very moist all right I think we finally got it there is water pouring down this wall
so hopefully we've got it pinpointed here well was it kind of gushing in or not it was it was
really like um like I mean it was definitely like oh my gosh there's water coming through the wall
you know I mean not gushing in but it was definite hugely visible there's water leaking through the
wall so it was definitely um not a gusher but very obvious I see exactly where in here now it was
coming and now I know why the wall was wet in the places it was wet because it was following these
channels as far as the metal crossbars and so now I can I mean I know exactly why it was
showing up where it was showing up good news is pretty sure that we've pinpointed
the source of our leak which is actually one of the areas that ben thought he had sealed up
yesterday and evidently it's not entirely sealed up so good news bad news is that he needs to do
a little bit better job of sealing I don't know um it also could be because we did get some rain
yesterday and maybe that didn't have a chance to fully set up but the good news is pretty sure
we've got this pin pointed the back closet was dry this was not that is how you diagnose a water leak
you just go component by component piece by piece on the roof until that you see where
it's coming in on the inside now I had to dig a little bit of the insulation out which is fine
because what we're going to do when we're ready to make the repair and put everything back together
is we're going to use some of this expanding foam great stuff to just fill in any of those
gaps where we had to pull out some of that foam insulation so good news is is we've got that
pinpointed and if you are ever needing to do this you just need really two people one to be out with
a hose one to be inside step by step until that you pinpoint the source of that leak and then
you can get it fixed up and sealed up so I think I found the culprit on where the drip is coming from
so as you can see here there's a seam where the two gutters come together and i think the water
is dripping down inside of there so what I'm going to do is just completely clean it up scrape out
everything and then run a bead of silicone right down there so it's completely sealed
all right so I think I might have potentially found another problem area where
water is getting in so we there used to be a satellite um on top of the RV here which I
ripped out just because I had no use for it so as you can see right down here
there's this area where the satellite would sit as you can see right down here where there's the
brown stuff that's where kind of water got in and sat or leaked into the rv so what i'm going to do
is the same thing I did with this as I put flex tape over the top and put
lap sealant around it to completely seal it up so that is what i'm going to do
so this wiring is completely wet and you know that when it rained water would get in
and run down the cable and to wherever the cable runs along so that is definitely one area where
water has been intruding into the rv so let's get this thing patched up
so
okay so now that we've identified where the leak is coming from around the the gutter seams
the rivets on the gutter seams yesterday I just cleaned up all the gutter rivets
and with mineral spirits so today
now that it's dry I'm going to hit every single rivet with this clear silicone so that way we
know they're covered we're not going to have any issues in the future so go up the ladder and
get this taken care of
all right so we should be in the clear we just ran the hose on the roof for a while and uh these
two areas that we found on the wall against this slide here where there was water coming in
no more water licks yes so hopefully no more delays moving forward
should be smooth sailing from here on out so um yeah super excited you get these walls painted
and repaired in flooring and everything else so we're gonna get back to work but I was just so
excited I had to make sure that I told you guys we got the leaks fixed uh gutter all the guys
so
you