Installing LED Lights

Today we are hanging out at Swantown marina, in Olympia WA.  Don’t think there is nothing to do, just because I’m hanging for a day and not moving.  There is always something to do on a boat, like boat maintenance, journal writing, etc.

Today I decided to do some maintenance.  Heather (my wife) reminded me that the LED light strip had fallen down in the fixture over the sink.  The lack of light was making it hard for her to do dishes, since she couldn’t use it.  In all total I found 4 fixtures out of 15 had their LED lights coming loose.  Got to keep the wife happy. As the saying goes, “A happy wife is a happy life”.   Since we both want a “happy life’, off to work I went.

A few years ago, I replaced all my 12-volt florescent light bulbs with strips of LED lights.  I was able to find LED light strips from BLACKHAWK, that were almost a plug and play installation.  The LED strips where just a little long for my fixtures.  The people at BLACKHAWK, suggested I just cut off one series of LED lights at one end of the strip, to make them fit.

The LED lights had sticky back tape to hold them up.  When I cut them down in length, I also cut some of the sticky back tape off.  Some of the tape was missing on the shortened LED strips, therefore a few of the strips came unattached from the fixtures.   

Using my MacGyver/Mr. Fix-it skills, I reattached the LED strips back to the fixture.  I did this by drilling a couple of small holes in the fixture.  Then I wired up the strip to the light fixture, using stainless steel rigging wire.  Why didn’t I do that the first time around?  Live and learn! 

See pictures below from this project.  Sorry about the quality of these photos, hope they will at least give you a visual to go with this LED light maintenance project.

Light fixture with loose LED strip

Wired up LED Strip