Don’t sweat the small stuff — fix it.

Now that we’ve lived in the Vilano coach for a while, I’ve  identified a couple of small things to improve upon or change up to fit our personal wishes. Luckily sitting parked here in Texas for a month has provided both the weather and time to get things done.

A. The Left side basement door

A right side storage compartment door, which provides access to the biggest storage compartment, the basement, raises vertically and is held fully open by two powerful magnets. The left side basement storage compartment door, however, has to open horizontally due to the bedroom slide coming out over a part of the doorway. This horizontally opening door provides full access but it quickly became apparent, if there is any wind, the door can become a head, arm, and finger cracking hazard, as the wind slams the door open or shut. To fix this issue, while keeping within the Vilano factory design look and feel, I installed a set of magnets (same type as those on the right side door) to hold the door in the fully open position. This solution looks as if it came from the factory and works great — definitely a safety and convenience improvement.

New magnet on door.

New Magnet on side of coach.

When door is opened fully the two magnets align holding the door in the open position.

B. Living room cabinets above the above TV

Coming from an I.T. background, I may have a few more electronic, media and network components than the average RV joe…but maybe not too many more. The most common place to set up these components would be in one of the three cabinets above the TV in the living room. However, there’s a  problem with using this area. These three cabinets are in the slide out, the walls exposed on two to three sides to sunlight/heat, and there is no ventilation into or between these cabinets which can make them warmer than the room temperature – especially with heat-producing electronics in them. Below are some things I’ve done to negate this heat issue:

• I used a hole saw to cut 4” inch holes in the two walls between the three compartments for air flow;
• I installed a 120mm 120v low-speed electric fan with a speed control into the newly cut hole in the left cabinet, which has my “gear” in it. The fan blows air from inside this left cabinet into the center cabinet or beyond;
• for now, when parked, I use small spacers to hold two of the doors about 1/2 inch open allowing cool air to enter the gear cabinet and blowing warm air out the center cabinet.

This works well, with the fan being near noiseless and the interior cabinet temperature remaining close to room temperature. So far I’ve only been able to test it with bright sunny 90-degree days, but it appears to have eliminated the heat issue. These mods also help to keep the factory installed Furrion DV1200 Media device cooler in the center cabinet. While you can hardly tell the doors are open that small 1/2  inch, some time later I may investigate cutting air flow openings, with grid covers, into the cabinet bottoms just above the TV so the doors can stay closed.

Three cabinets above the TV.

Left cabinet with network/media equipment.

New variable speed fan circulating air between the cabinets.

Center cabinet and equipment.

Notes: I have a network printer in the right side cabinet but it has a power saving mode and produces very little heat. All of the video electronics are tied into the DV1200 Media Center and its 5.1 audio speakers and it’s all controlled using a single Harmony One remote control.

I’ll publish a connection diagram for these components in a later post.