Bigfoot Roof Vent/Skylight Sealant - Butyl Tape?

[Perryb67]

We recently purchased a 2016 Bigfoot 25RQ. It’s been sitting inside it’s whole life. The tires look brand new, but have a manufacture date of September 2015. It’s had minimal use.

Upon roof inspection, it has a 4” wide tape for sealant around the vents and skylights. The sealant is grey and very pliable. There were a couple of <1” cracks that were easily sealed shut by just smoothing the existing tape to fill the area.

Is this “butyl” tape?

And yes, I’ll email Grant the same question.

If “butyl” how easy is it to remove and replace. Would you replace with 4” butyl again? In the past I’ve used Dicor Self-Leveling with great results, but this 4” tape might be a better choice?

Thanks,

Perry

[Tony Nowak]

Perry, We used the above material on our former 2003 17 foot Bigfoot as that is what the factory told me in about 2013. I saw a couple of years ago that they still use it. Can't find a picture of the can we had but remember it was alkyd stranded. Not saying it was the best thing but seemed to work well. Was told just to remove the loose material and put on another coat with tape to create an edge.
Glad you are still here on FGRV and hope to see you and Terry on the Mississippi in September.
Tony and Darlene

[Derek Johnson]

Butyl tape is the soft, grey, putty-like tape that comes in a roll. It is used between the fiberglass and the window frames and vent frames. It squishes out, then you trim it and then add another sealant. On top the factory used Plast-T-Cote as mentioned in the other post. It is a fibered roof coating that you put on with a disposable brush. Every few years I scrub the old coating, tape it off so it looks halfway decent (it can make a mess), and then add a fresh coat right over the old coating. The old coating sometimes has small cracks, but it has never peeled up and I have never had to scrape or remove any of it. It dries fairly hard and you cannot seal a crack by just pushing it together, so I don't know what is on your trailer that allowed you to do this.

We've had our trailer for 11 years and this has worked fine for me so far.

Derek

[CharlesinGA]

Originally Posted by Derek Johnson

Butyl tape is the soft, grey, putty-like tape that comes in a roll. It is used between the fiberglass and the window frames and vent frames. It squishes out, then you trim it and then add another sealant. On top the factory used Plast-T-Cote as mentioned in the other post. It is a fibered roof coating that you put on with a disposable brush. Every few years I scrub the old coating, tape it off so it looks halfway decent (it can make a mess), and then add a fresh coat right over the old coating. The old coating sometimes has small cracks, but it has never peeled up and I have never had to scrape or remove any of it. It dries fairly hard and you cannot seal a crack by just pushing it together, so I don't know what is on your trailer that allowed you to do this.

We've had our trailer for 11 years and this has worked fine for me so far.

Derek

Is that Plast-T-Cote that hard as a rock crap that is all around much of the stuff on the roof? and all over the roof where it should not be?

I've been wondering what that stuff was and why anyone would ever use anything like that on an RV. And I've been trying to figure out how to remove it without damaging the gel coat. Its awful. Looks terrible and doesn't seal anything that I can see.

A vent should be put down with a single layer of Butyl tape, then the screws tightened and you walk away from it. Later, snug the screws again, and then using plastic scrapers, etc, remove what has oozed out. Then mask off (if you care about your work) and apply Dicor self leveling sealant. I like GeoCel Pro Flex, but the stuff seems to attract dirt and where I used white around a couple of places, its now dirty looking and won't clean up. I did use black Pro Cel around the new Black outside lights I installed to replace the old yellowed ones at the dump station, porch and front of the trailer.

Charles