Pete’s RV-TV YouTube Channel resident Randal Murray delivers a crucial RV question: “What is the importance of slide toppers (aka slideout awnings)?”. When it comes to protecting the vitality and value of your RV, slideout seals found around the slide are the lifeline to the health and well-being of your camper. As Randy explains, if you compromise or damage those seals then you risk water potentially penetrating into the camper provoking damage over time. Randy presents a prime example of just how well slide toppers can defend your camper after a weekend at the campground. Sprinkling a box full of debris on the slides to simulate a weekend of buildup, you can clearly see that everything rolls off as the slides are brought in.

A highly-affordable investment, slide toppers can save RV owners thousands of dollars in repairs! For just a few extra dollars a month, their installation can be built right into your new RV payment plan.

Video Transcript for “The Importance of RV Slide Toppers”

Randy: Hey, guys, Randy with Pete’s RV TV here again today, another quick tip segment for ya from Pete’s RV Center.  We’re in the shop today at Pete’s RV, the Vermont location. A little noisy place, very busy place this time of year, as it always is.  Today I’m gonna talk about the importance of slide toppers and how they can protect your coach, especially as you start to get some age on the coach.

     A slide topper covers a slide topper, it covers a slide box, which, it keeps all the elements off the top of your slide, rain, snow, whatever, if your slide’s open in poor weather.  It keeps the sun off the top of your slide, so it’s gonna lessen the maintenance that’s needed to be done on the slide roof itself.

     It could help with a potential leak on a slide box.  If you were to have a leak, when the water pouring right on this, obviously it’s gonna rear its head into the coach very quickly.  With a slide topper on here, we’re not going to have water puddling against our seals and things like that, so it’s gonna really help out with that effect as well.

    As you can see, the slide topper here is gonna attach to the body of the coach, comes in the, the roller tube is on the outside of the coach.  So as we roll this in, any debris that is on the top will also fall off, and I’ll show you that in just a minute. We can also see how it keeps the roof of the slide out of the elements, another important feature, as I just mentioned.

    So when we’re camping up here in the Northeast, especially state campgrounds, things like that, most campgrounds around the country, actually we’re gonna tend to be around some trees.  Pine trees are a particular favorite up here in the Northeast. So when we’re out there, we have our slides open, we’re staying for a week or so on our family vacation, sticks, pine needles, leaves and things like that are gonna come down and get on the top of the slide roof.

    And when we close our slide without a slide topper, all that debris stays up on the roof unless you get up there and clean it off.  When that happens we’ve actually compromised our seal with the slide closed, we bring the unit back home, sits next to the garage for a few weeks until we get to go back out on our outing, with a compromised seal, we’re gonna see some water on the floor.

    So let’s take a look up on the roof, and we’ll show you how this kinda works. Okay, so here we are up on the roof of the unit with the slide topper on it, and,  We re-situated Josh so you can see the top of the slide topper, and you can see that no real portion of the top of the slide’s exposed. The slide topper is covering everything, which is what we want.

    So right now what I’m gonna simulate what would happen if you’re camping up here in the Northeast, and I’m just gonna take some debris that I kinda picked up outside there a little while ago, and I’m gonna put this on top of the slideout. Now normally with a slide topper, this would all end up on the roof of your coach.

     As I mentioned a little earlier in the video, when you bring this back in, all that stuff is gonna stay up there and compromise our seal, and potentially damage the seal, and that’s not something that we want. Those seals are very important for protecting our coach when we’re not using it.

    So let’s go downstairs again and we’ll re-situate the camera, and we’ll show you what happens when we bring the slideout in, and why this works so well, and why it’s so important to have these on our units. Okay, so here we are down below, and as you can see, we’re using our new brand–new Outback Fifth Wheel as our test model, so kind of excited about that.

    Let’s go ahead and bring in the slide, and we’re gonna watch how this guy protects our coach. So as you remember in the video, I poured some stuff up there, and you can see with having the roller tube on the body of the slide, everything is just gonna run right off, so we’re gonna protect our slide seals. We’re not gonna leave any debris up there to compromise those and cause potential leak down the road.

    And there’s the slide closed. Everything on the ground, not on the roof, right where we want it. We’ve protected our slide.  Everybody’s happy. We can put this away knowing that we’re not gonna have any damage to our seals or any water inside the coach from the roof of that slide when we’re not using the coach.

    So there we go, folks. Another quick tip segment with Randy from Pete’s RV Center. Thanks again for watching our quick tip videos, and make sure to check us out on Facebook, and keep an eye out for those new videos. Thanks for thinking Pete’s RV, and happy camping.

Pete’s RV Center is an exceptional dealership group serving the United States and Canada since 1952. With multiple locations, Pete’s RV provides sales, service, parts, accessories, and education to our community of RVers all across North America.