Maintenance or Bust!

January 2019
After a magic trip away Dave decided that he may as well leap in to trying to sort out the wee leak we had discovered on one of our first trips away. At the end of last year he had investigated places that would be able to build up the dip that had developed in the roof to stop rain building up over the level of the vent and the ensuing waterfall coming in to the motorhome. We found a place in West Auckland but the owners didn't really fill Dave with confidence and the quote was rather loose, so he started looking for a place we could store the Beast, somewhere waterproof, that would allow Dave to do the work himself. Sadly there weren't too many of those around either. So Dave came up with this idea of building a structure beside our house that would have a tarpaulin over it in case of rain and would allow for planks to go from one side of the motorhome to the other which would allow Dave to work on the roof without making the roof any worse.

18 January - 17 February 2019
This all sounded brilliant except for the little matter of getting the motorhome under the structure once it was built with only millimetres either side of the vehicle it was going to be tricky. With the side of our house - including the chimney on one side and our fence on the other side this manoeuvre involved folding the mirrors in, and me running from side to side to make sure nothing was being hit. Dave, meanwhile, inched the Beast forward with frequent stops to re-assess, re-adjust and re-move parts of the structure.

It took ages  - that is ages off my life!! Talk about stressful

Finally though the Beast was somewhat snuggly under cover and ready to have his roof peeled off like a sardine can.

What Dave had to do was take everything off the roof - the solar panel, the vents, the  satelitte dish, peel the roof back. Then he had to put in some supports that he had laminated so that they had a slight curve upwards. Then he would attach some plywood to this so that not only was the roof strengthened but it would then be slightly convex. Then he had to cover it all with aluminium sheeting that we had bought through Jono's work and make sure everything was water tight.

As you can see by the photos above, not only did he have to achieve this at a great height but he also had very little space between the roof of the campervan and the top of the structure he had created in case it rained. This meant he was going to spend a lot of time hunched over on his knees. The roof of the motorhome was level with our dining room window so I was able to get a few good action shots as Dave toiled to repair the beast.

Eventually the carpentry was done and it was time to re-apply the aluminium sheets. Dave rigged up an easy system to slide them up on to the top of the beast.

Getting the aluminium up there was one thing - next all the rivets had to be put in AND every rivet had to be sealed to ensure the waterproofing.

And then, as if Dave hadn't punished his knees enough, he had to put
all the stuff BACK on the roof. Of course he had given the vents and the satelitte dish a bit of a gussy up so the roof of the Beast looked all brand new!!

Finally, on 17 February 2019 it was time to add a few more grey hairs and reverse the beast out of its snug little home. Dave didn't have the use of his wing mirrors but luckily he had his wing man (alias, me!). I got to not only run from side to side to check on progress from the front of the motorhome but also run up the back steps, through the house and out the front door to check on progress from the back of the motorhome. A fairly small part to play considering Dave had spent a whole month scrabbling around on his knees doing this major repair which saved us a fortune!

Ironically, it hadn't rained at all through the month and we had to wait for quite some time for the rain that showed us that the repair had worked a treat. So not only did the Beast look a fantastic but he was also water tight once again.