I have a roughly 9" X 9" roof vent on my 82' palomino pop up. The lid to the vent is broken and will need to be replaced. The 14" x 14" vents seem to be industry standard now. Can I enlarge to opening to accept the larger vent? and if so what will I find is there wood in the roof, or foam like the sides are made of? I think the 9" x 9" is really to small, and I sort of like the idea of getting a model with the fan. Any help will be greratly appreciated. Mike
Hi Mike,
I don't know about your camper specifically, but it seems to me that with a few tools, you should be able to enlarge the vent.
First, pull out the old vent. I just replaced our Jayco's 9x9 vent. The top had 18-20 screws and the bottom had fewer. The two pieces overlap, with the bottom being slightly larger. After you pull the top off, raise the roof to take off the bottom section. Then adjust the roof height so you can see/probe inbetween the inner ceiling and outer roof. Mine had foam a tan solid foam in there.
To increase the size of the vent, you would only be going out a few inches in each direction, so I would cut and use a straightened coat hanger to proble through the foam. If you hit something solid, you know you would need to adjust where to cut.
I did not probe on mine as I replaced the broken vent with a new one, so all of what I just wrote is theory, not experience.
Hope you can get a bigger vent with fan in there.
Just a few weeks ago, I replaced our broken vent with a new 9x9 vent from Elixir(part no. 18511-C1G) from my local Palomino dealer. $34.97 plus tax, and another $6 for the putty to put under the vent to seal it. It's not the same as the original, but stands about 2 inches higher.
Also, the vent, while advertised as 9X9, is actually 9 1/2 by 9 1/2, so I had to cut the opening a bit larger.
The Palomino roof is a sandwich of fiberglass interior, with wood between the interior and the aluminum outer roof. Not to terribly hard to cut through.
The original vent was held in by 8 screws from the top down, and 4 screws hold the interior decorative cover plate. With the new 9X9 vent, you may have to drill new holes(we did, but we managed to re-use the original interior trim piece).
HTH:D
One more thought for you to ponder on. :D
If you have lights in your ceiling, be careful where you cut. Check for wires. ;)
one more option for you to consider is a vent cover like you see on self contained units you can get them with fans and you don't have to worry about not being able to close your vent because it goes over the frame and keeps rain and everything else out we had them on our 30 ft bunkhouse and left them open yearround
I figured that if I was going to have to cut a little, that I would just cut a little more and put a 14" x 14" vent in. I even got one with a fan. Hooray for e-bay.....