Help with low voltage lighing ideas

3930dave · Mar 23, 2014

Eddie - have a look at this discussion.

Solar panel project for low voltage landscaping lights

The controller they are talking about has a Low Voltage Disconnect built in. One comment on amazon noted that it was set to 11.7volts - playing it safe in terms of discharging the battery - that level may be adjustable, or they may have other models if you want a different LVD voltage level.

Just wanted to cite that controller as a generic example of something that will regulate both the charge voltage going To the battery, and will also protect the battery from too deep a discharge by the Load.

One bulb that can give you a nice spotlight is an MR16. I've been looking at the LED MR16s lately, as they have come down some in price - I have a household application in mind for that. MR16s have sometimes been used for outdoor lighting, utility line powered - if you can find some older halogen fixtures in metal still, one option would be to drop in LED MR16 upgrade bulbs. (Edit - those line powered applications had a transformer that plugged into the wall.... Long way of saying..... consider MR16 bulbs to be 12vdc bulbs).

As stated by others, you want to stay with LED, or you will be upsizing your battery bank.

Rgds, D.

woodlandfarms · Mar 23, 2014

So are you looking at landscape lighting or more than that? You want light you can read under? Or just not take a header off the stairs. The more light you have, the more power you need. So if you are looking for path lights and accent lights, LED and a car battery is great. If you are looking for more, you might need to consider a second battery to operate those in a manual fashion.

First thing. I like to buy the housings with the incandescent bulbs. Then I purchase the LED bulbs afterward and it is a lot cheaper (many sources on the internet). The metal enclosures, whatever you choose, are the best.

We have plenty of LED Solar and they work great as long as you have DIRECT day light to recharge. In a forest, shaded for part of the day, forget it. And the little AA replaceables are good for a year or two and expensive as heck to replace.

If you source from a car battery as suggested, you need to distinguish positive and negative side of your wiring. LED works off of DC so it needs the voltage correct or it will either not operate or burn out.

They sell low voltage landscape wire. It is very heavy gauge because in 12 volt, the resistance in the wiring will effect your lights the further you get away from the power source. I think the fact you need so little wattage you won't have an issue.

A replacement LED runs at .5 watt to 2 watt draw. Your Incandescent runs 8 watt to 25 watt draw. A nice deep discharge battery will give you a heck of a lot of juice. This is why campers and such are swtiching to LED as you don't need nearly the same battery requirement.

All of the above IMO.

glastron23 · Mar 23, 2014

Eddie, if its for that LITTLE mud puddle you made (great read by the way) then LED is the way to go, we installed some strip lighting (color changing) from Sylvania we bought at Costco, 12 foot lengths X2 (about $20 bucks each) and installed a gel battery with a solar panel. the lighting takes about 1.5 amps to run at full brightness so with it running 24 hours it lasts about 4 days with out charging the battery.

EddieWalker · Mar 23, 2014

Great info, thank you!!!! I'm going with LED for sure, and wont know until I finish building the gazebo how many I want or where they will go. I'm hesitant on using lights shining up from the ground because they seem to get damaged the most and if they are in the flowerbeds, the plants sometimes get in the way. I want to light up each post and the cupola. I have a picture in my head of what it's going to look like, but until I build it, I really wont know what I want to do with the lights. This is just to show off the gazebo, and not for anything on the inside.

Eddie

Pixguy · Mar 23, 2014

HD's Malibu has some decent LED metal casing lights that I'm using without trouble. Nice downlighting and lights use could see in soffits.
http://http://t.homedepot.com/s/Malibu%20led/?searchtype=text
Start a thread for us who would be interested in your build.

grsthegreat · Mar 23, 2014

Eddie. Arnt you going to have to add a bubbler to aerate that pond??? Most of the ponds i see that dont have a steady flow of fresh water have to add a 120v - 220 volt air pomp bubbler in order for the fish to survive and help keep the pond healthy. I have a buddy that has a huge pond on his place, and it really improved 200% after adding the air to the system. He even added a fountain kind of thing in the middle that allows the water to pass thru a UV light source before flowing thru fountain to improve clarity of water. His pond is HUGE.... cost a small fortune.

I kind of thought he was nuts....but he insists its for emergency water use and fire suppression.... but i think its an excuse to boat around it and fish

Then again, i dont know how large of a pond you have created.

3930dave · Mar 24, 2014

Hi again Eddie...

I'm pricing batteries myself, and wanted to toss this data that I came across today your way......

Group 24 Pure Lead AGM Deep Cycle Battery | Canadian Tire

In case the link is geo-filtered, the key data was:

"Capable of over 400 charge/discharge cycles to 80% depth of discharge and over 900 cycles at 50% depth of discharge - that's more than 2X the cycle life of regular AGM batteries and 4X the cycle life of conventional flooded deep cycle batteries."

That battery is one of the newer style AGMs with a high Lead content, and corresponding price tag.

As you've seen by now in this thread, a Deep Cycle battery is relatively better than a standard automotive Starting battery at handling Discharge conditions. The key point to remember with flooded acid and AGM batteries is that they all will suffer a reduced lifespan from heavy discharge conditions.

Kind of like Taking a Punch..... consider the Deep Cycle battery to be the tough guy on the block..... he has better chance of staying standing, but still will feel a well-thrown punch !

Rgds, D.

3930dave · Mar 24, 2014

grsthegreat said:
Eddie. Arnt you going to have to add a bubbler to aerate that pond??? Most of the ponds i see that dont have a steady flow of fresh water have to add a 120v - 220 volt air pomp bubbler in order for the fish to survive and help keep the pond healthy. I have a buddy that has a huge pond on his place, and it really improved 200% after adding the air to the system. He even added a fountain kind of thing in the middle that allows the water to pass thru a UV light source before flowing thru fountain to improve clarity of water. His pond is HUGE.... cost a small fortune.

I kind of thought he was nuts....but he insists its for emergency water use and fire suppression.... but i think its an excuse to boat around it and fish

Then again, i dont know how large of a pond you have created.

Bubbler.... near where I used to work, there was a large catchment basin for storm-water runoff in a new sub-division. I used to walk by there at lunch.

A relatively small windmill (think classic 30's style) was tripod mounted on-shore, and directly drove a bubbler (via an air line) in the centre of the pond. It was a commercial product, but I can't remember the manufacturer.

It won't give you a Bellagio style fountain display, and for a Texas

size pond, you might need a couple of them.... just wanted to mention it as an existing off-the-shelf option.

Rgds, D.

charlz · Mar 24, 2014

Until you 'boondock' in an RV or otherwise try to live off batteries for a while you don't really realize just how nice the power grid is

As an example let's say you wanted to run some of those 50-watt equivalent Malibu lights. From the pic it looks like you have 6 posts and you want to light each post. They use 11 watts each for a total of 66 watts.

Amps = Watts/Volts so Amps = 66/12 or 5.5 amps.

So each hour the lights are on you are using 5.5 ampere-hours. A good Group27 deep cycle has about 100 ampere-hours but you don't want to go below 50% charge so 50/5.5 means you can run those lights about 9 hours. That is assuming your battery is at 100% charge at the end of each day.

Which brings up charging your batteries. You would need to figure out your average hours of sunlight, how much your panel location will get and then set up the correct amount of solar panels and a charge controller to be able to bring your batteries back to 100% charge each day. The deeper you discharge the batteries and the more often you cycle them (daily it sounds like) the more you will need to check them to add water etc. Summer heat will cause water loss as well so you may have to check them pretty often in the summer until you get a feel for how often they need to be serviced.

V1Rotate · Mar 24, 2014

Deep cycle batteries have thicker plates which make them more tolerent of heavy discharge/recharge cycles.
The downside is that these batteries will not produce the huge amperage surge that automotive batteries provide while starting an engine. But you don't care about that, so deep cycle is the way to go. You can get them at sporting goods stores, they use them for trolling motors.