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Wood shed mk 2 is almost complete.
Having spent the last couple of winters splitting wood/making kindling in the open I decided to build the mk2 shed large enough to do this under cover.
I have gotten by by using my head torch but fancy something a little more "proper".
Solar lighting seems cheap enough .... circa £30 per unit but it also seems too cheap.
Any suggestions as to a good one?
Do it properly. Get a 12v battery (leisure preferably) and one or two LED lights (I'm using a multi-led strip. A bit of cable and a switch on the wall and you'll be sorted. Plus you can run other stuff at the same time (we've got a car stereo with aux input and 2 x USB phone chargers connected to ours which is actually a beach hut so no other way to charge phones nearby).
Recharge it when you want/need to, although I fancy connecting a semi-flexible solar panel to ours to trickle charge it during the day.
I suspect solar lights are generally a bit pants - especially in the winter when you need them more.
Kind of did a similar thing:
- 12v Solar panel sized to meet your needs/budget
- Streetlight charge/load controller from Ebay (low current ones were ~£10 IIRC)
- 12v SLA sized to meet your needs/budget.
Using the streetlight controller makes it a doddle as it controls the SLA charging and regulates the voltage to the load device, so 6 cables to connect and off it goes. Have linked this up some lights and to a series of voltage droppers (pennies on Ebay) to charge AA batteries, run a radio, connector to power USB devices etc...
Interesting.
How long and you go between charges?
Whats a decent battery cost?
My wood store joins on to the shed so the option to run a couple of LEDS would be quite cool.
Any links to your lights used?
Okay .... I'm gonna come clean electrics are not my thing.
Is the above straight forward?
wood shed??? we NEED Photos!!!!!
Yep - piece of p!$$. connect +/- cables from battery, solar panel and load device (light with an in-line switch in the simplest case) and it just works.... I was put off having a go for ages for fear of having to build a charge controller for the battery, but finding that the streetlight controllers were so cheap meant it was up and running in an afternoon. SLA was the most expensive bit.
Interested too, but electrically inept so links to examples would help (please!)
Ta
Edit Ah now i see what a SLA is!
So something like [url= http://www.batterytrader.com/fm1270-sealake-fm1270c-sealed-lead-acid-batteries-p-36378.html?gclid=CNzd7N-yvrkCFQTHtAod6w4AYQ¤cy=GBP ]this?[/url]
Could I just get away with batter and two independently switched lights?
I realize I would have to charge the battery every so often.
But if I got a panel and one of [url= http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/10A-20A-30A-Solar-Regulator-Street-Panel-Charge-Controller-12-24V-Auto-switch-UK/350772158545?rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.m1851&_trkparms=aid%3D222002%26algo%3DSIC.FIT%26ao%3D1%26asc%3D14384%26meid%3D1165877145520103869%26pid%3D100005%26prg%3D7041%26rk%3D2%26rkt%3D5%26sd%3D141022662571%26 ]these[/url] I could trickle charge the battery?
Think I got the 20A version of this:
It's as simple as the diagram on the front - the only other thing to know in the (2 page) instructions was to plug in the battery first before the panel. You can get more funky ones, probably for less, direct from China.....
EDIT: For SLA sizing, you'll need to work out how long you want to run the lights for, what the power consumption is for that time and balance that against the charge time it'll have between those cycles and how much power you'll get from the panel. Think mine is 28Ah as it more sized for charging 4x 2900mAh AA's fairly regularly (and I got it for a good price).
I'm using a 75Ah battery and it it needs recharging every couple of weeks, but the radio/speakers do use a bit of juice so it's all down to what you're powering.
For instance a 4 watt 12v LED lamp will use 0.333 amps (watts divided by volts = amps), so a 7 amp battery will last about 21 hours before it's completely dead (although you'd stop using it before then), so two lights would give you about 10 hours runtime.
In my opinion bigger is better.
Morning newby.....
MODS!!!!
Morning newby.....
MODS!!!!
It will add to your cost but I did a DIY version on my shed and use this box to hold a big 12v battery. Makes connections easy as you can connect the solar panel to the terminals but it also has a cigarette style connector to simply plug your light or anything else into.
[url= http://www.maplin.co.uk/solar-battery-box-264935 ]http://www.maplin.co.uk/solar-battery-box-264935[/url]
A wood shed thread without pics? I feel cheap, dirty and used. 🙁
That bottle light is quite amazing, inspirational fella.
What led lights are people using to light their sheds as would like to give this a go.
The strips seem common but how long a strip do you need to light a normal sized shed?
I've just taken delivery of a [url= http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B002GN4WGM/ref=pe_385721_37986871_TE_item ]couple of these[/url]
I haven't installed them yet, or have any idea of how well they'll last. But for the money they look good. There's enough light to see what you are doing to lock a bike up , of get something out of the shed, but probably not work on a bike.