The Best RV Roof Coating - Makes Your Roof Last Longer And Care Is A Breeze!

[Music] thank you hello everyone and welcome to the RV inspection and Care podcast and video I'm Dwayne I'm a certified RV inspector and today we're going to be talking about the best RV roof coatings that can drastically extend the life of your RV roof and drastically cut down on the maintenance you spend on that roof recently I made a video about RV rubber roofs and in that video I included information about how to identify what kind of rubber roof you have if that's what you have on your RV and I also covered information on how to maintain the roof as well that's because RV roof care is vital to the life of your RV it's the first line of defense against water leaks and water intrusion that allows water to get into your RV and break it down from the inside out but here's the sad truth very few rvers actually care for their roof like they should there can be various reasons for this number one you know the roof is up there it's out of sight so it's probably out of mind and maybe they just forget also it could be that the owner doesn't really know what to do and therefore they kind of do nothing but in many cases they just don't want to get up there and do that kind of work and so the job gets put off uh several times and just keeps on getting worse well here's the truth RV inspectors like myself we find these roof problems regularly in fact it's one of the most common things that we call out on our RV inspection reports usually it's a problem with the sealant and sealant that has started to age it started to crack somewhat and needs to be reapplied in many cases however it often goes so far the neglect has happened so long that there's no saving it the sealant just has to be scraped off and reapplied brand new again well that's a lot of work but it's also a lot of work to maintain sealant and roof Roofing as well on an RV so is there a way to lower required maintenance on RV roofs I asked that question because I myself am not crazy about going up on RV roofs and doing all of that necessary work I mean it's not something I look forward to but I do it because I know that it's so important it's so vital to the life of my RV well is there a way that we can lower all of that effort and time spent on RV roof maintenance we just bought a grand design fifth wheel so that we could use it as a home base in our RV travels and that's because covet taught us a lot of lessons but one of the good lessons we learned is it's a good idea to have a home base even when you're full-time traveling so we got this fifth wheel we put it on an RV lot in Arizona it's a 2015. it has an EPDM Rubber roof and the rubber roof is already showing somewhere in age and as a result it's darkening if you watched my video about rubber roofs you know that's a characteristic of EPDM as it ages it very often darkens and that means that it absorbs more heat and transfers that into the RV and that's not a good thing especially in Arizona so I decided that I needed to put an RV coating over that rubber roof and I wanted to accomplish a few things number one I want to extend the life of my roof number two I wanted to reflect heat better off of that roof and number three I wanted to find a way that I could cut down on all the necessary maintenance that I was having to do now the good news is that the previous owner of this RV had already started working toward the idea of cutting down on roof maintenance they had used the turnabond tape on several of the seams of the RV and around some of the roof equipment you know like skylights and vents where the sealant is they covered it over with eternal Bond tape and that's actually a great way to start cutting down on maintenance requirements because Eterna Bond tape lasts 20 years or more in many cases and can protect that sealant from UV damage that breaks it down so that was a good thing when I found that he had already started to use a turnab on tape on the roof but that didn't solve the problem with the roof material itself so what coating should I use for that I started doing a lot of research and many of the Coatings are made as acrylic based products dicor makes them very good roof coatings they make it for various kinds of roofs they've got a product for rubber for fiberglass and for metal there's a separate product for each one of them you don't use the same product but the good news is there's lots of great reviews about their products from people that have used it the only issue was that you had to reapply the product again every few years or so to keep the roof in good shape well I kept looking and eventually I found a product called Henry's 887 silicone roof coating and it comes with a lifetime warranty and I thought that's pretty good it also can be used in almost any RV surface you want to name and it specifically says that it's made for high UV areas and severe weather areas so when you're talking High ultraviolet that's Arizona for sure and I thought this is really good it's got compounds in it that specifically resist UV now when I took a look at the bucket and I highly encourage that whatever product you get look very closely at the instructions and the guidelines they give you the bucket said that it can be used on TPO on EPDM on PVC on metal and here's the kicker usually with a one coat application that's great because the dicor products do use are require a multiple coat application now they discussed the prep that you need to do on your roof and the instructions were just clean with TSP and water you could use a brush to brush a stiff bristle brush to clean the roof and then hose it off with water or you could use a power washer but I recommend if you're going to use a power washer be very careful don't use high pressure at all you can damage these roofs so proceed carefully once you clean the roof though allow it to dry completely and then you can just use a roller like a paint roller to apply the product and sure enough on my rig it was a one coat application and I even found by reading the comments and the reviews that many RV owners have just gone right over their Eterna Bond and it's worked well for them so that's what I did now let me say this whatever product you use follow the instructions very carefully make sure that you're using it the way it's intended to be used and be safe on RV roofs my friends that can be very dangerous if you aren't careful so if you are not comfortable on RV roofs then get someone to do it for you that is if you do it take all the safety precautions that you possibly can now here's the proof of the pudding let me show you the before and the after on my fifth wheel EPDM roof and here's a picture of the before this is actually not the true before this is after I cleaned it this is improved by the way but you can still see there's darker areas on the roof there now I applied the product and here is the finished product from the tropical from Henry's and just look at that isn't that a beautiful roof and so white that is going to reflect heat very very well so for me I am very happy with the Henry's product I'm really happy that this is going to cut down on my maintenance drastically now you don't have to use hand raise again I I recommend core there's another fine company called Haynes they have great reviews from RV owners as well the only problem with dicor and hings is you do have to re-apply every so often if you do decide to look at the Henry's tropical 887 let me warn you Henry's makes a lot of roof products so don't use anything else if you want to do what I did I used the tropical 887 that is what you want to look for if you're doing what I did there's lots of great reviews too from RV owners on Amazon for the Henry's product so it does seem to be tried and true now I'm going to place links for all of these products that I mentioned in the video down in the description of the video and the podcast so that you can take a look at these products for yourself I encourage you do your own research determine what's best for you and your RV I just wanted to share with you what worked well for me but if you want to extend your RV roofs life and you want to cut down on your roof maintenance than getting a really high quality RV roof coating is a great way to do that well that's it for now as safe and happy travels my friends until next time [Music]

Channel: RV Inspection And Care

Views: 205,211

Keywords: rv roof, rv care, rv maintenance, motorhome roof, dicor, rv life, rv living, rv tips

Id: n-HsLP2aB10

Length: 12min 7sec (727 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 22 2023