Cover or no cover RV Model 2016 Minnie Winnie 31H

[Allan]

Greetings,
First time user, first time Class C owner. I live in NH where we get a lot of snow, should I put a cover on my RV? I have owned tag alongs but I never covered them. I have heard covers cause their own problems.

[Eagle5]

Hi Allan,
I mostly deal with rain, but once in a while we do get snow. How much snow are we talking here?
Covering a 22M
Welcome to the forum.
Eagle5

[Allan]

Lots. Could be 4 or 5 feet. I have seen over 2 feet in one storm.

[Eagle5]

That sounds like you will either need a carport or garage rated at 100 Lb/Ft2, or heating tapes to melt the snow off as it falls.

[Allan]

What I am looking for is the pro's and cons on covering in peoples experience. DO they get moldy, do they do any good? good and bad experiences. But thanks for your input.

[Eagle5]

Hi Allan,
The three-cover method and the keep the squirrels out lights which I use work well for me.
Pros:

1. I stop the damaging UV exposure.
2. I keep my motorhome clean between uses.
3. My motorhome's body paint does not get scratched or scuffed.
4. My covers do not get moldy.
5. My wiring does not get chewed-up by those horrible squirrel things!

Cons:

1. It takes about 30 minutes to either remove or install the LED Rope Lights, the wheel covers, the empty boxes on the roof (to prevent water pooling,) the body cover, and the fly-over rain-shedding cover.

I also use a Davis 1000 Air Dryer inside the Eagle5 to keep the interior from molding.
Four feet of snow-load is not good for any RV, so I would also figure-out a way to keep the snow shoveled, swept, or melted off the plastic fly-cover.
Thanks, Eagle5

[Ray,IN]

The roof of a class C is just as rugged as any travel trailer and will withstand snow-loading every bit as well.
I used to cover my towables with a plastic farm tarp @ $70 ea. from Harbor Freight, then use enough elastic cords to hold it taut in wiindy weather, approx. 3x the number of original grommets and elastic cords.
Each tarp would last 3-4 winters before sun rot made them useless. I never did notice any rub or abrasion spots on the trailers from the tarp.
When I had saved enough money I built an RV garage pole-barn type.

[Eagle5]

I worry about four to five feet of snow load. If we assume the snow weighs 25 Lb/Ft3, that would be a force of 100 Lb/Ft2 with four feet of snow. My Minnie Winnie has a roof area of:
8½' × 22' = 187 Ft2
187 Ft2 × 100 Lb/Ft2 = 18,700 pounds
My Minnie Winnie is rated for a maximum payload of 4,171 pounds.
The most snow we have seen in South Bend was about three feet back in 1962.
Eagle5

[Morich]

I think the snow load is less than what is mentioned. I read it as being a total season of as much as four feet with max at one time of two!

But that is still open to knowing if that snow melts before the next or piles up! I would go with what they have seen before on the snow as they mention having rV before, so have some experience.

From there, I have mixed feelings about covering RV as it depends so much on the exact RV and exact situation.

Can you get the cover on/off without getting on the roof or do you do as much damage walking on it as you prevent? Some RV, we have covered and some we had covers but wound up not using them to avoid damage.
Can you put it on and off from the ground or ladders or does it have things sticking up that won't let you drag a cover across?

Mold has never been a problem for us and covers are rarely so tight that we don't have a lot of air passing under them, even when living North! The RV may be pretty tight and able to hold moisture but the cover has never been that tight!
Holding rubbing down has been a challenge at times and we never really got to our "comfort zone" on what we wanted to do. We could get it covered but at such a high level of labor and potential damage that we stopped before we really broke something!

Nothing worse than spending a few hours saving the RV but stepping through a sky light or off the edge to break our body! Once we reached a point where we felt we could afford to replace the RV, rather than go to the hospital, we stopped covering the RV!

Very much a lot of personal choices to make!
Inside or under cover is certainly better but does cost more in most places. We also like the safety of having the RV where we can watch over it more than if stored.

Keeping the four legged rodents out is tough but those two legged ones are far more dangerous when stored away from the house!