Ouch. I bet it was less than thrilling to see the damage.

I recall (now that you've described the setup) that when I was on a long
bicycle ride up the east coast a few years ago, our sag wagon was a
small motorhome. The driver and her husband slept inside, I slept
outside. It being summer, and us being in the southern portion, sleeping
outside meant lightly draping a sheet over my body because the humidity
and heat were pretty high. Anyway, she had a Fiamma on it. She was not
real "technical" so I helped her sort out how it works. It did have that
center rafter, which I remember (now) talking to her about, and
discussing the necessity of sloping the thing so it doesn't turn into a
lake. My memory . . . it ain't what it used to be.

--

Mike "Rocket J Squirrel" Elliott
71 Type 2: the Wonderbus
84 Westfalia: Mellow Yellow ("The Electrical Banana")
KG6RCR

On 6/16/2006 1:16 PM Loren Busch wrote:
>  RE: Rain breaking the awning....
> If the awning is allowed to fill up with rain water any awning or some
> part of it can fail, water is heavy.
> First, I have the largest of the Fiamma awnings, almost ten feet long
> and extends around eight feet.  Second, Fiamma provides, with that
> size awning, a center rafter to be put in place in case of rain.  And
> they also warn you to slope it so that the rain can run off.  I didn't
> have the center rafter in place and thought that I had sloped the
> awning enough to handle the rain, let it run off.  But the rain
> started in the middle of the night and when I heard it I was to lazy
> to get up and check. The rain was very light, just a drizzle. It
> survived for several hours but the buildup of water and the consequent
> weight was to much for the gutter mounts,  Just as I was waking up
> about 0715 there was a great crash outside as the rear gutter mount
> pulled off at the rear of the van.  When it crashed, it broke a hinge
> fitting where the extension arm attaches to the outer portion of the
> casing, the part that is at the outer edge of the awning.  This was
> totally my fault and I should have know better, I had an almost
> identical failure a few years ago when a major rain squall and hail
> storm hit the camp while I was away from the van.  Major damage that
> time.