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Rockwood Comparisons

Fifth Wheels
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Hybrids
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Pop Up Campers
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Travel Trailers
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	Rockwood	Competition
Reliability	Rockwood is owned by Forest River Inc. – Berkshire Hathaway, (a Warren Buffett company). How does this affect you? Forest River is debt free, giving you assurance that when you need your warranty, it’s there!	In 2009 many of Forest Rivers main competitors faced an ailing economy, experiencing bankruptcy, permanent layoffs, and/or plant closures. When making your decision of a Forest River RV versus Jayco, or Fleetwood, knowing your warranty is safe is critical.
Wall Construction	Rockwood Walls are constructed using a method called vacuum bonding. Essentially the walls are taken into a temperature and humidity controlled clean room. Once in the clean room, several hundreds pounds of pressure are evenly applied to for several hours. Making your walls statistically 10 times less likely to delaminate	The majority of manufacturers are still using a technique called pinch rolling. While using this method is cheaper for manufacturing, it puts costs back onto you. Pinch rolled walls are more likely to delaminate causing separation which puts you at risk of moisture damage. When this happens you have to replace the entire wall, costing upwards of $8,000 to $10,000.
Framing Studs	Rockwood will add wood inserts in the ends of their metal studs. And then both sides of the stud are welded to the attached stud. This helps provide structural integrity from all the movement of being on the road.	Generally the competition won’t have a wood insert, when a stud is screwed into another one you have only metal on metal contact. This kind of attachment is likely to sheer off causing a less stable attachments. As well you will see a weld on only one side of the stud. You don’t want to have to drive down the road knowing each mile you drive is causing vibrations, likely putting your RV at risk.
Floor Construction	Rockwood frames around the heating ducts in the floor. Providing a better sealed heating ducts, and no weak spots in the floor.	The competition generally doesn’t add framing around their heating ducts. This can cause weak spots in your floor that have potential to sag or break.
Roof Construction	Rockwood Travel Trailers have a Vacuum Bonded radius roof. Making a roof that is thicker and better insulated. Built with a 2″ radius the roof naturally sheds waters. The top layer of your roof is made of Alpha-ply, this material is stretchy like rubber but is much lighter, and oxidizes less, making it less chalky which can causes streaks on the side of your RV. And it comes with a 12 year warranty, to put you at ease.	The competitions roofs are not vacuum bonded making them more likely to delaminate. Generally they use a flat roof, providing standing pools of water that put your roof at further risk.
Heated Holding Tanks	Rockwood’s holding tanks and dump valves are protected by electric heating pads, and heat strips. The heating pads are guaranteed to work even at -11°F, keeping your holding tanks from cracking from cold weather. Rockwood also encloses the underbelly of their trailers, providing a variety of advantages. Enclosing the underbelly makes the trailer more aerodynamic, provides an added level of insulation, and protects the bottom of your trailer from weathering and damage.	Freezing can cause dump valves to freeze shut, or even crack them essentially dumping your holding tanks. Freezing can damage your holding tanks, causing not only a mess on the ground but a financial mess too.
Awning	Rockwood’s A&E Awnings allow you to adjust or extend the arms to causing rain to dump off the side rather than pooling and causing damage or sagging to your awning. The fabric used is both mold and UV resistant, and with the push of a button opens or closes.	A manual awning takes longer to put up and take down, and can sometimes being an overly laborious task. As well lack a rain dump feature, and don’t provide a flex that power awnings do, making it weaker in the wind.
Sofa	Rockwood comes with a Hide-A-Bed air sofa, that offers an innerspring seating surface, storage underneath, and a queen 60″x80″ air mattress just plug it in, flip the switch and it will automatically inflate or deflate.	Remember those traditional sofa sleepers where you unrolled a metal frame that comes with a wafer thin padded mattress and a cross bar in the middle that digs into your back? Need we say more?
Blinds	Rockwood comes standard with Day/Night Shades. With these accordion style fabric shades you can choose how much light you want to let into your RV, or how much privacy you want.	Traditional mini-blinds make are make annoying rattling noises, and are more suseptable to breaking. Often times you see the plastic clips that hold them in place are weak and get broken easily, often times leading to broken or bent blinds.
Table	Rockwood’s Solid Wood table option comes with a table top extension to offer more seating space plus extra storage under the seats for cards, games, books and more.	Non-adjustable table. No storage under the chairs. Hard to fit four adults comfortably around the table.
Bed	These beds in the bedroom have a standard 60″x80″ Queen Heated Innerspring mattress that is thermostatically controlled. This offers warm on those cool nights without turning the heat on. There is an upgraded Serta mattress as well. There are also swivel reading lights over the bed. There’s also plenty of storage under the bed.	Lights in the middle of the bedroom and even if there are two lights, they are usually not swivel lights.The bed is a RV “short queen” (60×74).
Suspension	Rockwood’s torsion axles are maintenance free and give independent suspension for a smoother ride. They have bearing buddies for easy maintenance.	Spring suspension is standard out there. If you don’t have the bearing buddies, it’s a lot more work to maintain the axles.
Short Bed Truck Friendly		Rockwood Fifth Wheels have an optional Sidewinder Hitch that makes it so you don’t have to get a slider hitch with a short box truck saving you money, creating a lighter hitch weight, and easier towing. Some short bed trucks (5 1/2′ beds), you can’t use a slider hitch.
Water Test	Forest River’s inspection building has rain booths that test the coach for leaks by drenching the coach with the equivalent of 24 inch/ per hr of rain with 184 spray heads. Every coach is tested for 15 minutes. Water is sprayed with the slides in and out position, underneath, sides and top.
Fantastic Fan	Rockwood offers the 10 blade Create a breeze fantastic fan that pushes over 900 cubic feet of air per minute. The benefit is it can replace all the air in your RV in under 2 minutes and it will save you from having to use your Air Conditioner as much.	The competition will use a regular small RV fan. These fans are only capable of pushing 25-30 cubic feet of air per minute. When your camper gets stuffy there’s little you can do unless you crank up your generator or plug into a 110v outlet.
Water Heater	The water heater that Rockwood puts in it’s RVs gives you 16.2 gallons of hot water per hour. This heater takes up less space than a typical 10 to 12 gallon heater, but gives you more hot water much more quickly.	The competition will usually use a 7.4 gallon hot water heater per hour.. Less than half of what a Rockwood will provide.
Water Filtration	Rockwood has a 10,000 gallon residential water filtration system that filters all of your water. The benefit being you don’t have to be picky where you get your water. You can leave your home and fill up your holding tank closer to your destination.	The competition generally doesn’t have a water filtration system. Possibly they will have a filter that provides clean water just for your sink, Rockwood filters all of your water sinks and showers. With the price of gas these days it’s easy to see how this really isn’t functional.
Black Tank Flush	Rock wood uses a built in black tank flush system. In-order to clean your black tanks all you do is connect a hose to a port on the side of the unit, and the built in sprayers will do all the work for you.	Without a black tank flush system you have drag a hose through your RV and into the bathroom where you drop it into your toilet, as well you have to buy a special sprayer attachment for the hose. When your going RVing spending more time setting up or breaking down is just a pain!
Locking Latches	On all Rockwood Roo hybrids you have heavy duty latches with internal locks, knowing that your personal possessions are securely stored.	Usually you will have a metal flap lock the requires a padlock. Which might look secure, but are very easy to break into.
Expandable Bed Support	The tip-out beds in the Rockwood Roo Hybrids are supported with 1,200 lbs Aircraft quality cable, which is attached the structure of the unit for added strength. A steel reinforcement assures that the bed won’t bow overtime, so when the bed is in the upright position you can be sure your seal is tight.	The competition will use support bars under the bed, which takes a lot more work and time to set-up. As well their beds don’t have a steel reinforcement and are known to bow.
Double Ducted Air	Rockwood uses uses double ducting for all of the air ducts, this ensures an even temperature throughout your RV. On the smaller units you don’t have AC ducting as your AC should be able to cool the entire unit itself.	The competition will only have ducting on one side of the RV which can create pools of hot and cold areas in your RV.
Rain Spouts	Rockwood does everything they can to ensure your camper stands the test of time. Adding a longer rain spout helps keep water off of your RV.	Most manufacturers will use a short rain spout that don’t keep the water off of your RV. This can cause weathering and black streaks on the sides of your RV.