Do you get water coming in thru your vents?

[Diesel Dan]

For those who have used HVAC indoor louvered vents for various purposes on the outside of your bus, I can't help but wonder if water gets in there? Surely during a good storm if you're driving down the road, the wind must whip a certain amount of rain into the bus through those vents, right? Here is an example of what I'm talking about:



I'm going to need to vent my battery compartment, which may actually end up being inside the bus, so I'm wondering how these vents have worked out related to water coming in.

Who has had experience with this?

[lornaschinske]

On the Class C... I have one of those on the back section of the refrigerator, 2 on the generator, 1 venting the portable gastank for the generator and 1 small one venting the converter. Only thing different is I have made screens to keep the creepy crawlies out. No water problems a little damp at times when the rain is blowing almost horizontally. And it rains a lot in the SW Appalachian Mountains... not so much here in NM.

[lornaschinske]

Originally Posted by Smitty

... return air vents. I'd venture to say the only way either would not leak (on a vertical surface), were if they never saw rain

Smitty

Mine are return air vents (does NOT have a shut off or damper). I've had them installed on the Class C since 2006. During that time we were in the RV (full-time) in NC, GA, NC, FL, GA, FL, NC, TN, NC, NM, TX and now back in NM. While it doesn't rain much in NM, it did rain a lot while in Corpus Christi TX and let's face it, drought or no drought, it flat rains a lot in GA, NC, & TN. I mean honestly... there was emerald green MOSS growing in the window ledges of the skoolie when we left NC (it was brown by the time we hit the TX state line). Yes we have gotten tiny amounts of rain inside the openings. But less than if you walked in to the RV with wet feet from the rain. And I have driven in the rain (raining so hard we had to pull over, we couldn't see to drive). Driven on interstates with semi-trucks passing me. Not a problem. I figure you will probably get more water damage from accidentally leaving a window slightly open than you will from one of these vents. But I could be wrong... it's hot and I'm getting cranky.

[lornaschinske]

Originally Posted by Smitty

... How hard would it be to add a shroud over them? Like an awning, but more like a large dryer vent cap....more vertical than horizontal.

lol....you can be as cranky as ya like....I don't have to live with ya

Smitty

The "shroud" would have to be pretty big. We are ventilating a refrigerator stacked on top of a freezer (that's a huge heat build up in the summer). We keep a fan blowing air thru the cabinetry and up to the rooftop vent. It's 100 degrees inside the RV and my freezer (on the warmest setting) is -6.2F. I need to be someplace cooler in the summer.

The generator is in a metal lined "box". It needs a fair amount of air flow too.

And you would be cranky too if you were sitting in 100+ degree heat and the water in your fresh tank was too hot to take a "cool" shower! OMG IT'S SOOO HOT! And it doesn't cool off until after midnight! Of course it IS a dry heat... like a convection oven... I gotta go suck up some AC at Wally World!

[Diesel Dan]

Hmmm... I may be better served by venting out of the floor of the bus rather than the sides. Maybe have a sort of p-trap type thing so that it is harder for water to find it's way up into the bus. I'm thinking of having a small exhaust fan that will run when the batteries are charging. Is that going overboard?

[lornaschinske]

You have a breeze??? The only "breeze" we get is just before a rainstorm and then it's more like a gale... with dust... and everything that used to be in the neighbours yard! We now know why all the yards around here have walls!!