Rusty 87 build thread

[musigenesis]

I thought I had fixed all of my window leaks, but instead it seems that almost every window in the bus is leaking to some extent. These pics are too dark to show the leaking; just references for me - although since all the windows are leaking, I don't really need them.

A number of them have very small leaks in the corners of the window panes themselves, although this doesn't let much water through. Most of the water is either coming through the windows themselves via the corners (of the frame itself, not the panes), or entirely around the windows. I'm guessing the Dynatron seal around the edges of the windows is not completely watertight, although I'm not sure how that could be the case.

Very depressing, and for good measure when I got home this morning my basement was leaking massively.

[musigenesis]

I noticed my emergency exit windows were leaking in a weird way, too. There is weatherstripping along the bottom of the part that hinges out, to seal off where it meets the bottom window sill. This weatherstripping is getting soaked and then wicking water (a small amount) to the inside of the window. I might try replacing this with a rubber gasket of some sort, or maybe I'll have to fix these windows so they can't hinge outwards and seal them completely in place.

[Mountain Gnome]

I feel for you. I thought my windows were not leaking. used high-pressure hose, rained on them for years.


The week I installed cabinets, that e-window started leaking at the corner, dripping down the wall to the mounting bracket for the cabinet, down the bracket, and strait into the steel cabinet, which is now rusting in the bottom.


I gave up on trying to work on the windows and paint since all it has done for the past 2 years is rain 3 or more days a week, unpredictably. The last paint job was the rub-rails on one side. Chance of rain: 10% for the next 3 days. Spent a day covering that entire side with newspaper and blue tape. Then it rained that night. I painted the rails the next day, and within an hour, it rained. Peeled off the newspaper, and the ink soaked into the paint behind, it is still stained from a year ago.


I'm heading to the desert to finish the seal-up job on the windows and the paint.

[Oldyeller]

Interesting to see what you're doing as I'm now confronting the sad reality of window leaks myself (I posted a new video of one of the windows openings yesterday). I'm getting a lot of good information from your experience. Based on what I saw today I've mentally added re-caulking (at least) the tops of the exterior side rails

I've concluded that most of the rust on my interior floorboards was caused by the windows leaking, the moisture being held by the plywood sub-flooring under a rubber membrane and the billions of little kiddie feet dragging salty water down the center isle of the bus for 16 years. (OK I'm exaggerating, not billions, maybe 10s of thousands of little kiddie feet. )

I'm not going to do a permanent build out right now. After I repair, clean and paint the rusty flooring with . . . whatever I decide to use (I have no idea yet what to use) I'm going to lay down closed cell rubber floor mats that I already have and - perhaps - lay floating flooring of some kind as a short term floor. I'm going to add some pieces of furniture I took out of my house when I moved out and I'll use them in the bus initially until I figure out what to do in my bus. After the first xx # of months of using the bus, if I decide I like the lifestyle, full-timing, and the bus is workable, I'll probably do a roof raise at which time I'll strip it down to the floor again and see how it's fared over the time I was running it and to see where water has accumulated and how much damage it did over the time I was running it. Hopefully 6 or 8 months on the road won't result in too much additional corrosion in the floor.

[musigenesis]

This could have been a complete disaster, but instead it turned into a raging success. The Tree of Heaven behind my bus - home of the lanterflies that have been pooping up the back of my bus - fell on the bus some time this afternoon. The bus was not even scratched as it seems the fence next to my bus caught most of it. I just moved two spots over and I'm good to go. I was considering asking the owner to cut the tree down but I doubt she would have done it.

[Oldyeller]

It's good to see that you're 'branching out' with your build. Keep going and you'll eventually get to the 'root' of the problem. I guess you should leaves it at that.

Glad no damage was done. Here in Jersey we didn't get much wind but a fair amount of rain.

[musigenesis]

It's possible I fixed the leak in my front right window. I set up my garden hose to point right at this corner and let it run for a few minutes and got some leaking inside right away. This all-over treatment of the corner seems to have fixed it, although I've said that before - I let the hose run on this for half an hour and the inside stayed bone dry.

Dynatron-550 supposedly has UV resistance and can be left unpainted, but I'm starting to wonder if there is an issue with it when it's left exposed to the sun, especially when the coating is particularly thin. The stuff seems to shrink a little bit and then crack if it's really thin. The seams I put on my roof panels a year and half ago are 1/8" thick or so, and those things show no signs of leakage although I left them unpainted, too.

One good thing about glopping up my windows like this is that I'm just going to paint my bus with a roller and not worry about it too much. This bus is going to look like patented ass up close no matter what I do.



Another problem I'm going to have to deal with is this sealant on the inside corner. The windows have stops at the bottom which push into this, and on other windows I can see the impression these leave in the sealant and I think it's possible they can dislodge it and allow leaking again. I have to make sure the windows don't go all the way down, or I may see if I can modify the stops so they don't impinge on this part.



I decided to go with a more natural flooring material for my living room.

[musigenesis]

Started raining again this morning so I went to check out the bus. Front window is leaking as badly as ever.





Noticed this large rivulet of water coming down the wall on the other side of the rib by the leaking corner - obviously nothing to do with the window.



The framing around the door had a couple of missing rivets along the top, and a couple of sheet metal screws that I had run into empty holes along the left side of the door. I'm hoping that the source of this leaking I'm seeing is from that rather than from the window itself. So I sealed the hell out of everything - every screw and rivet and even the underside of the drip rail (I'm thinking maybe water was wicking inside through it).



I haven't attempted to seal the rivets holding on the external window trim pieces as they appear to be sealed by paint. May have to add those as well and just seal every single thing on the outside.



More thunderstorms this afternoon, so we'll see.

[Oldyeller]

Yesterday, just before I quit for the day. I pulled out the 6th window I'm going to remove for my shortening (assuming I actually go through with it) and sat for a while and looked it over. Given the way the windows were installed, including the weather sealing, or more accurately the lack of weather sealing, and the design of the windows and window openings, it's going to be tough for me to seal them and I don't see how, if the water initially gets past the window frame, it can be stopped from running down the interior wall to the floor. It's like the Jeff Goldblum quote in that dinosaur movie, "Water will find a way." or something like that.

[musigenesis]

Hot damn! https://bigshipsalvage.com/product-c...-valve-wheels/

[JDSquared]

Originally Posted by musigenesis

Hot damn! https://bigshipsalvage.com/product-c...-valve-wheels/

That will be cool.

[kidharris]

Originally Posted by musigenesis

Started raining again this morning so I went to check out the bus. Front window is leaking as badly as ever.

Attachment 47672

Attachment 47673

Noticed this large rivulet of water coming down the wall on the other side of the rib by the leaking corner - obviously nothing to do with the window.

Attachment 47674

The framing around the door had a couple of missing rivets along the top, and a couple of sheet metal screws that I had run into empty holes along the left side of the door. I'm hoping that the source of this leaking I'm seeing is from that rather than from the window itself. So I sealed the hell out of everything - every screw and rivet and even the underside of the drip rail (I'm thinking maybe water was wicking inside through it).

Attachment 47675

I haven't attempted to seal the rivets holding on the external window trim pieces as they appear to be sealed by paint. May have to add those as well and just seal every single thing on the outside.

Attachment 47676

More thunderstorms this afternoon, so we'll see.

You would probably be better off if you threw your caulk gun in the trash. I have been holding off on commenting on these leaks posted by numerous posters on this thread and on other threads. I can't type and it takes way too many words and time to impress upon folks what they need to do and to quit building dams to stop rain leaks.


Cars, houses, and most structures are built using the simple concepts of shingling, flashing, gutters, and diverters to allow gravity to move the rain off and drain it away. It is not like plumbing where you must plug every hole and seal it up to stop water leaking out from inside a container. Every house and car, for instance will fill up with water in a flood where the water is coming from the bottom up.


Shingling is a term to describe the act of lapping the top components over the bottom components sufficiently that gravity will take the water away. Side laps are required to prevent wind or unintended sideways slopes/sags from changing the direction of the draining water. The steeper the slope, the better shingling works for instance walls drain better than roofs. Roofers managed to prevent leaks for a very long time without caulk.


On what we generally call a shingle roof (say for instance, composition asphalt "shingles") if water leaks through a hole in the "shingle" it will get on the shingle under it and go ahead and drain off. If you apply a bead of caulk/cement to the bottom edge of the shingle you will seal it off so that if any water ever did leak from higher up it could no longer drain off from under the lapped shingle. Now that you have built a dam to stop the water from draining it has no choice but to back uphill until it hits the top edge of the lower shingle or a nail hole and can now go under the lower shingle and leak into the house.


For an example of you doing this just look at your pictures. All that caulk smeared outside the bus around the window, the rub rail, and the skin panels is just trapping the water in the wall from getting out, it is not stopping any water from going in. Any caulk in the windowsills is an excellent example of this. Any design that depends on caulk is a bad design in my opinion. Most aluminum windows and skylights have little gutters/channels to catch the water and drain it off. Often they have "little weep holes in the channel/gutter to drain the water, other times the water goes out the end of the channel/gutter and drains off of a piece of "flashing" following the shingle principle. No doubt you probably sealed that too.



People often think that their repair worked for a while, than they come to the conclusion that it is worse. Some times this is because the rain came from the wrong direction and the leak was shadowed and little or no rain actually hit it. Some times it just takes a little more water to leak to have enough to flow over the top of the "shingle" like in my example above... or the insulation or wood is soaking it up like a sponge and you need to get enough water to fill the "sponge".



Don't feel too bad, this is a very common mistake, I've seen it thousands of times, often done by "pros" that should know better.


When I was roofing and I'd walk up on a leak "repair" and I see caulk smeared everywhere the first thing that I know I have to do is get all of that crap off so I can track down the leak. Skylights are the worst. Very few skylights or window designs require caulk.



When you see little holes that look like they were intentionally made in the manufacturing , they may be weep holes. Like on the inside bottom of old car doors for example. If you determine that the holes are weep hole, make sure the holes are not plugged so the water can drain out.

[Oldyeller]

Kidharris, I read your post, understand and agree with what you said. The thing that puzzled me yesterday when I was looking at my windows was the fact that the ONLY place effort was made to caulk was on the bottom of the windows, on the 'sill' where I'd expect water would drain off. The caulking there would prevent water from running off the sill and down the outside of the bus. I have no idea if that caulk was applied at the factory or by some owner/operator.

Based on your post I'm thinking the best approach with my windows would be a small bead of caulk on the top and both side flanges of the outside skin that the windows seats against and a bead near the top of the inner flange. My only other concern is whether the 'sill' is a solid piece of steel the entire length of the side of the bus. I'm thinking that's NOT the case. Perhaps the leaks I'm seeing are on seams in that sill caused by the failure of 16 year old caulk. Maybe today I'll try cleaning up the sill of at least one of the window openings and see what I can see.

Thanks for your post.

[Mountain Gnome]

You can not "shingle" the seam between the bottom of the window and the frame in my bus. Only a sealer will do. The "weep holes" drain INTO the bus.


How do you "shingle" the leak behind the rub rail? add more sheet metal flashing all the way to the roof, then more on the roof to "shingle" the shingles you just added.


Poor guy has a piece of Swiss cheese. He would have to shingle the whole bus from the top to bottom.

[BeNimble]

We don't use shingles on boats..the windows have seals. The water CAN come from below.

[musigenesis]

Originally Posted by Mountain Gnome

Poor guy has a piece of Swiss cheese. He would have to shingle the whole bus from the top to bottom.

Hey, now ... my bus is Gruyere, thank you very much.

[kidharris]

Originally Posted by Mountain Gnome

You can not "shingle" the seam between the bottom of the window and the frame in my bus. Only a sealer will do. The "weep holes" drain INTO the bus.


How do you "shingle" the leak behind the rub rail? add more sheet metal flashing all the way to the roof, then more on the roof to "shingle" the shingles you just added.


Poor guy has a piece of Swiss cheese. He would have to shingle the whole bus from the top to bottom.

So you think his bus is just leaking everywhere?? Abandon ship??


As for your bus, You may need to remove your window, clean up the caulk mess, analyze the water flow, and start over. Generally speaking the window sill is part, if not all, of the counter flashing for the metal panel under it. If what you are saying is true that " The "weep holes" drain INTO the bus.", then all of your windows should be pouring water.


Leak test - to find a leak, start at the bottom with a water hose or bug sprayer and work your way up. Go slow to give it time to show up. Having a second person is helpful. Food coloring in a spray bottle is good to pinpoint the leak and show its path, but keep a towel handy to soak/clean up the colored water. The coloring stains some things. Use a different color for each leak in case they overlap. It happens more often than you would think, sometimes one above the other so don't stop just because you found one leak. Be thorough.


One of the problems with caulk/sealants is that you can inadvertantly cause the water to redirect and the leak "shows up" some where that is not leaking, maybe even in multiple places. This makes it hard to track down. An example that is easy to understand is if the water penetrates the "roof" and lands on a metal panel, it then has to go to the end of the panel or the next hole downhill to drip off. This process can get repeated multiple times and in multiple directions so that one leak looks like numerous leaks.


My advice is FIND THE EXACT LEAK SOURCE, think like water, then, maybe, use a good caulk/sealer if no other method is available.


I worked commercial flat roofing for many years where the whole roof is just one big "seal". The roof leaks in one place on top and shows up 20 plus feet over. The water might flow down the metal decking panels to a truss/rafter/brace/pipe/wire/duct/whatever, then down the sloped truss components to drip off onto the ceiling, then has to find a hole (or soak thru the ceiling) to drain inside and finally get noticed by the occupants. If it winds up in a wall or some other hard to see location then it might not get noticed for years, by which time it has caused extensive damage....think rusted out bus floors


"How do you "shingle" the leak behind the rub rail?".... How do you know it is leaking behind the rub rail?


Is there a panel lap under the rub rail? It is more likely a loose/missing screw or rivet. BTW, does the bottom of the rub rail have a small gap caused by the rail having depressions for the screws/rivets to mount? This gap is a long weep hole to avoid water getting trapped under the rub rail. Do not caulk, top or bottom. The water is meant to run under the rub rail.


"He would have to shingle the whole bus from the top to bottom." The idea behind "shingling" is to start at the bottom and lap all the way to the top - bottom to top, not top to bottom. LOL. As Bruce Lee said "You have to be like water"





A lot of roofs get needlessly replaced because they can't stop the leak.

I think that you might make a good roof salesman.

[kidharris]

Originally Posted by Oldyeller

Kidharris, I read your post, understand and agree with what you said. The thing that puzzled me yesterday when I was looking at my windows was the fact that the ONLY place effort was made to caulk was on the bottom of the windows, on the 'sill' where I'd expect water would drain off. The caulking there would prevent water from running off the sill and down the outside of the bus. I have no idea if that caulk was applied at the factory or by some owner/operator.

Based on your post I'm thinking the best approach with my windows would be a small bead of caulk on the top and both side flanges of the outside skin that the windows seats against and a bead near the top of the inner flange. My only other concern is whether the 'sill' is a solid piece of steel the entire length of the side of the bus. I'm thinking that's NOT the case. Perhaps the leaks I'm seeing are on seams in that sill caused by the failure of 16 year old caulk. Maybe today I'll try cleaning up the sill of at least one of the window openings and see what I can see.

Thanks for your post.

Sounds like it might work. I would leak test it first. If you can remove the window, you might get better clues. If it is installed properly and any rubber seals are in good shape it shouldn't leak. Do not use silicone caulk if at all possible. It doesn't stick well and will fool you

[kidharris]

Originally Posted by BeNimble

We don't use shingles on boats..the windows have seals. The water CAN come from below.

Did you miss this part?

"Cars, houses, and most structures are built using the simple concepts of shingling, flashing, gutters, and diverters to allow gravity to move the rain off and drain it away. It is not like plumbing where you must plug every hole and seal it up to stop water leaking out from inside a container. Every house and car, for instance will fill up with water in a flood where the water is coming from the bottom up."

You may want to re-read this part too.



"Shingling is a term to describe the act of lapping the top components over the bottom components sufficiently that gravity will take the water away. Side laps are required to prevent wind or unintended sideways slopes/sags from changing the direction of the draining water. The steeper the slope, the better shingling works for instance walls drain better than roofs. Roofers managed to prevent leaks for a very long time without caulk."


I was talking about the concept of "shingling" where "shingle" is a verb, not using actual house shingles on your bus.


Boats are more of a plumbing situation plus buoyancy thrown in to complicate things. Space ships are more the reverse situation. Pressure plays a huge role in both situations.



Another way to say it is that most structures/buses/cars are water resistant, whereas plumbing, boats, and spaceships are water proof.


If water comes from below on your bus, you better be more careful.

[musigenesis]

Woo hoo! My mega-sealing job on the front door worked, no leaks from the front window any more. I peeled back the lip of the window inside a bit and saw salt streaks wrapping around the inside part of the rib to the side of the window, so it looks like it was actually leaking above the door and just making its way out down the window corner. Just got hit with our second storm of the century (first since Tuesday lol) and no water came in at all.

In rent news, my rent went from $75 a month to $100. Also a woo-hoo since I thought it might be more - or that I might be getting the boot.