Date: Wed, 19 May 2010 10:14:00 -0700
Reply-To: Jake de Villiers <crescentbeachguitar@GMAIL.COM>
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From: Jake de Villiers <crescentbeachguitar@GMAIL.COM>
Subject: Re: Camping Christmas Lights
In-Reply-To: <4BF41B23.7060206@gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
I've put warm white Xmas strings across the front and side of the house to
light the pathways (we don't have streetlights here in Crescent Beach) and
the colour is pretty acceptable. I'd love to have a 12 volt string for
camping.
Jake
On Wed, May 19, 2010 at 10:08 AM, Mike "Rocket J Squirrel" <
camping.elliott@gmail.com> wrote:
> Rewiring a factory-made light string from 120V to 12V might be a big
> challenge. There's also the current draw to consider: you didn't say if
> you were wanting to run incandescent bulbs or LEDs. A string of 25 C7
> (the big outdoor seven-watt) bulbs would be (25 Bulbs X 7 Watts = 175
> watts, which is about 15 amps at 12 volts (not counting inverter losses)
> so running that string for, say, eight hours would need 120 amp-hours. A
> darn big aux battery.
>
> Far more energy-efficient would be those strings that use LED bulbs.
> I've seen strings of 70 LED Christmas lights that use only 3.5 watts. A
> third of an amp-hour per hour. My inverter doesn't draw much excess
> current and thinking about it, it would be fun to bring a string of
> those things along in Mellow Yellow to festivize the site.
>
> A nice warm white might be hard to come by, the LED strings I've seen
> use the cheaper colder bluish-white LEDs.
>
>
> Richard Koerner wrote:
>
>> Went camping recently, had shore A/C power at the campground, and ran
>> a string of white Christmas lights outside the vanagon laid on the
>> ground....just for the fun of it.... but provides just the right
>> amount of light for illuminating the area. Girlfriend likes it, too;
>> now, she wants them all the time, even when out in the middle of
>> nowhere.
>>
>> I have an aux battery per the GoWesty kit. So one option is to run
>> the Christmas lights off a 120 VAC inverter.....easy smeasy I guess
>> to do that. The other option is to "rewire" the string of lights so
>> as to directly operate off 12 VDC; my string has 50 bulbs so normally
>> 120V divided by 50 is 2.4 volts per lightbulb....thus need to "group"
>> about 6 or 7 bulbs in series across the 12 volts of the auxillary
>> battery. Yes, much more hassle than simply using the inverter, but
>> probably more electrically efficient, and I could "derate" the bulbs
>> by putting them in groups of 8 or 9 thus with slightly dimmer light.
>>
>> Anyway, I suppose a third option is to buy 12VDC Christmas lights
>> from someplace....they must be available. But that takes all the
>> challenge out of it!
>>
>> Just wondering if the List has any clever ideas on this; basically it
>> provides low-cost, pleasant, lighting around the campsite in the
>> immediate vicinity of the slider door area. So would candles and a
>> kerosene lantern I guess.....but candles blow out, and don't want to
>> carry 2 or 3 kerosene lanterns, too bulky.
>>
>> Rich 85 Vanagon San Diego
>>
>
>
> --
> Mike "Rocket J Squirrel" Elliott
> 84 Westfalia: Mellow Yellow ("The Electrical Banana")
> 74 Westrailia: (Ladybug Trailer company, San Juan Capistrano, Calif.)
> Bend, OR
> KG6RCR
>
--
Jake
1984 Vanagon GL 1.9 WBX 'The Grey Van'
1986 Westy Weekender/2.5 SOHC Suby 'Dixie'
Crescent Beach, BC
www.thebassspa.com
www.crescentbeachguitar.com
http://subyjake.googlepages.com/mydixiedarlin%27
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