The Great Clean Out

As you may have seen in our earlier post, and in more detail if you follow us on Facebook, our RV was in a less than ideal state when we moved her out of storage. The good news, even after some more rain, there has been no more water leakage. We are assuming that water came in through the bedroom slide – whether it wasn’t closed all the way, or if leakage occurred because of the tilt we were on in the lot, or if because it just DOESN’T DRY OUT HERE IN OREGON, we don’t know. More research to come later.

Dehumidifier working some magic…but not enough to leave the carpeting down.

Initially, we had hoped that we could sop up the mess with a steam cleaner. Well, more accurately, Keith was hoping we could just sop up the mess with the steam cleaner. After reading some online, I was pretty confident we were going to have to pull the carpeting. Before we steam cleaned however, we needed to get the humidity levels down so we are now the owners of a nice dehumidifier, which was on our list to purchase anyway. Unfortunately, we couldn’t get the constant cycle working so each night we would visit to a dehumidifier that was full (and only collecting about 6 pints of water a day which just wasn’t enough!). In our previous homes, the dehumidifier had a switch that we flipped if we wanted to run continuously but we couldn’t locate one on this unit. After a call to the company, the oh so technical term ’tilt it’ came about. We achieved success when tilted it over the sink at just the right angle! So, after a week of drying out the unit and steam cleaning the floors a few times, the smell of mildew got stronger.

A peek under the carpet

It was time for me to put my foot down & take a look under the carpet. We choose the transom from the bathroom to the hallway and took a peek. Not good. It was still incredibly moist. In the meantime, I got the brilliant idea that we had insurance & we should call to see if this was covered, knowing we have more of a homeowner’s type policy. After talking to the company & the adjuster, the chances of it being covered are slim (darn insurance companies & their leak exclusions) I will say this however – GMAC and their response time was amazing. We called on a Sunday afternoon and talked to a pleasant gentleman. He stated they were having some computer issues with assigning an adjuster and it might not get assigned until Monday. Okay – no worries. By 10am Monday Keith got a call and the adjuster wanted to meet us that day. The adjuster was friendly, and looked for any damage that might be covered – he even got on the roof to check for the off chance we hit something that may have forced the leak.  So, while it didn’t produce a win in terms of coverage, the response time & employees we have dealt with have been nothing less than excellent. While we hope we never have to call for an accident, I feel a bit more comfortable with the company & how they may handle future claims.

After meeting with the adjuster Monday afternoon & getting his unofficial assessment, we went back out to the RV Monday night to remove the majority of the capeting & linouleam. Wow – a lot of moisture still down there & I think this was the best thing to do to ensure the subfloor stays in excellent condition. Had we left it, there was a good chance it would have rotted out & we DO NOT want that. Luckily we didn’t let it sit too long and the plywood dried out extremely well.

Drying out the subfloor

The clean out took much longer than expected – getting into every corner, under the bed, under the slides – there’s a lot of places that flooring is stuck in these rigs. Also, the ridiculous number of staples tacking the stuff down had to be removed.  Since we have a gas rig, we also had to figure out a way around the doghouse and decided that since the carpeting on the slides will remain, so too can some carpeting up front and (hopefully) not have it look too off.

Application of KILZ after all the carpeting & linoleum was removed (save the slides & the doghouse area)

An application of Kilz to ward off future mildew, leveler around the areas that need it and now the big question – what flooring to actually put down! Stay tuned…