9/19/19

You hope it never happens, you don’t want it to happen, but deep down you know it’s inevitable – you’ve got a leak in your rig. 

It’s September in the Houston area, smack in the middle of hurricane season, and we’re stationary because hubby is still working. Here comes Imelda, the remnants of a sudden  disturbance-turned-depression-turned-storm-turned-depression. No biggie. I weathered Hurricane Harvey alone in an apartment while hubby was in Baton Rouge. Surely, I can handle the remnants of a tropical storm in a well-built RV while hubby commutes back and forth to work. 

Okay, so those “remnants” brought us 12” of rain in 36 hours. 

Day 1: I come out of the bathroom to find a puddle of water on the floor and water pouring in from the TV antenna handle on the ceiling. I lower the antenna (lesson immediately learned) and watch the water slow down to a trickle, then a drip…drip…drip. Out come towels and a bucket. Eventually, the rain slows, and the dripping stops. Hubby comes home to find a dry bucket. “Looks like it may have just been water build up from having the antenna up.” Uh-huh. I leave the bucket out that night, and we go to bed. The weather man says to prepare for the worst. The storm is “fizzling” but it’s got a freakish amount of moisture build up. “We could see some severe thunderstorms, heavy amounts of rain, flash flooding, and maybe some tornado conditions.” The storm after the storm.

Day 2: At approximately 1:30 a.m. we hear the roll of thunder. I go back to sleep, realizing that there’s not much I can do but watch the water drip if my roof resumes leaking. At 5:45, hubby gets a weather alert on his phone. We see constant flashes of lightning and hear roaring thunder, howling wind, and pouring-down rain. My bucket is, once again, collecting water. “Huh,” says hubby. “Looks like I’ll have to get up on the roof when this is all over.” He leaves for work in torrential rain and lightning strikes so frequent it’s like daybreak, though the sun won’t rise for another hour.

Now, the cool thing about living in an RV is that you won’t immediately notice certain things, like a loss of power. Hubby called me from his drive to work to tell me to turn on the generator – my morning cup of Joe came courtesy of our house batteries. So, I follow his instructions and start the generator. “Congratulations. You are officially boondocking.” Cool. 

I go around the rig, turning off non-essential lights, unplugging chargers, raising the thermostats, etc. and settle in to watch the madness outside. Satellite is out, antenna is not an option, WiFi and phone signals are very weak. It’s eerily quiet inside the rig. All I hear is the drip…drip…dripdrip…dripdrip…what?! There’s a second leak, not far from the first, coming out of the AC vent. Carry-over? Maybe. Sigh…bucket #2.

At this point, I take my trusty penlight and start searching the rig – every nook and cranny of that ceiling, inside every cabinet and closet, each fan, and finally the skylight above the shower…Yup, water’s dripping down from the frame, onto the shower floor (luckily, because I’ve run out of buckets). Ugh.

By now, I’m torn between begging God not to allow any more leaks and challenging Him à la Lieutenant Dan – “YOU CALL THIS A STORM!!!” I figure I’d better not press my luck. I opt for begging and bargaining.

Aftermath

Sometime that afternoon, the rain stopped, and so did the maddening drip, drip, drip from my ceiling. The sun began peeking through the clouds, and the skies looked friendly again. I, of course, kept the buckets where they were, still half-filled with water, to show my husband when he got home from work. “Well, looks like it’s over now. You handled that pretty well.” 

The next few days were clear, and that weekend we got up on the roof to conduct our inspection. No visible damage, cracks, holes, tears…nothing. Since then, with every rain, I check those two spots and, let’s be honest, every corner of my ceiling. We’ve experimented with the TV antenna up and with it down. Nothing. Not even the slightest hint of water. In addition, no more water has entered from the shower skylight. Lucky? Who knows. Reward for not challenging God? Maybe. 

The most likely take-away is that we received 12” of rain in 36 hours, coupled with powerful wind gusts (some tornadic in nature). The weakest points on our roof simply could not handle that amount of water. We were lucky those were the only two spots.

Still, we will be visiting the manufacturer of our rig in Nappanee, IN come July. I’ll be requesting a full inspection of our roof, along with a check for mold, and will keep you posted. 

Until then…

The post above was written after my first experience sitting out a tropical storm in our rig – my first time experiencing real weather in a motorhome. Not included in this post are the emotions I felt – anxiousness, fear, concern, frustration, ultimate relief. The area surrounding us sustained extensive flooding and damage to streets, homes, businesses, and schools; our park was clear and spared any flooding or damage. We were lucky. The moral of the story? Weather and RVs don’t necessarily mix. We watch; we plan; we have insurance – we will be safe.