Roof, Slide Out and Awning Services in Rancho Santa Margarita
Written by RV Systems Lead, RV Systems and Electrical Lead, OCRV Center. Reviewed by Structural Repair Lead
In shortThree services grouped because they all finish with a metered flood test. Roof and room structure posts at $210, and mechanisms and awning assemblies post at $260 per hour.
What does the roof, slide out and awning department handle?
Roof, slide out and awning services group the three repairs that share a covered roof bay, slide room stands and a metered flood test rig at our Yorba Linda facility. Rancho Santa Margarita owners get membrane, room and awning work from one crew across two posted rates.
- All three services end at the same flood test rig
- Roof and room structure post at the body and paint rate
- Mechanisms and awning assemblies post at the mechanical rate
- The roof bay is covered, so weather never sets the schedule
- Services in this group
- 3Roof repair and replacement, slide out repair, awning repair
- Structure rate
- $210 per hourRoof decking, membrane and slide room boxes
- Mechanism rate
- $260 per hourSlide drives, hydraulics, awning arms and motors
- Seam welding
- Leister hot air welderTPO seams welded at roughly 1100 degrees Fahrenheit
- Leak verification
- Controlled flood test rigMetered flow at seams and penetrations before release
- Written estimate
- $150Credited in full against an authorized repair
Last verified
Roofs, slide rooms and awnings look like three unrelated things and they fail for one reason: each of them is a hole or a moving joint in a surface that has to keep water out. A membrane terminated under trim, a room that slides through a wall, an awning rail bolted through a sidewall. Every one of them is a designed compromise, and every one of them is where the water gets in.
That is why they share a department, a crew and a final test. Whatever the job was, it ends at the flood rig with metered water on the area we touched, because on this kind of work the only acceptable proof is water that does not come inside.
Schedule of work
Three services, one reason for grouping them
Every repair in this department is at a boundary. Membrane meets cap. Slide box meets sidewall aperture. Awning rail meets skin. Boundaries are where materials with different expansion rates are asked to stay joined for a decade in Southern California heat, and they are also where a repair either seals or does not.
Sharing the crew matters because the failures cross over constantly. Water found in a slide floor is often a roof seam above it. An awning rail pulling from a sidewall frequently reveals framing that has been wet for years. One department seeing all three means the second problem gets found while the vehicle is still here.
- Roof repair and replacement: membrane, decking, vents and full replacement
- Slide out repair: mechanisms, seals, room boxes and drive motors
- Awning repair: fabric, arms, motors, sensors and full assemblies
- Shared: the covered roof bay and the metered flood test rig
Working on a roof under cover
The roof bay is indoors with clearance for a thirteen foot six coach, and that single fact changes the quality of every roof repair we do. Adhesives and self levelling sealants have temperature and humidity windows. A membrane bonded on a hot roof in direct sun does not wet out the same way it does at a controlled temperature, and no amount of care compensates for that.
Being under cover also removes weather from the schedule. A roof opened up on a Thursday does not have to be closed before a Friday storm, which is what forces a shop working outdoors to make compromises. Rolling roof platforms and weight distributing walk boards let the crew work on a laminated panel without adding damage while they are up there.
The flood test rig and why it ends every job
Leaks are diagnosed and verified with metered water applied in stages, not with a hose and an optimistic look. Staged flow at a known rate, starting low on the vehicle and working upward, is the only way to identify which of several candidate paths is actually passing water, because water travels a long way inside a wall before it appears.
The same rig closes the job. Whatever we opened gets flooded again before the unit is released, and the result is recorded. This is also the reason we will not quote a leak repair over the phone: until the path is identified, the difference between a sealant job and a decking job is a factor of three or four in hours.
Note
A stain on a ceiling panel marks where water arrived, not where it entered. Those two points are frequently several feet apart, and only a staged test tells them apart.
The three services in this group
Roof repair and replacement covers EPDM and TPO membrane, laminated fiberglass roofs, hail damage, vents and skylights, and full membrane and decking replacement. It is where a job goes when water is arriving from above or when the deck underfoot has gone soft.
Slide out repair covers the rails, gear packs and racks, the wiper, bulb and D seals, the room box and floor, and the drive motors and gearboxes. Awning repair covers canopy fabric, torsion arms and springs, drive motors and wind sensors, and complete assembly replacement. Both of those are the moving half of the department.
Two posted rates inside one department
Roof work and slide room structural work post at the body and paint rate of $210 per hour, because they are structural and refinish tasks performed with body department skills. Slide mechanisms, hydraulics, awning arms and motors post at the mechanical and electrical rate of $260 per hour, because diagnosing a drive current imbalance or programming a motor limit is systems work.
A single slide job can therefore carry both rates, and we split it on the estimate rather than averaging. If a room needs re-supporting and its motor replaced, the structure hours and the mechanism hours appear separately, which also makes the estimate legible to a carrier reading it against a policy.
How a roof or slide job holds a bay
Roof work is measured in shop days rather than labor hours because the material dictates the calendar. Laminated fiberglass sections cure under vacuum bagging and heat on their own schedule, and self levelling sealant needs time before the unit is moved. Rushing either produces a repair that fails at the seam we just made.
Slide work needs a bay with side clearance so the room can be run out and supported off the coach on stands with a spreader beam. That is a different bay from the booth, so a unit needing both paint and slide work is repositioned mid job. We schedule that move rather than discovering it.
Where this department stops
Interior finish disturbed by a roof or slide repair goes back through the finish shop, not through this crew. A slide opening that is out of square because the body took a hit goes to the structural bays first, since sealing a room to a distorted aperture is work with a short life. Refinishing a repaired roof to match a painted coach belongs to the booth.
What this department does own is the verdict on whether water is still getting in. Nothing leaves with an open question about that, and if a flood test finds a second path we did not quote, you get told before we chase it rather than after.
The department this runs in
This department owns everything on the outside of the unit that moves or gets walked on. It runs a covered roof bay with clearance for a thirteen foot six coach, a Leister hot air welder for TPO seam work at around 1100 degrees Fahrenheit, slide room stands with a spreader beam, a hydraulic test bench for Lippert cylinders, and a controlled flood test rig with metered flow. Roof and slide room structure post at $210 per hour. Slide mechanisms and awning assemblies post at $260 per hour as mechanical and electrical work.
Appendix: questions and answers
- Why are roof, slide out and awning work grouped in one department?
- Because all three are boundaries in a surface that has to shed water: membrane against cap, slide box through a wall aperture, awning rail bolted through skin. The failures cross over constantly, so one crew seeing all three finds the second problem while the vehicle is still in the bay.
- Does every job in this group finish with a water test?
- Every job where we opened a seam, a penetration or an aperture. Metered flow is applied in stages to the area we worked and the result is recorded before the unit is released. Staged testing is also how the leak was found in the first place, since a ceiling stain rarely sits under the entry point.
- Why do slide mechanisms bill at a higher rate than roof work?
- Different skills and different instruments. Roof and room structure is body department work at $210 per hour. Drives, hydraulics, motors and sensors are systems work at $260 per hour, because measuring drive current under load and programming a motor limit is a technician task rather than a fabrication task.
- Could a roof be repaired outdoors on a dry day instead?
- Adhesives and self levelling sealants have temperature and humidity windows, and a membrane bonded on a hot roof in direct sun does not wet out properly. Working under cover also means an opened roof does not have to be closed early because weather is coming. All of our roof work is done inside.
- Does a slide room have to be extended while you work on it?
- Usually, and sometimes it comes off the coach entirely onto stands with a spreader beam. That needs a bay with side clearance rather than the paint booth, so a unit needing both slide work and refinishing gets repositioned partway through. We plan that move into the schedule at authorization.
- Which of these three services covers a leaking slide opening?
- Slide out repair, but the diagnosis often reaches further. Water in a slide floor is frequently arriving from a roof seam above the aperture, and an aperture that is out of square needs the structural bays before any seal will sit evenly. The flood test tells us which of those we are dealing with.
Open a file on this repair
Tell us the vehicle, what happened and whether a claim is open. We will tell you what the scope looks like and what it takes to get you back on the road.
Or call (949) 799-3387