The RV maintenance checklist: what to do every month, every season, and once a year

Twenty minutes a month and one focused day per season is the whole job. That is not a sales pitch to make maintenance sound easier than it is. It is roughly what the tasks below actually take, once you know what you are looking at. Most of the damage that turns into a real repair bill starts small: a soft floor under a slide, a ruined water heater tank, a dead house battery bank at the worst possible campground. Almost none of it happens overnight. It builds up over a year of something small getting skipped.

This page is a schedule. It tells you what to do and when, and each task links out to the page that actually walks you through doing it. A checklist that also tries to teach roof sealant chemistry or black tank sensor cleaning in the same breath ends up doing neither well. Print this, tape it inside a cabinet, and treat the deep-dive links as the reference you open when a specific task is actually in front of you.

Why a cadence-based checklist beats a task dump

A wall of forty unordered tasks is how good intentions die. Some jobs matter every time you use the rig (checking tire pressure before a trip), some matter on a calendar (dumping the black tank before it hits capacity), and some matter only twice a year (a full roof inspection). Sorting by cadence, not by system, means you are never staring at a 90-item spring list wondering where to start.

The other reason to sort this way: neglect compounds. A pressure regulator you meant to buy "eventually" does nothing while it sits on the shopping list. For eight months, campground pressure spikes well above the roughly 60 psi the plumbing is rated for slowly stress a fitting. A roof seam you'll "get to" behaves the same way. A hairline crack takes on water for two seasons before a soft spot shows up inside. None of these are one-time failures. They are slow ones, and a monthly rhythm is what catches them while they are still a five-dollar fix.

Before every trip (about ten minutes)

• Tire pressure checked cold and sidewalls looked at (tire care)
• Lug nuts snug
• Running lights, brake lights, turn signals and the breakaway cable on a trailer
• Smoke, CO and LP detectors tested (a propane detector that beeps)
• Roof vents, windows and the TV antenna down or closed
• Slide rooms clear on top and fully in
• Steps retracted and the awning locked

Monthly checklist (about 20 minutes)

None of that requires tools beyond a flashlight and, for the battery check, a cheap multimeter. If any single item takes more than a couple of minutes, that's the signal to open the deeper page for that system instead of digging further on your own.

Seasonal checklist (one focused day, three or four times a year)

Seasonal work is where the calendar actually matters, because two of these four windows are non-negotiable if you live somewhere the temperature drops below freezing.

Spring (de-winterizing and the first full walkaround)

• Flush the antifreeze out of the water system and sanitize the fresh tank before the first trip
• Reconnect the water heater bypass valve to normal flow and refill the tank
• Do a full roof walk (in soft-soled shoes, only if the roof and ladder are rated for foot traffic) and check every seam, vent, and skylight for cracked or lifting sealant (the sealant inspection that should happen about every 6 months)
• Check tire pressure cold and inspect sidewalls for cracking after months of sitting
• Inspect the awning fabric and roller for winter damage before the first extension

The de-winterizing side of this has enough steps and gotchas that it gets its own page: the de-winterizing steps.

Summer (the heavy-use season)

• Recheck the roof at the midpoint of the season, since sealant works hardest under summer UV
• Watch AC performance on the hottest days; reduced cooling on an extremely hot day can be normal design behavior for the unit rather than a fault
• Confirm the absorption fridge is running level; hours of off-level operation can overheat the boiler section, crystallizing the rust inhibitor in the cooling solution and blocking tubing there, a failure that usually means replacing the cooling unit
• Add holding tank treatment on your normal cadence if you're using one

Fall (pre-storage prep for anywhere freezing is coming)

• Winterize the fresh water system: bypass the water heater first, which saves refilling a 6- or 10-gallon tank with antifreeze you'd just have to flush out again
• Use RV/marine antifreeze only, which is propylene glycol and pink; automotive antifreeze is ethylene glycol, green, and toxic, and it never belongs in a potable water system
• If using the blowout method instead of antifreeze, keep the air at 35-40 psi at most; higher pressure risks damaging fittings, pipes, and valves
• Clean and inspect the roof one more time before the rig sits (the sealant inspection that should happen about every 6 months)
• Dry-lubricate slide rails and awning arm pivots, never WD-40, which attracts grit

The full winterizing walkthrough, including the antifreeze-versus-blowout decision, lives at the winterizing guide.

Winter (storage checks, even if the rig isn't moving)

• Check on the rig periodically if it's stored somewhere reachable; a slow leak in a heated aisle or garage-kept unit can still do damage over a stored winter
• Verify the water heater bypass and tank drains are still in their winterized position
• Keep the propane detector's battery backup fresh if the unit has one

Annual checklist (once a year, regardless of season)

A simple way to build your own cadence if this doesn't fit your rig

Not every rig matches this list exactly. A rig used every weekend needs the monthly items closer to every two or three weeks; a rig stored nine months of the year can compress the seasonal list into two visits instead of four. Use this three-question method to build your own version instead of forcing the printed schedule onto a use pattern it wasn't written for.

1. How many nights a month does the rig actually get used? Fewer than four nights a month: keep the checklist as written. More than ten nights a month, especially full-timing: cut the monthly interval in half. Tanks fill faster and systems cycle more when the rig is lived in.
2. Does the rig ever sit through a freeze? If yes, the fall winterizing and spring de-winterizing steps are required every year. If the rig lives somewhere that never sees a hard freeze, those two steps shrink to a lighter seasonal check instead of a full winterizing pass.
3. Is this the first year with this specific rig? First-year owners should run the monthly list at double frequency for the first three months. That's the window when a marginal water heater fitting, a weak factory sealant bead, or a battery already near end of life tends to reveal itself.

That third point matters more than it sounds like it should. A surprising share of expensive early failures aren't age-related wear at all. They're factory or dealer-prep issues instead: a fitting never fully tightened, a sealant bead skipped at one seam. First-year attention catches those before they become a mid-trip problem. The first-year RV mistakes page covers the pattern in more depth if this is a new-to-you rig.

What this checklist deliberately leaves out

This page stays inside onboard systems: water, tanks, electrical, propane appliances, roof, slides, and awnings. It does not cover engine service, chassis lubrication, towing hitch inspection, or brake maintenance, because those are a different discipline with their own manufacturer schedules, and folding them in here would make this list too long to actually use. If a water heater isn't producing hot water at all rather than just needing its yearly anode check, that's a different problem with its own troubleshooting path at a water heater that won't heat.