Shades/Blinds

SJH

Past Washington Chapter Leaders
Here is a silly question for you...do you travel with the shades up or down? I never gave it much thought and just left them down. After our last trip I noticed a couple of the plastic curtain tensioners were broken. Thought maybe it was from the blinds swaying.
 

cookie

Administrator
Staff member
We always travel with the blinds down. We have never had one break.

Peace
Dave
 

kakampers

Past Heartland Ambassador
We leave them wherever they are, up or down, when we breakdown....five years and not one problem....
 

meandg

crawgator
Anything facing outside will be closed because of the sun but on our back window it stays up and we have a blackout curtain.
 

Nabo

Southeast Region Director-Retired
We have the day/night shades and always travel with them down. It helps reflex the sunlight and other passing folks from seeing in.
 

bighorn3370

Well-known member
Same with me. all ways down. Never had a problem. On my last sob I had blinds and never had a problem with them. Ernie
 

danemayer

Well-known member
We have the wood slat blinds (which I really like btw) and travel with them up. They swing pretty easily and I don't want to find out what happens when they swing around banging on the valence and wall for 7 or 8 hours.
 

boatto5er

Founding VA Chap Ldr (Ret)
We also have the wood slat blinds (which, like Dan, we also love). However, we travel with ours down. Have never had a problem.


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Ray LeTourneau

Senior Member - Past Moderator
We travel with the day night shades down and our wooden blinds up. We wedge foam around the blinds in the side valances to keep em from floppin.
I'm afraid I can't picture the breakage you're talking about. I do know the strings will eventually break if the tension ot the strings is too tightly adjusted. They need to be just barely tight enough to hold up the top shade when moving the bottom one.
 
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Swinborn

Member
We just bought a 2012 Big Country 3650RL that has the large, 2" blinds on seven windows. It came without the clips for the bottoms of the blinds that hold them in place. A call to Heartland today revealed that the unit should have come with those clips. The dealer seemed to not know about the clips which was strange, and suggested we just pull them up when traveling.......

Anyway, we found the clips on "fixmyblinds.com" and ordered them. Now, Heartland is sending us some too, so I'm going to wait for them to see if they're the same as we ordered. I think they will travel better with them down, closed, and fastened on the bottoms, especially the huge six foot set for the rear window of our camper. I would think if they were pulled up when traveling, the concentrated weight and bouncing around would eventually break the cords that are used to raise them.
 

Dave49

Well-known member
I also "had" the day/night shades and I had 3 out of 6 of them with broken strings. So we said enough of this and bought new ones. We don't like the new ones at all and recently bought the kit to redo the strings in the day/night shades. We found that we like the option of the darkness. Hope we figure out how to make them work without breaking the strings because its going to be a PITA to repair from what I see on the instructions!

Dave
 

Silverado23

Iowa Chapter Leaders
I also "had" the day/night shades and I had 3 out of 6 of them with broken strings. So we said enough of this and bought new ones. We don't like the new ones at all and recently bought the kit to redo the strings in the day/night shades. We found that we like the option of the darkness. Hope we figure out how to make them work without breaking the strings because its going to be a PITA to repair from what I see on the instructions!

Dave

Don't overtighten the strings when restring the shades. Too tight and you could end up breaking more strings. The strings should be loose enough to raise and lower the shades easily but tight enough to hold the shade in place.
 

donr827

Well-known member
My first trailer, Jayco, had the blinds as was common back then. Wish I had the blinds on my current trailer. Much prefer blinds over the day/night shades.
Don
 

JonV

Well-known member
Here is a silly question for you...do you travel with the shades up or down? I never gave it much thought and just left them down. After our last trip I noticed a couple of the plastic curtain tensioners were broken. Thought maybe it was from the blinds swaying.

We had the same experience. I don't think we have any of those plastic tensioners left intact. We were going to replace them but it's not doing any harm and we figured it would just happen again so we're just going to leave them the way they are. :D
 

kakampers

Past Heartland Ambassador
I am really surprised at all the problems some on here have with their day/night shades...we've lived in our unit since July '07, and knock on wood, we haven't had one issue with ours. Not one broken string...nothing! I will say I'm not one to constantly move them though...I don't close everything up at night, etc. Didn't do that in my sticks and brick, and nothing has changed since we became fulltimers. Maybe we don't adjust them as much as many others..not sure...but ours are just fine. We do close and open the bedroom daily, but they are also just fine.
 

donr827

Well-known member
We had blinds on our first trailer 10 years ago. I really prefer the blinds over the day/night shades.
Don
 
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