Bunk Ladder

Our Itasca doesn't have a bunk ladder, doesn't need one, there's stairs. Sort of.

Our dinette is next to the cab over, you step up onto dinette seat, onto the hard flat step designed into the seat back and up into the bed.

Even crippled old me can do it easily.

GrumpyandGrandma wrote:

The Logans wrote:


Jayco is really getting cheap!

They haven't provided bunk ladders for over 10 years +/-.

I just bought a 2014 Grayhawk 31DS and it has a bunk ladder. Yeah the rungs are skinny and slick. Put some traction tape on them, but yeah they need to be wider.

Aha, thanks for the insight JD. Out of curiosity, I just measured and ours is 4'8" to the top of the mattress/cushion.

kU, it goes like this:

IF the coach floor is flat with the cab floor, then it's about 5-ft from house floor to the bunk. A coach like that has little to no outside storage because the house is sitting on the Ford/Chevy chassis.

Go to one with a "full basement" and the climb is down to maybe 3-ft. Ours is somewhere in between. There's a tradeoff in what you can see out of the windshield from inside the coach. We looked at late model Winnie products and there was little forward view because the house was so high.

First C we had was flat floor and a 5-ft ladder, leaned against the bunk, was ideal height. Floor was carpeted and the ladder stayed steady. But there was still the issue of finding the right rung in the middle of the night. A nurse friend told us to get out of it before we had an injury and we did.

I should add, the Basement C's wind up with a cabover you can sit up in. The ceiling height needed to stand up in the House extends over the cab, so taller cabover. We could not sit up in ours and making the bed was very difficult. Basement coaches take care of that, but at the expense of a deep step down to the cockpit.

Our ladder has nice thick treads, so no discomfort (but I know what you guys are talking about, my DS had a bunk bed that was awful! We used pipe insulation on it and it helped a lot)

I'm gathering that the height is different between different rigs. I can't imagine just leaving a step ladder down there and successfully getting down in the middle of the night. I'm fit, practice yoga and do rock climbing, so it isn't that I'm fragile, it is just a long way down in our rig and I wouldn't want to try to aim my foot at a moveable stepladder at 3am. I don't usually sleep in the cabover, but I have done it when traveling with my friends for a girls weekend. But it sounds like some rigs have a shorter distance - or maybe y'all are taller than me!

My 'C' came with a ladder, but I've never used it. FT bed in the rear. I actually removed the lousy mattress in the overhead and lined the area that I could reach from the floor with rolls of the no slip shelf liner stuff. I bought some "make it yourself" boxes from an office supply store. They're cheap, and you can mark the contents with a magic marker. Nothing heavy, but its a good way to keep things that you don't need that often or things small enough to get lost, in easy reach without taking up room in the cabinets.
I never quite understood my ladder. I don't know anybody that goes to bed with their shoes on, and the ladder rails are hard on bare feet.

We didn't use ours either because it does hurt our feet. It got to the point where we really wanted it so I took some nice 2x4 and ripped a groove in it at an angle that would hook over the original ladder but be level when in use. Rounded the edges, put some finish on them and installed with screws from below. Part of the problem was the angle of the treads when in use. Now we have a comfortable way to access the overhead bunk that is safe to use, especially in the middle of the night.

Ours doesn't have one either.. I was wondering when hurting the feet would come up! My grandparents had one in there's and I couldn't climb it even with my younger feet. Won't get one for ours unless there's another option.

Never use the POS aluminum ladder that came with mine. Hurts even the kiddies feet. We use a 2" step to access the cab over instead.

We bought one when we had our Class C. It has really wide treads so doesn't hurt feet near as bad. We traded our Class C while we were in California and the ladder had been left at our home in Washington. So I guess what I am saying is we NEVER used it once. So don't rush to get one.