Slide Awning necessary?

[RhoZeta]

Originally Posted by puff

Yes, I have thought about this and others of a tube or ? or ? My only problem is that I get some high winds and the slide needs to come in. If I have all this stuff under the topper on the slide well it would all have to come down first. My my ideal choice.

Ours have rode out some hellacious winds, storms and severe weather, before the deflappers they made a lot of noise, once installed never had any more problems, never saw a need to bring the slides in that is for sure. I agree tho if some sort of emergency it would be a bit of a pain in the arse.

[puff]

Well I live a stones throw away from open ocean. We regularly get S.E. winds that are 60 - 80km/h (40-50mph) more so in the winter. 2 years ago we hit 137km/h 85 miles an hour...you would pull your slide in too..!

My topper are starting to tear at the seams and or where the fabric must have been weak. All I am saying is that if you encounter strong winds on a regular bases and are not close to the trees...leave the topper off. y .02 worth.

[Kemosabi]

I have toppers on all my slides and wouldn't be without them, makes close-ups a breeze.

One question, is there a way to tighten up one end if they are not equally tight on both ends? I find one end sags a little so I get a little bit of ponding there instead of it running off.

Kemosabi

[ependydad]

Kemosabi, I found this on another thread:
http://www.rvtechlibrary.com/exterior/AE_topper.pdf

[puff]

To my knowledge there is no way to tighten up one end. That means your topper has been cut wrong or installed wrong. Is it bent..? Pooling or puddling in the middle is very common this does not help the ends or the middle from looking even either..!

[RhoZeta]

Originally Posted by puff

Well I live a stones throw away from open ocean. We regularly get S.E. winds that are 60 - 80km/h (40-50mph) more so in the winter. 2 years ago we hit 137km/h 85 miles an hour...you would pull your slide in too..!

My topper are starting to tear at the seams and or where the fabric must have been weak. All I am saying is that if you encounter strong winds on a regular bases and are not close to the trees...leave the topper off. y .02 worth.

I could see where being near water with a constant wind blowing would be a PITA! I guess with all that wind you would not need awnings anyway as the wind just blows the tops of the slides clean anyway!

[Kemosabi]

Thanks Puff for the document. Since it does mention 13 turns on both ends of the roller attachment arms i suspect that perhaps like mentioned it may have been installed crooked or taped to the roll crooked but one extra turn on the loose end may take up the slack. It's not to bad so I will decide if I try it or not depending if I see any issues starting from it. The ponding right now is only about 12"x6" near the one end so not to bad.

Thanks again for the help.
Again I wouldn't be without these awnings on my slides. The remain as new, the gaskets stay clean and when I closed last fall I whipped the gastets and rubber covers with the gasket conditioner to keep things in good condition.

Kemosabi

[Mikegjax]

Without them all of the debris can end up inside your unit. A must have IMO.

[Brother Les]

I have camped in every type of environment and have almost always had something stick to my awning canopy. Leaves, twigs, bugs, moss. It is very rare that I do not have to sweep off my canopy as I roll it up. The point of this thread is to have a cover (awning) over the slide-outs so when you pull the slide out in you will not be dragging leaves, twigs, bug, moss into the camper and mess up your seals, etc. I would assume that you should check the top of your slide for debris before you retract it, awning or not. 'Stuff' at one time or another will blow in there. This can be seen by all of the 'talk' about the wind factor on this thread. Does not 'stuff' stick to your slide out awnings that need to be swept off? If you have no awnings on your slide-outs, care should be taken to clean off the top of the slide-out. If you do have awnings on your slide-outs, these also should be cleaned off as they are retracted in.

[Kemosabi]

Cleanout as with anything is important both on and under the awning, or at least check then first. I very seldom have debris under my awning and when I do I use a light duty pushbroom head screwed onto my extendable pole handle (that I use for window and trailer cleaning usually with my cleaning brush/squeegy head). The light duty 24" push broom head goes in nice and pushes all the dirt and dust outprior to closing. also works well for an annual wet scrub so I don't have to detach the awning.

Kemosabi

[Old Bones]

I wonder if the benefits of having slide awnings or not is more dependent on geographic location.

I live in the south central part of our province which is flat land prairies and usually there is a wind of some sort. There are trees in our parks, but more of the leaf variety and not as many of the fir variety with needles.

The dealer and our friends with TT just told us to check the top of the slides for debris before retracting them and if there is to just sweep them off.

Until we purchased a TT and starting camping with it, I wasn't even aware of slide awnings and started to read about them on various forums. I was starting to think, damn I should have enquired about them when we bought the trailer and had them installed. So I started to look for them on the trailers in the parks we were going to in our area.

What I noticed in our area is that there are very few trailers with slide awnings which makes me think in our geographic location they are really not required or emphasized by the dealers. I always check the top of our slides before retracting them and have only had to sweep them off a couple times.

However I could see in our northern campgrounds where there are a lot of fir trees and little wind to blow leaves, etc off that they would be very beneficial.

[Mikegjax]

I don't know how much rain you get, but they also help to keep water from running down the slide into the RV. There are other types of covers that do much the same as the awning but are much less visible.