water leaks - what am i missing here?

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Joined
Dec 1, 2017
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i'm living in a 36 foot dutchmen trailer with vinyl roof, and have been using Henry 208 wet patch for my roof repairs. yes, its a black product, oh well. here in western washington state i'm not too worried about the heat implications of black.
anyway, i have one leak situation i'm still failing to solve. in the bedroom (back of the trailer), i get wet spots in the carpet about a foot from the walls. the walls and ceiling always stay dry, but these spots get truly soaked. last week i mopped up a pint from my carpet in several minutes, using only a wad of paper towels and a bucket.
on the roof, the vinyl had many areas where it was cracking at the edge of the roof, and several other spots with obvious flaws. after patching the obvious flaws and still having leaks, i then patched the entire length of the rig about 6 inches wide on both sides, to cover these edge cracks. i also found the corner of the wall had a seperation where the back wall siding had pulled away from the side wall, leaving an open gap for approximately the bottom half of the wall. i reattached that and its all tight again. this is on the same side as most of my wet spots, but they're worst about 5 feet forward of that corner.

i'm about ready to buy a couple more buckets of my patching product and coat my entire roof in it, but thought i would do well to ask around if y'all have any advice for me. the only plumbing in that whole section of the house is the freshwater tank, which is sitting empty. everything else is significantly farther forward.

thanks in advance for any advice
 
There's probably vinyl flooring underneath the carpet. The water can be getting under the edge of the vinyl flooring and coming up through staple holes, soaking the carpet well away from the leak.

Your roof material is either EPDM or TPO, commonly called rubber. That Henry's sealer you have been using should come nowhere near your roofing material. It contains a lot of petroleum products.
Pretty much, your roof is ruined, and would most likely cost more than what your trailer is worth to repair it, not counting the water damage that's already occurred.
 
It's too late to chide you for using an asphalt-based  product that is damaging to rubber (EPDM) RV roofs, but I suspect you will continue to have problems with because of it.

Odds are that you have more joint separation problems that you simply haven't found yet. Water runs down through walls and out onto the floor, often appearing well away from the source. That pint of water indicates a serious leak. Keep hunting around the rear cap joint and the corners.
 
Thanks for the info guys.
All the other wall joints are tight, but I think my next step is going to be cleaning and caulking around all the windows, corner joints,  and other possible leak points in the walls, as the caulking looks to be failing from 20 years of weather.
 
All the seams should be checked annually on Rvs that travel over the road, but one that remains parked can maybe be less frequent. Caulk doesn't last forever, though, and RV joints and openings are subject to a lot of temperature expansion/contraction even if they do not get road abuse.
 

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