Our 2021 Sundance Ultralite 242RK has been towed about 4,000 miles so far. Every day on the highway a new batch of chips or cuttings falls on to the bed, it looks like it is most likely coming through between the overhead cabinet and the front wall. They look like a mostly white plastic material, maybe from the roof or outside walls. Has anyone else experienced this in a new RV and can anyone tell me when it stops? It's very annoying going to bed and finding a bunch of junk that needs to be swept off. Much worse than someone eating crackers!
Chips falling onto bed...
- Thread starter AE5TE
- Start date
Just so you know there is never an end to the debris falling from the ceiling. Our last two fifth wheels , and our current one... have this same type of debris falling from the ceiling vents in the back above the couch, and on the bed their entire time we owned them. Our debris consisted of foam, and sawdust. Pretty harmless, but rattling down the road causes it to fall out the roof panels.
thewanderingeight
Well-known member
We don't have anything falling on the bed luckily, but it took a few thousand miles for sawdust to stop dropping onto our countertop in the kitchen. It was from behind the cabinet and there would be a nice pile for us to clean up after each trip. Just keep in mind that they seem to do zero clean-up during the build process. We had quite a few walls that we had to scrub because every time we touched them, we were getting fiberglass on our hands.
Same thing on my 2015 ElkRidge. Wouldn't stop coming every time I moved the trailer. turns out that it's saw dust in the ceiling from the original construction falling out of every ceiling penetration. I pulled down the AC supply vents, vent trim etc' and use foil tape and fiberglass insulation to seal the space between the ceiling paneling and the framing. Problem solved.
southernlady5464
Well-known member
Our 2017 Landmark did this to this day although it has slowed down. I’ve wondered just how much debris was left up there?
taskswap
Well-known member
1 year in on our Milestone, same story. Last camper we had was a 2012 Sunset Trail, it still did that after a decade.
That doesn't mean you can't do anything about it, it just may not be worth the work. As an experiment in the last camper I removed everything mounted to the ceiling in the back bunk room (lights, vent, and a cover plate for an unused electrical box) and put a thin bead of RTV on the back side of each item, making a sort of gasket. I let it completely cure (common trick with sealant if you want a gasket, but not a permanent one) then reinstalled the components.
It helped a lot but not completely. After three hauls there was no dust on any of the upper bunks/cabinet surfaces, but there was still some on the lower bunks. I traced this to rough cuts on the edges of the bunk supports themselves - the underlay under each bunk was OSB and dust from this would shake loose from the top bunks and drift down to the bottoms. So I took those out and coated the edges with epoxy to seal them.
After another haul I checked the back bunk room again and the dust was ALMOST gone except in one corner area. I later realized it was coming from the gap between the wall and ceiling where some thin molding strips had a gap. I sealed that with some caulk and after a few more hauls there was no more dust back there.
All told I figure I spent 10-12 hours sorting that out. I was able to do it. Was it worth it? Would it be worth it for a whole camper? Only you can decide that.
Lately we've been throwing thin plastic drop-cloths over the beds when we travel or store the camper. The thing is, even if you solve the sawdust issue, there's dust in the air itself. In a house, surfaces get used and cleaned regularly so it doesn't build up. But in a camper in storage for a few months over winter you'll come back to a thin layer of dust on literally everything. (We live in Colorado which is more dusty than other states, making it worse.) This is easily wiped off a counter but not as easily off a mattress. So since we wanted to cover the mattresses anyway for storage, we just do the same thing while driving. Each bedroom/bunk area has a plastic sheet that gets thrown over the bed when we're packing up, and we stopped worrying about it after that.
That doesn't mean you can't do anything about it, it just may not be worth the work. As an experiment in the last camper I removed everything mounted to the ceiling in the back bunk room (lights, vent, and a cover plate for an unused electrical box) and put a thin bead of RTV on the back side of each item, making a sort of gasket. I let it completely cure (common trick with sealant if you want a gasket, but not a permanent one) then reinstalled the components.
It helped a lot but not completely. After three hauls there was no dust on any of the upper bunks/cabinet surfaces, but there was still some on the lower bunks. I traced this to rough cuts on the edges of the bunk supports themselves - the underlay under each bunk was OSB and dust from this would shake loose from the top bunks and drift down to the bottoms. So I took those out and coated the edges with epoxy to seal them.
After another haul I checked the back bunk room again and the dust was ALMOST gone except in one corner area. I later realized it was coming from the gap between the wall and ceiling where some thin molding strips had a gap. I sealed that with some caulk and after a few more hauls there was no more dust back there.
All told I figure I spent 10-12 hours sorting that out. I was able to do it. Was it worth it? Would it be worth it for a whole camper? Only you can decide that.
Lately we've been throwing thin plastic drop-cloths over the beds when we travel or store the camper. The thing is, even if you solve the sawdust issue, there's dust in the air itself. In a house, surfaces get used and cleaned regularly so it doesn't build up. But in a camper in storage for a few months over winter you'll come back to a thin layer of dust on literally everything. (We live in Colorado which is more dusty than other states, making it worse.) This is easily wiped off a counter but not as easily off a mattress. So since we wanted to cover the mattresses anyway for storage, we just do the same thing while driving. Each bedroom/bunk area has a plastic sheet that gets thrown over the bed when we're packing up, and we stopped worrying about it after that.
If you have an opportunity to take a factory tour you will see why all the debris. They build and do nothing more then clear the big objects out of their way as they continue to install items. It’s too bad that they don’t clean as they go, but after taking a tour the factory floor is nothing more then a land mind also. My guess in the last couple of years of flat out manufacturing it has only gotten worse. We as consumers/customers put up with it unfortunately.