Because we want to be able to live off grid most of the winter, we are always looking for ways to draw less power. We had a decorative light bar over the bathroom vanity that works on 120 volts, it had four 40 watt bulbs and was on a dimmer switch, so whether dimmed or on full they always draw about 160 watts.

My solution four decorative LED bulbs with a solid state dimmer so now our total draw is less than 20 watts the four bulbs are 18 watts 4.5 watts each. LED bulbs can be expensive to purchase but it is still cheaper than buying amp/hours of battery power and as I get ready to do my load assessment for the battery bank upgrade every 100 watts I can reduce makes the total required amp/hours less.

When planning for months of boondocking in the desert, every item that is used, needs its power consumption to be tracked as it makes a difference at the end…now I’m the one who uses this light bar the most and mainly while shaving, so not a long period of time but still ever 10 minute of draw adds up. The photos above show the difference, and it is hard to believe the difference is over 140 watts…can you see the difference?

It’s early October and you can tell it is fall. the temperatures are heading south on the thermometer so its time to start packing for our next journey. Yesterday I replaced all the rest of the lower marker light on Thunder with the new LED ones, so much better looking and should make us much more visible. I also replaced the tail / brake lamp bulbs to LED 1157 bulbs and that made a big improvement as well.

I also reinstalled the kayak racks on the towed and replaced the wiper blades, and hope to get the kayaks in the racks this afternoon, I have today off because I worked Monday on a little project with Richard, so my hope is to get most of the towed packed so I can start packing the basement next week. But it is raining this morning so I’m off to town to pick up some items and order some more LED bulbs for the towed the difference between the LED’s and the old incandescent bulbs is amazing and the last thing we need is someone running into our house.

The weather is in full fall effect with the cool rainy days and as I mentioned the falling temperature, oh well I wont have to worry about working up too much of a sweat for a while packing, the towed or the basement, now its all about getting a break from the rain to get the job finished, I did get the kayaks in place, and the bike rack mounted on the towed and its raining again…come on just give us a little break on the rain!

The lights took a little longer than I had hoped, but I did find the short in the trailer plug wiring, a couple of shorted wires. Because the coach has separate brake and turn signal bulbs and our towed does not (the brake and turn signal use the same bulb) the coach had an adapter to solve that issue,so a couple hundred dollars in parts for a new adapter and LED lights for the towed and the coach is all fixed up reconnected, of course because of the location of the connections  I used crimp connectors  and added heat shrink tubing to keep moisture out. Now I have to see if replacing the turn signal flasher on the towed will make the warning system happier.