When It's Time for Rv Repair in Harlingen, TX

A musty smell near the floor or under the sink

A musty, earthy smell low in the coach means water is getting in somewhere and sitting in a wall cavity or under a floor panel. It doesn't dry out on its own. RV walls are thin and the cavities are small, so by the time you smell it the damp has usually spread past the spot where it's visible. A small stain on the surface often has a bigger footprint underneath.

It can almost always be fixed, but the cost follows how long it has been wet. Caught early, it's a matter of fixing the entry point and drying things out. Left alone, it turns into replacing soft floor or wall panels and resealing seams, and sometimes repairing wiring that got wet. Rainfall here varies a lot from year to year, so a dry stretch can hide a bad seam until the next hard storm shows you where it is.

An air conditioner that runs but doesn't cool

If the AC runs constantly and the interior stays warm, cycles on and off more than it should, grinds, trips the breaker, or blows warm air on a cool setting, have it looked at before it quits completely.

Replacing an RV air conditioner runs $1,200 to $2,000. We check the unit and the electrical supply to it before we quote anything, because a dead-looking AC is sometimes a smaller problem than a failed unit. If it does need replacing, we tell you that and quote the swap.

A water heater that won't light or stays lukewarm

A water heater that won't light, or never gets properly hot, is one of the more common calls we get. Replacement runs $800 to $2,000, and where you land in that range depends on the unit you need.

If the heater is leaking or fails repeatedly, replacing it is usually better than chasing it. If it just won't come on, we look at the simple things before we quote a new unit.

Roof seams and where the water gets in

The roof is where we start on any water call. Sealant around vents, AC units and other roof seams cracks, shrinks and pulls away from the surface, and that leaves a slow leak you may not notice until a ceiling panel stains.

We clean the roof surface with SikaSense-3502/11 and let it dry for 5 to 10 minutes. Then we run a bead of Sikaflex-715, roughly an inch wide, over the seam or profile and cover the screws with sealant. Where old material has to come off first, we use a hand drill with a non-abrasive removal wheel. Resealing is a small job if the structure under the roof is still sound. Once a ceiling panel or wall has soaked for a while, you are into panel replacement and re-insulating.

We walk the whole roof on any water call, even when the stain shows up somewhere else. Water follows frames and channels, so the leak is often not directly above the stain.

A refrigerator that won't run

When an RV refrigerator does nothing at all, we work through it in order: the supply voltage, the fuse, the wiring, the switch, and the thermostat. Most no-operation complaints turn out to be one of those, and checking them first keeps you from paying for a new unit you may not need.

When several things act up at once

If lights dim, the pump struggles and nothing points to one cause, we look at the power system as a whole, starting with the converter, before we replace anything. A weak converter can make several systems look like they're failing. Checking it first costs less than swapping parts one at a time, and it means we quote the real problem instead of the symptoms.

Call us with what you're seeing

Tell us what you're smelling, seeing or hearing and we'll say whether it can wait a couple of weeks or needs attention now. Water and a struggling AC both get more expensive the longer they run.

On the phone we can give you the typical range for the job, such as the $1,200 to $2,000 for an AC or $800 to $2,000 for a water heater. The exact number is confirmed once we've seen the RV. When we quote, we walk you through what we checked, what we found and why the number is what it is.