So, the COVID-19 projects continue with our Isata 5. One I’ve been anxiously awaiting is the replacement of the dinette booths and carpeting. We home school 3 kids and I work from home a lot, so the dinette seating gets used A LOT! The dinette cushions are just shy of horrible to sit in for anything more than the timeframe of a meal. Plus, it’s always be somewhat of a pain to get at the stuff that we store beneath the seating. Our solution will be the same as the Dynamax’s solution; replace the booths with the sprung cushion version from RecPro. They will be here on Monday and we are excited to see, feel and sit in them.
The carpeting is also a sore spot for me. We never, EVER wear our shoes in the coach. Even with a hard and fast “no shoes” policy, the carpeting under the dinette was beat to death. It was matted down and discolored pretty badly. So, we are going to a very high-quality carpeting and also going to add padding under the carpet in-between the dinette booth to gain some much-needed insulation. The area is so small that even when buying some of the best carpeting that the carpet stores have to offer, it’s still going to be VERY reasonably priced.
Yesterday was the tear-out and it all went pretty well. Seems like Dynamax used a comically high number of staples to hold down such a small piece of carpeting, but I gave the kids a couple pair of pliers and sent them to work pulling staples. Now for the bad news, I found quite a bit of area of water intrusion and some small patches of mold.
First, the mold: This was at the very outside edge, right in the middle near the mount for the Dinette table.
Next, the water intrusion: First patch is near the corner of the outside edge and the front (towards the cab). You can sort of see how the top layer of the plywood is wrinkled and splitting. Having the plywood wrinkled like that suggests there was standing water for some amount of time or possible repeated water intrusion.
Next spot is on the furthest inside edge and all the way to the front (again, nearest to the cab). Once again, the top sheet of the plywood is wrinkled and splitting.
Next spot is near the inside edge and furthest away from the cab. This one is more of a water “stain” and there is no wrinkling or splitting of the top sheet of ply.
When I showed it to the wife, she sort of shrugged her shoulder and said, “I guess the kids spilled some stuff”. I thought about that for a minute and that doesn’t make sense. All these water damaged areas would have been “protected” by the dinette booths. The water stain
MIGHT have some merit as being “user error” because that corner of the slide is closest to the kitchen and since it’s just a stain in the wood,
MAYBE it was a one-time deal.....but I still don't think so. The others? Almost impossible that they were a spill of some sort.
So, now come the questions:
Any idea on what can cause this?
Any idea on how to prevent this in the future?
I am okay with cleaning it up. I can spray bleach water with the best of them and I’ll probably go over it with some sort of anti-mildew paint of some sort (Kilz or whatever), but I’d like to stop this from becoming a real problem.
Any thoughts, idea, tips, tricks, or anything at all would be greatly appreciated. Rig has been in-service for less than 2 years, but I am not sure what a warranty fix would look like for something like this, but again, I am all ears if you have ideas for that.
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