# Skylight Replacement 210Trs



## brkramer (Feb 7, 2016)

The skylight on our 2016- 210TRS has leaked since almost the beginning. We kept noticing a stain in the bathtub under the skylight. The first repair was done by an "emergency" repair guy in Alberta Canada, which didn't work. He just applied more Dicor. I bought a ladder and went up there and discovered what appeared to be hairline cracks in the skylight. A quick fix was to spray some clear rubber sealant over that section of the skylight and that seemed to hold up for about a year until during our long trip last summer it started to leak on the very first day on the road. I just gave up and covered half the skylight in Dicor and that didn't work, but we just removed the inner liner and let the water drip into the grey tank until we got home. When we got home I ordered a replacement Lexan skylight from EBay and a couple of weekends ago put it in.

I'd like to report my findings, because it might help someone in the future. This trailer has the taller, arched and less flat roof unlike the current trailers where you absolutely shouldn't walk the roof unsupported. You supposedly can walk this roof, but I leave that to my ultralight wife. The roof doesn't seem that strong and makes all sorts of horrible noises even when someone barely out of the two digits in weight is on it. The arch is the problem with the skylight. The roof is nowhere near flat. The skylight that keystone uses is amazingly flexible. I am no longer sure what appeared to be cracks, were actual cracks. The problem appeared to be areas along the edge of the skylight where the material was buckled leaving a huge gap of 1/4 of an inch or more between parts of the seal and the roof. You could see the water stains and where they corresponded to the buckled skylight edges. The fact that you could buckle the skylight is a testimonial to how flexible it is. Maybe it is too flexible because Keystone did one lousy job sealing it.

Anyway, I removed the existing skylight and cleaned the butyl sealant as best as I could, put down a good layer of new butyl sealant and started to screw down the new, much less flexible skylight. The ads for this skylight show someone standing on top of it, so it is pretty strong. The old would have just crushed under my weight. Unfortunately that means the new skylight wasn't as flexible. I started screwing it down and about half way through realized it would be hovering over the other side by over an inch. What to do? I climbed down the ladder and found my heat gun and a small piece of plywood. I started heating the Lexan and softening it especially at the edges and slowly it lowered down to the roof surface. I used the plywood to protect the roof material as best I could. It didn't take a lot of heat for the Lexan to droop down. Then I moved to each screw doing the same thing thing as I moved from the center of the roof towards the outside. By the time I got to the last screws I had pretty much made a decent seal all the way around as you could see the butyl flatten out as the pressure was applied. Finished it up with Dicor around the edges and over the screws and then Michael ripped through our state, not doing a terrible amount of damage here, but dumping 6-10 inches of rain. I lined the bathtub with toilet paper to detect any leaks and it was dry as a bone after the storm. The moral of this story is if you replace your skylight with a hard lexan one, have a heat gun nearby or you will never seal it. I wouldn't recommend the skylight that Keystone uses, because as you force it over a curve it is going to buckle at the edges. Don't know how it would do with heat. It took a considerable amount of time to get the skylight shaped using heat and I doubt they would spend that time during the initial construction. Instead they made up for the slop using Dicor, which failed on that wide a gap. Your results may vary.


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## Bill & Kate (Apr 28, 2012)

Good information. Ours will need changed soon as it is showing cracks and leaks in the corners. Have it temporarily fixed with additional Dicor, but know that is only a temporary fix.


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## brkramer (Feb 7, 2016)

If I get the energy, I'll post a picture of the old skylight. Basically the provided skylight we had would never seal. In between every screw point there was a bulge that potentially broke the seal. The base of the skylight looked like a wave-form. It was like trying to screw down rubber. A Lexan Skylight will seal, but it will require heat and some re-shaping to do so. Don't know why they just don't make these things made to fit. One thing we have learned to do is always leave out one screw in the inner trim skylight. The screw at the lowest point which in the back corner of the bath tub. That way if it leaks, it will not build up and damage the ceiling and will just drain into the bath tub. You have a better chance to see it, to know that it is leaking. I've actually had that whole trim piece removed the last few months until the repair was completed. The leak just flowed over roofing into the bathtub.


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## dalor (May 27, 2012)

Our Skylight required replacement after a hail storm damaged all plastic on the roof. I removed the old (see the attached picture it had a dark and clear layer)






, cleaned the roof and reinstalled as above (without issue experienced with initial seal). I actually think this repair could be clasified as an entry level repair if you are comfortable with tool use.

The newly installed skylight was purchased from Campers World and is double layer of plastic. I ordered it by replacement size and not by trailer model.

I have inspected it the past 3 years since replacement and needed to add additional self leveling sealant this past fall before putting it away for the winter.


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## brkramer (Feb 7, 2016)

The key to getting a good seal with with a skylight is to use butyl sealant under the flange and to make sure the coverage is even and thorough. The lap sealant is barely necessary if you do a good job with the butyl. My problem was fitting the skylight to the curvature of the roof. That required shaping the skylight with heat and was time consuming.


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