I thought I would open this item to relat eot you folks an incident that occurred to us that caught me totally off guard. Now we have been RVing for many years and this is a new one on me. While driving between Texarkana and Livingston Texas my wife, who was driving at the time, noticed that the awning over the slide out was coming loose from the coach. Well we hurriedly found a spot to pull off the road and I pulled out the telescopic ladder and checked it out. We had assumed that it had torn but no. It turned out that the thread used to sew in the plastic tube that slides into the awning rail had rotted out and broken allowing the cloth to pull out of the awning rail. Well there was no repairing that on the road so I removed the awning and stowed it. The canvas fabric was fine it was just the cotton thread that became rotton and broke allowing the seams to open up. The awning is a Carefree of Colorado brand and is about 6 years old. Once we arrived at our eventual destination in Houston I found an awning business in Tomball that repaired the awning by re-sewing the seams for just $20. I don't know what can be done to prevent the ageing of the cotton thread the factory uses to sew the seams but I certainly will be on the look out for one.