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Just had a 'non-existent/vanishing' leak repaired!
Last time I used the van in August, I found a couple of damp patches on the ceiling corresponding to roughly where the front roof strap is. Smallish patches less than the size of your hand, and reading on the damp meter about 45% for the mid roof and 90% for the roof/wall corner. Checked again a week or two later to see if getting worse, but had stayed the same.
Not having any desire to let this take hold and cause expensive damage, set about finding someone (could technically do myself, but bad shoulder prevents ATM!) to reseal the roof strap - like looking for bloody hens teeth! Excluding the known cowboys in the area who I avoid totally, couldn't get any response to my enquiries from any of the what I had regarded as reputable repairers, no replies to emails and/or phone calls! Finally found a guy by word of mouth, who it turns out is highly regarded, but was unknown to me. Says he gets a lot of work because he bothers to answer his phone and reply to emails where others don't! He confirmed to me all the cowboys in the area, as he said he often has to put right their shoddy work!
Repair done yesterday. Now just got to wait and see if effective which may be trickier than you might expect! Van's 6 years old and joint appears to be the original unmolested factory fitment, so not feeling too aggrieved that it's started to fail a little, certainly when you hear of so many brand new vans leaking!
Now the 'vanishing bit', I went over the problem areas again to remind myself exactly where the damp was to point out to repairer the location and check how bad it was now (no marking or discolouration on interior decor to indicate a problem) and there was nothing untoward registering on my meter, everywhere was a really good 12-14%! Perfectly dry! Repair guy used his £400 professional meter and confirmed dry as a bone! He was as surprised as I was that it had totally dried out, not common in his experience, and we'd just had a few days of pretty heavy persistent rain! Prior to recent rain we had had weeks of hot sunny weather, so I guess plenty of ideal drying out conditions, but to be totally dry was not expected.
Point to post being, a damp inspection can be VERY misleading, it could give a clean bill of health, whereas under different conditions there may well be damp to be found! I've got my own meter and regularly check most vulnerable spots pretty much every time I visit (in storage) or use the van, an annual habitation check may well have failed to pick up the leak, by the time the next annual check came round that damp could have been doing it's damage for around 12 months!
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Topic: Damp and a `vanishing` leak!
