Lady Macbeth had her “damned spot”….

…. and I have my damned puddle. 🙁

While we were out today (Sunday, May 17th), there was a hard rain here.  When I checked the trailer after we got home, this is what I found.  AGAIN.

What made this even more frustrating is that on Saturday Wayne caulked over EVERY rivet that he could reach on the roof, caulked along the belly band by the door and over the screws on the door hinges.  We REALLY thought we’d taken care of the leak in the front…

On the positive side, after yesterday’s rain, there was a tiny bit of water in the window track on the inside, so I cleaned out the track again, cleaned out the weep holes again, and I was delighted to see that it was completely dry after today’s hard rain.  Yay!  As a result, I feel pretty confident about putting the fabric on all of the rear walls and ceiling.

But as to the water in the front, Wayne has gotten up on a ladder a couple of times to look for holes or cracks on the roof and he hasn’t seen anything.   This evening as it started to rain yet again, I decided to try a different approach.  I already knew that there were no leaks through the insulation, because it always come from behind the insulation–though I didn’t know which route the water was taking to ultimately wind up on our future “dinette.”

I figured the only thing to to do was to start ripping off the insulation–while it was raining–and this led to a “Voila!” moment and a simultaneous “What the hell?” moment….

To my complete surprise, I discovered a series of tiny holes in the ceiling above the door and towards the front of the trailer.  I don’t know why we haven’t been able to see them from the outside, and I have no idea what might have caused them.  I took some toilet paper and pressed it against each dark (moldy?) spot and all were wet–some more than others.

I dried them as best as I could with a paper towel, and Wayne caulked them from the inside before the rain got even heavier.  Not sure if the caulk will stop the leaking, but it’s the only thing we could think to do as a short-term fix.  At this point, I’m not sure what the best long-term fix might be.

While I’m very glad we finally found the source of my “damned puddle,” I have to wonder if there are OTHER tiny holes (of unknown origin) behind the insulation in other parts of the trailer.  We haven’t had any other leaks (yet) and I really, really don’t want to rip out and replace ALL of the insulation, just to check!

But in other quick news, on Saturday we re-attached the door latch that was held on with one rivet.  We put a couple of small bolts through it (with washers and a lock nut) and it’s very solid now.  We also discovered that wasps were building a nest under the hitch!  While I don’t like to use sprays, these guys needed to go to wasp heaven, and we sent them on their way.  Since we still need to replace the chains on the tongue–if we can ever get the bolt off–we had to make sure that we wouldn’t be reaching into a wasp nest.