I was out in the driving rain for the entire weekend and soon found out where all the leaks are in my 17' Boler. A few around the windows which is a minor fix. My biggest problem was the driving rain forced water through the side louvers of the fridge, furnace and range hood vents. Trying to think of a way to refine the louvers to prevent this. Ideas?

This is something that I'll admit has always bothered me about the way things like that are vented. Those louvers IMHO are asking for trouble...

I would suppose that one possible answer would be deeper louvers (with more 'overlap' so to speak) - you'd need molded plastic for that though, which isn't too appealing.

Some sort of vent which could be closed is another possibility. Either something that flipped (like heat vents in your house) or that closed over the entire vent area. That's a pretty big modification though...

One question that occurs to me is this:

Where's the water coming from? I know the wind is driving water in through the louvers - BUT is that water that's going through the vents being blown DIRECTLY into the vents (ie rain drops) or is it raining on the trailer - running down the sides (including over the louvers, forming drops on the bottom edges of the louvers) and the resulting drops are being blown by the wind through the vents???

To me the latter seems more likely for two reasons: more water (the collected water from that area of the roof will be flowing past the vents) and it's closer to the holes (dripping a fraction of an inch from the opening).

If that's true - I'd expect the problem to be the worst on vents in the upper half of the trailer and much less on vents located directly below the belly band. Was that the case?

Anyway - if the dripping water is the source of the problem - I'd think that a possible solution would be to add 'eyebrows' above the vents similar to the ones over the door to channel water away from the vents so it doesn't flow over them.

Just an idea...

mkw

Can you think of some way to put a piece of sheet metal in there on the floor?
Form the sides up and slant it down toward the drain holes of the
louvered cover?
That way any water drains right out.

That's what I did when I ripped out the refer and put in an air conditioner.