--- title: "What to Inspect on an RV That Sits in a Storage Lot" description: "Twenty minutes a month in the lot catches rodent entry, tire aging and fresh backing damage while it can still be dated. The route, in the order it matters." focus_keyword: "what to inspect on an rv sitting in a storage lot" canonical: https://ocrv.me/blog/the-storage-lot-walkaround-that-takes-twenty-minutes/ kind: blogPost updated: 2026-07-29 source: OCRV Center --- # The Storage Lot Walkaround That Takes Twenty Minutes > Stored units fail quietly. A monthly loop catches **rodent entry and tire aging** early, and it produces **a dated photograph record** that makes new lot damage provable. ## What should you inspect on an RV that lives in a storage lot? Tires and their date codes, roof lids and covers, rodent evidence at the utility bays, battery state of charge, and the exterior for damage that was not there last month. Rancho Santa Margarita owners who run this loop arrive at our Yorba Linda shop with problems that are still small. - Photograph all four corners monthly so new damage has a date - Rodents enter at the LP bay and the furnace intake first - Tire sidewalls age out before the tread wears out - Check the sun facing side twice as carefully as the shaded side ### Key facts | Item | Value | | --- | --- | | Time required | About 20 minutes per visit | | Suggested interval | Monthly, plus after any wind week | | Tools | Phone, tire gauge, flashlight, voltmeter | | Diagnostic rate if something needs tracing | $285 per hour | | Written estimate | $150 (Credited in full against an authorized repair) | The economics of a storage lot work against the vehicle. You pay by the foot to keep the unit somewhere other than your driveway, and the natural consequence is that you visit when you are going to use it. In Orange County that means a great many units get looked at closely three times a year, in a climate that punishes rubber, plastic and anything a rodent can chew. This is the loop we suggest, in the order that puts the expensive discoveries first. It is twenty minutes, it needs a flashlight and a tire gauge, and its second purpose is quietly more valuable than its first: it produces a dated photographic record of the unit's condition every month, which is what makes a fresh scrape in a shared lot provable rather than arguable. ## Start by photographing all four corners Before you look at anything, walk the unit and take the same six photographs every visit: each corner at an angle, then each long side square on. Same spots, same order, thirty seconds. You are not inspecting yet, you are creating a baseline, and the value of that baseline is entirely in its repetition. Shared lots produce backing damage. Somebody misjudges a turn with a thirty foot trailer, contacts your rear cap, and leaves. Without a dated record, a claim on that damage is an argument about when it happened, and an argument about when it happened is one you usually lose. With twelve months of monthly photographs, the window narrows to thirty days and the conversation changes completely. ## Tires, and why the tread is the wrong thing to look at A stored trailer tire almost never wears out. It ages out. The DOT code moulded into the sidewall ends in four digits giving the week and year of manufacture, and a tire in its eighth or ninth year is at the end of its service life regardless of how much tread is left. Owners routinely run tires with excellent tread and a 2015 date code, and those are the ones that fail on the 241 in July. Look at the sidewalls and the space between the tread blocks for fine cracking, and look hardest at the side that faces the afternoon sun, because ultraviolet exposure is not distributed evenly across a parked unit. Check cold pressure at every visit rather than at departure, since a slow leak found in the lot is a repair and a slow leak found on the freeway is a blowout that takes fender skirting and wiring with it. - Read the four digit DOT date code on every tire, including the spare - Fine cracking between tread blocks and in the sidewall means age - Check cold pressure monthly, not at departure - Inspect the sun facing side more carefully than the shaded side ## Rodents, and the three places they get in A stored unit is a dry, sheltered, undisturbed cavity in a landscape that offers few of those. The entry points are consistent: the LP compartment, where the regulator lines pass through a grommeted hole that is almost always oversized, the furnace combustion air intake, and the gap where the underbelly wrap meets the frame near a wheel well. Evidence comes before damage. Droppings on the floor of the LP bay, shredded insulation on the belly, a smell of urine when you open a compartment, or fine sawdust below a wire loom. Wire insulation is the expensive part. A rodent that chews through a harness behind a wall panel produces an electrical fault that takes diagnostic hours to trace, and those hours bill at the diagnostic rate whether or not the rodent left anything else behind. ## Lids, covers and the roof from a ladder From the ground, walk the perimeter and look up at the roof line for anything that should be a smooth silhouette and is not. A missing vent lid, a lifted membrane edge or a displaced air conditioner shroud is often visible from below once you know to look for the outline rather than the detail. Every second visit, climb up. Plastic vent lids go brittle in this climate and the hinges snap in wind, and a lid that leaves in September opens a fourteen inch hole that nobody notices from the ground. While you are up there, feel the decking near the front and rear cap seams with your feet. That is the entire roof portion of this inspection and it takes four minutes. > **note:** Take the same six photographs every month even when nothing looks wrong. The set with nothing wrong in it is what proves the date of the set with something wrong in it. ## Batteries, and what a month of sitting does A lead acid house bank left disconnected loses charge slowly and sulfates while it does it. A bank left connected to a coach with parasitic draws loses charge much faster. Either way, a voltmeter on the terminals tells you where you are in about fifteen seconds, and a reading below roughly 12.4 volts at rest on a flooded bank means the bank is being damaged while it waits for you. If the lot has power, a maintainer solves this. If it does not, disconnecting the bank and checking monthly is the realistic option, and topping up flooded cells with distilled water when the plates approach the top of the fill wells is part of that visit. Lithium banks have different storage behaviour and different state of charge targets, so treat them by their own documentation rather than by lead acid habits. ## The two compartments worth opening every time The water heater bay and the LP bay. In the water heater bay you are looking for rust streaks below the burner tube, spider webs in the combustion tube, and evidence of water where water should not be. In the LP bay you are smelling before you look, then checking that the regulator vent is clear and that nothing has nested against it. Neither of those takes more than a minute and both address failures that begin invisibly. A water heater bay that has been wet all season means either a relief valve that has been weeping or a fitting that has loosened, and both are cheap to correct in January and expensive to discover in July when the tank is full and you are eighty miles from home. 1. Six photographs, same angles, every visit 2. Tire date codes, sidewall cracking, cold pressure 3. LP bay and furnace intake for rodent evidence 4. Roof line from the ground, roof surface every second visit 5. Battery voltage at rest, with a note of the date 6. Water heater bay and LP bay opened and smelled ## Questions and answers ### Why photograph a stored RV every month if nothing is wrong? Because the photographs with nothing wrong establish the date of the photograph with something wrong. In a shared lot, backing damage arrives without a note on the windshield, and narrowing when it happened to a thirty day window is what turns an unprovable claim into a straightforward one. ### How old is too old for an RV tire with good tread left? Tread depth is the wrong measure on a unit that sits. Read the four digit DOT date code and treat the eighth or ninth year as the end of service life, sooner if the sidewalls show fine cracking. Stored tires age from ultraviolet exposure and ozone, not from mileage. ### Where do rodents get into a stored RV? Most often through the oversized grommet where regulator lines pass into the LP compartment, through the furnace combustion air intake, and where the underbelly wrap meets the frame near a wheel well. Evidence appears as droppings, shredded insulation and fine sawdust below a wire loom before any fault shows up. ### What resting voltage means a stored house battery is being damaged? On a flooded lead acid bank, a resting reading below roughly 12.4 volts means the bank is sitting at a state of charge where sulfation progresses. Check monthly with a voltmeter on the terminals and note the date. Lithium banks store differently and should be managed to their own documented targets. ### Which storage compartments are worth opening on every visit? The water heater bay and the LP bay. Look for rust streaks below the burner tube, webs in the combustion tube and any sign of standing water in the first. Smell before looking in the second, then confirm the regulator vent is clear and nothing has nested against it. --- Source: [OCRV Center](https://ocrv.me/blog/the-storage-lot-walkaround-that-takes-twenty-minutes/). Last verified 2026-07-29.