We Do So Much More than Tick the Box

One of the things manufacturers love to show in their video tours these days is the “shower room” or “rain booth” they use to test an RV for water leaks. Here’s how it works: they roll a travel trailer or motorhome into a specialized room equipped with sprinkler heads where they try to simulate a real-life rain scenario. After a good 20 or 30-minute soaking, a technician checks around the windows, doors, vents, and siding seams to see if any water has made its way inside.

But hang on. Take a closer look at those videos, and you’ll no doubt see that the simulation is more akin to a gentle shower you might take at home or in a luxury hotel, not a rainstorm you’d experience in the real world.

They may be ticking the box on a quality control checklist, but we think they’re missing the point on testing an RV for water leaks because their approach isn’t realistic.

Many RVs will pass a leak test akin to a spring shower. Sure, water falling gently across the length of the RV is a nice visual for a marketing video, but what does it prove?

The real test is how an RV performs when the rain is falling hard and blowing sideways. This is why Bowlus always leak tests our RVs with high-pressure streams of water.

In the real world, rain hits your RV from various angles and at different pressures. The more wind and the heavier the rain, the more force those droplets have as they hit the outer shell. If you’ve got a gap in a seam or a leaky window, that’s when you’ll see the water getting inside your RV.

Also, consider what happens to your RV when you’re towing through a rainstorm. The force of the wind and rain increases exponentially, exploiting any vulnerabilities and driving water into your RV.

And that’s why most of the rain room tests online are so meaningless. By targeting the seams of our aluminum shell with high-pressure streams of water, our leak tests are more precise and thorough than other manufacturers.

At Bowlus, we take quality seriously, so we put our RVs through stringent testing. We don’t just tick the box and call it good. With Bowlus, quality means that you can have peace of mind knowing that your RV will be delivered leak-free and will last for decades to come.