Refrigerator vent cover leak

Thought I'd post this here in case it's helpful to someone on their rpod.

When I removed the steel sheet that surrounded the Onan generator in my Chinook, which sits just below the fridge, I found to my surprise and dismay that I had a concealed water leak from my fridge access door. If you look at the way that Dometic designed that door it's no big surprise, there is no lip or dam at the bottom to prevent water getting in and running down inside the walls.

This is going to be worse in a fiberglas RV like the Chinook that has outer walls that taper upwards, but blowing rain would do the same thing on a vertical wall I think.

I'm probably going to build up a lower inside lip out of something and also place a drip shield above the access door but I thought I'd bring it to this forums attention because I think rpods use the same stupid fridge door design.

Thanks jato

I've checked a few other forums today and apparently the problem I'm having effects the fiberglas RVs which have sloping sides much more often than the flat sided ones.The Chinook, Escape, and Casita forums all have posts on it.

Makes sense I guess. A marginal design that is pushed over the edge of failure by a slight tilt. OTOH even a flat sided RV gets parked sideways on a slope sometimes.

Most of the fixes seem to involve creating a dam inside the bottom edge of the door. Seems so obvious. I can't believe Domestic wouldn't just design it that way in the first place, but then there seems to be a lot of crummy design in the RV world.

Anyhow I've applied heat and gotten things pretty well dried out now. it's interesting that the water worked it's way down the walls supporting the fridge base to the floor and it's the lower walls and floor in that area that were damaged, not the base the fridge itself which I can see has been wet but apparently dries out quickly.

The damage isnt that extensive so my plan is to repair it with g/flex epoxy, which is both flexible and bonds well even to damp materials.

The interior walls are all wood, only the shell is fibreglass. I was only planning to use the gflex epoxy to repair wood damage, not to encase the whole fridge.

I considered whether the wet might have come from condensation from the fridge itself but it hasn't seen much recent use so I doubt it. Then I read about many folks having water getting in that poorly designed access door.

There was little air circulation down at the bottom because the Onan generator was located there and it was completely enclosed in a fire resistant sheet metal box. The damage was only visible after I cut that up and got it out of there to make room for a window a/c. It will get a lot better chance to dry out going forward.