Water leaks from windows or elsewhere?

[KJ4567]

Let me start by saying we did not do the conversion on our bus. When it rains, we have water that pools slightly at each "seam" where the windows meet. The water pools at the bottom on that little white ledge where the silver aluminum wall meets the white metal ledge. Do you think it is from windows or somewhere else? Trying to decide how to best tackle this. TIA!

[musigenesis]

Your windows are leaking (like about 100% of buses). Water can come in through the gaps between the window frame and the square wall opening in which it's placed, and often the gaskets that hold the glass panes in their aluminum frames will dry and shrink and allow water in. In addition, the corners of the window frames themselves can slightly separate, allowing water inside when it pools in the sills on the outside (this problem will be worse if the bus is parked on a slop instead of flat). All of these potential openings are very tiny, but tiny openings can let in a surprisingly large amount of water.

You need to seal all three of these areas (from the outside) to ensure that the windows are watertight. Or, like a lot of people do when faced with an apparently hopeless situation (or an actually hopeless situation) is to remove the windows entirely and skin them over with sheet metal.

Additionally, given the severity of what you're seeing there, you should really remove the inside walls and treat any rust you find and paint at least the affected areas if not the entire thing. This will also give you an opportunity to insulate your walls, which you're going to need in Texas.

[KJ4567]

Thank you. The good side???? It is windows instead of roof right?

[musigenesis]

Originally Posted by KJ4567

Thank you. The good side???? It is windows instead of roof right?

Sorry, I don't understand what you mean by "the good side????" There is no good side in a bus.

I think the windows are 100X more likely as the source of leaks than the roof (excepting the roof escape hatches which are also prone to leaking). It's easy to seal the seams and rivets on the roof for good measure - took me like two afternoons to run beads of Dynatron-550 over them.

Removing the inner walls and ceiling panels makes identifying the sources of these leaks a lot easier, one of the reasons I tend to look askance at builds that have not done so (in addition to the lack of insulation problem).

[KJ4567]

I was ATTEMPTING to look for a good side to any of it. That is all.

[musigenesis]

Originally Posted by KJ4567

I was ATTEMPTING to look for a good side to any of it. That is all.

The good side is that you can fix your leaking windows in a day. It may just take you two years to figure out how to do it, like, um, some of us.