Sheri and I took some pictures of how we secured our RV Awning.
In this picture you see that we took our aluminum support brace and removed it from the mount on the side of the RV. By doing this we can get a better mechanically sound setup for the awning. You can see the red strap… That is a tie down for a truck with a mini-winch. You can find those at Home Depot or Lowes and many, many different types will work. This strap will pull the awning tightly down and the wind will take a GREAT DEAL of power to lift the awning.
In this picture we show two key things. We use a 8 inch long tent stake to fasten the aluminum awning strut to the ground. It is actually still very easy to pull UP, but it makes it so that the strut cannot slide around very easily and is a very very strong connection. The tie down straps then fasten to one of the those screw in dog leash tie-downs and makes a very strong connection to the ground.
Finally to keep the wind from vibrating the awning and doing damage a little bit at a time we used these things called de-flappers. In an earlier article, we warned against the Camco de-flapper, but I think there are many good varieties you can find. When we find a good substitute we’ll post about it.
The dog leash tie down I picture next just so you can see what they look like. They screw right into the ground and they are amazing.