Originally Posted by B_and_D

We store ours open because we can. I don't see any reason to close it down when we get home, it's nice to be able to get in and out of it any time I want, and sometimes we sleep out there (like last week when my daughter invited 5 other 21-year-olds to spend the night, I was ready for bed at 10 p.m. and the giggling was just getting started). I go out there at least once every couple of weeks just to check things out, get something, or ? We get digital TV reception out there that we don't get at the house, even with the Winegard TV antenna folded down onto the roof and under the cover. I was out there today several times, and yesterday several times.

We recently replaced our old one, and bought the ADCO Tyvek 24-26' cover, #27903000 per the receipt, it was $244.99 with the President's Club discount. They say to buy one (if I recall correctly) 2 feet longer than your trailer. Our trailer is (I believe) almost 24' open and the cover roof overlaps our roof on each end. It's plenty big. When we put the cover on we tuck the door flap underneath the roof, flat out across towards the other side. What I neglected to do with this new cover was to tie cords onto the door flap so that I can pull it down flat from the other side. I tried rolling the door flap up, first just by itself, and then with a PVC pipe rolled up inside, but it works best to just tuck it up under the roof.

I have a new way of protecting the corners with styrofoam pieces that I get when this lady has her medicine delivered to our office in a thick styrofoam cooler. I first used to tape them on, but that left gummy stuff all over the trailer. Now I just use that green "twisty-tie" wire that comes on a roll and tie on the corners using the outside hardware on the TM. No more gummy stuff and it's easy to reuse the twisty-ties. We also put the cover on by first closing down the TM, it's much easier that way. Even with the care we've taken to cover up the sharp edges on the corners (my '97 probably has more sharp edges than a 2006 does) we went through the patch kit that came with the first one and 2 additional patch kits. The guy at Camping World said that the covers only last most people 2 years.