This isn't exactly a "Winnebago Specific Issue" but it follows a discussion that was started by John Canfield about a year ago. I found this topic when I was researching how to improve the illumination in my basement compartments, so I thought I'd continue the thought process here.
Our MH basement compartments are pretty poorly lit, so I looked at how John used an LED light strip to improve the lighting in his wet-bay and I thought that should work for my basement compartments too. Picture 1 is how my dual-door basement compartment, with the slide-out tray, looked when illuminated by the single factory light - an incandescent bulb. Picture 2 shows how it looks now - illuminated by the factory light and by about a three-foot section of an LED light strip that's glued along the top of the compartment door frame. What an improvement! The pictures don't do it justice. The shadows and dark areas that were present with the factory light are almost non-existent.
I also wanted to make it easier to turn the basement lights on and off, because when the slides are extended, you have to crawl under them and search in the dark compartments for the light switches (They're on the light fixtures). Picture 3 is one of my compartment doors - one arrow points to an existing wiring harness for the compartment-door-locks, and the other arrow points to a plastic housing that covers the door-lock-solenoids and door-handle-mechanisms. All of my compartment doors have these housings. Picture 4 shows a switch that I installed in each of these housings. The switches are wired in parallel to the factory light-fixture-switches. Using a coat hanger, it was easy to snake the wiring for each switch through an existing channel in each door.
Picture 5 shows the location of the switches in two compartment doors, and how well the compartments are illuminated now. For some reason, Winnie chose not to install light fixtures in the rear compartments (??) so I ran 12 volts to those compartments and illuminated them with the light strips. The arrow in Picture 6 shows the compartment-illumination and the location of the switch. Yes, you still have to bend down to open the doors, but every little bit helps.
None of this was hard to do, just somewhat time consuming. The total cost for all the switches, light strips, wire, solder etc. was about $75.00. As soon as they arrive in the mail, I'll be replacing the factory incandescent bulbs in the basement fixtures with LEDs.
Kev
