With all the complexities of everyday life sometimes the little things can be forgotten.  Oftentimes though in an emergency situation the little things can make a big difference.  One of the little items that often gets forgotten is everyday maintenance of items. From the sharpness of your knives to maintaining the roof of your RV maintenance is extremely important part of being prepared.

One of the larger maintenance projects I have worked on this year is checking and fixing any problems on the roof of our camper.  Due to illness in our family the camper has been relatively ignored for the past two years.  We are in an area prone to forest fires and having the camper ready to leave when necessary is an important line item for my summer preparedness.  One item I do not want to deal with is a leaky roof, or the cost of repairing water damage inside the camper.

General roof maintenance is relatively easy, there are two main products used on modern camper roofs (Usually made from TPO or EPDM).  The roof on our camper is EPDM and two main products are used to seal around the windows etc. Dicor is commonly used to seal around the openings on the roof but needs to be maintained around every 2 years as it can crack and allow water through. For a longer term solution I decided to use Eternabond Tape for a longer lasting seal. Now I should just have to perform a quick inspection once a year to verify there are no issues on the roof as the Eternabond should not crack like Dicor can. I personally plan to keep a role of Eternabond around as well as it can be used to seal any tears on the camper roof.

Maintenance is an important part of being prepared, don’t forget to keep your preps and other items maintained so that they will work as you expect if needed.