Roof vent needed

[DEKirk]

Hello everyone. My 2007 3124 needs a new roof vent, but it looks weird to me. It has a piece of plastic on the roof attached to the vent, this is a thin 1/2 strip of plastic on all four sides of the vent - under it, and then inside it has a bracket in each corner, do i need a special vent, or can i use any vent, and reuse the plastic pieces?' The vent up top is not attached to the trailmanor - but is attached to the plastic strips with rivets??

[Wavery]

Originally Posted by DEKirk

Hello everyone. My 2007 3124 needs a new roof vent, but it looks weird to me. It has a piece of plastic on the roof attached to the vent, this is a thin 1/2 strip of plastic on all four sides of the vent - under it, and then inside it has a bracket in each corner, do i need a special vent, or can i use any vent, and reuse the plastic pieces?' The vent up top is not attached to the trailmanor - but is attached to the plastic strips with rivets??

I know that makes sense to you because you are looking at it. It might help make sense to us (at least me) if you post a pic.

[ShrimpBurrito]

Originally Posted by DEKirk

Hello everyone. My 2007 3124 needs a new roof vent, but it looks weird to me. It has a piece of plastic on the roof attached to the vent, this is a thin 1/2 strip of plastic on all four sides of the vent - under it, and then inside it has a bracket in each corner, do i need a special vent, or can i use any vent, and reuse the plastic pieces?' The vent up top is not attached to the trailmanor - but is attached to the plastic strips with rivets??

That 1/2" piece of plastic is simply plastic 1x stock that raises the roof vents a bit off of the roof. It is necessary to do that because the vents protrude through the ceiling, which ordinarily is not a problem, but is in TMs because the roof halves fold on each other. Thus, there is no clearance for the roof vents inside.

If you have to replace the vent, I'd plan on replacing that plastic, since it likely will be UV-degraded and/or will fall apart when you pull the vent. I did this a few years ago and replaced that plastic with UV-stabilized PVC, because the factory used these huge staples to hold the frame together, whereas PVC will hold perfectly with PVC cement. Available at any lumber yard.

The brackets in each corner are what hold the vent to the roof. Each one is basically a clamp that bites down on each corner. On the vents that have this (the crank vents, on my TM), the vents are not attached to the plastic with other fasteners. The Fantastic Fan, however, bizarrely lacks those very simple and handy clamps, and so it is attached to the roof with a few dozen screws that go through the plastic and then into the roof.

Aside from the screws and clamps, the vents are attached with butyl tape, which also helps make a good seal. The layers should be:

roof
butyl tape
plastic/PVC 1x stock
butyl tape
vent

I'd dip the screws in silicone or caulk before screwing (on the Fantastic Fan), and then finally, with all the vents, go over all the seams from the vent base to the roof with Dicor lap sealant.

Note that if the vent lid is the only thing that is cracked, you don't have to replace the whole vent. You can simply buy a replacement lid, but there are a few different types so just make sure you get one that matches the old one.

Dave