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ellie

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i live in the middle of nowhere and sometimes have no electricity. instead of being at the mercy of EDF i have decided to run a 12v lighting system alongside the 230v mains system. to test if a bulb would light from a battery i wired a 12v halogen car bulb to a battery with a switch. i kept it simple. red wire from red terminal of battery to switch, from switch to bulb. black wire from bulb back to black terminal. it worked. for all of 5 minutes. then the bulb blew. what did i do wrong? i am hoping to also run my modem and laptop from batteries so advice on this would be helpful too please. :)
 
The battery might have been under or over voltage for the bulb which prematurely caused it to fail.

It could also have been an AC bulb being fed on a DC supply
 
Or your halogen lamp (bulb) may of been contaminated with sticky fingers . They do not like that.
If you continue with your experiment , use LED lamps . Halogen lamps will just eat your power.
Caravan sales outlets will give you an idea of the type of lamps that are available, but don't buy them from them . They are usually well marked up. Go to the well known online market place. :)
 
I would suggest that if you want a DC system you might do worse than have a look here:
Display Lighting Systems UK | Cabinet Lighting | Display Lights | Retail Display Lighting - https://www.display-lighting.com/
My wife occasionally runs a display at certain craft fairs and often the electricity supply isn't close enough. What we bought was a set of 4 lights from these folk, along with the 230V plug-in transformer, which we use when there is a mains supply handy. If there isn't we use the adaptor that lets you run the lights from a battery.
These folks do sell 12v batteries, and there is a table on the site giving you details, size, output and so on, so you can calculate how long the battery will last etc. However, we simply used a 12v golf trolley battery and the 4 lights ran all day, and most of the night. Obviously, we had the battery and charger, but the two together will cost a lot less thgan one of those mega-expensive ones on that website, and for ocasional use a standard, lead-acid type will be fine.
 
And if you are in a sunny part of France , solar panels may be a consideration to keep your batteries topped up.
You could even create a battery bank and run some power sockets via an inverter.
To my mind that is when solar power comes into it's own.
 
Agreed, 123, however if for ocasional use maybe the generator and dedicated circuit/changeover switch might be on the expensive side? Plus you need to store fuel for the genny, and put up with the noise and the other inconvenience...some generators can be difficult beggars to start...and have to be housed somewhere.

Ruston, I do like your view on this, but again the initial expense might not be justified...it's up to the OP to rule on that point.
 
On the cost front, these were about £200 for the set, ifrc

4 x S124 Clamp Spots, 5W LED Lamps & Battery KIT - Display Lighting Ltd - https://www.display-lighting.com/led-battery-powered-lighting/s124-battery-led-clamp-spots/dkit4xs124-300-dc.html

and can be clamped to tables, shelves screens etc.
We got at least 10 hours running from the golf trolley battery, which is a standard, non-lithium 22ah 12 volt thingy, which cost less than £50
Lucas 22Ah Golf Battery LSLC22-12G - Lucas Golf Batteries - https://www.tayna.co.uk/golf-batteries/lucas/lslc22-12g/
and is half the price of the Motocaddy branded equivalent that for me lasts only one season. I don't mind paying £50/year, but twice that is just silly...especially as my golf is rubbish!
Going off-topic here, sorry...
 
I guess if you had a nice big car battery anyway, and a charger for it, then you would get a couple of days of light from it using similar LED lamps. At 5W output they give a good light too. I know that you can buy a car battery with 95ah for under £100 these days, so that's 4x the output of the golf trolley one, at the expense of size and weight obviously. As usual, the market dictates the price, and for golfers size and weight are important (not just of the golfers, but their batteries too!) thus these mini-sized ones are expensive...and the market is small compared to cars...however, the average car battery will outlast the golf ones by years, and as the OP has a car one, maybe that's the simplest and cheapest solution...car battery, some nice LED 12v lamps and job done...
Not going to run too many loads off an inverter, but small appliances would be fine, I think, so worth investing in one of those as well.
 
No, if you know your 12v electrics, there is zero fire risk if, and only if, you do your homework, so on this occasion I beg to differ Vortigern.
I was born and bred on these 12v things, and 24v too, and there is no way you can cause death by stupidity unless you add total ignorance too!
It is a different world, and it has it's detractors, but the fact remains...some install sub-stations, some do mini-electrics, but each has its idiosyncracies, and each its specialists!
So..."electricals/idiots"? well probably not...but I bow to your experience...
 
Have you ever tried putting a spanner over the terminals of a car battery? But yes on the surface of it what could possibly go wrong. Oh and by the way I would not recommend bowing to my experience, like anyone else here there are always things to learn from each other.
 
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No, can't say I have lol. Seen a few go up though.
I don't think the OP will be commissioning this herself though. I think she is just looking for views.
 
as with any electrical system the safety key is using the proper sized over current device (fuse or circuit breaker/interrupter)
the stupid factor comes in when untrained people wont investigate a nuisance failure and just install a larger fuse. (seen too many production twits do that)
 
I agree . I repaired a burned out harness on a Mini Bus taxi recently because the 'technician' kept replacing the fuses with the next size up.
The harness was like a charred branch.
They were lucky they did not lose the vehicle.
 
Fellow posters, we are responding to the OP who wants to run a few lamps from a car battery...there are in-line fuses to protect the setup.
I suspect she will not put a spanner in the works!
If we were talking about an automatic start when the mains goes off, with a full generator backup, I would simply leave it to those with that particular specialist knowledge...and thus I would have nothing to contribute.
However, I am the first to agree that many fires are caused by inappropriate measures on what many think are "safe" 12V applications.
In my early years of tinkering with such systems, in the marine environment, we often had multi-fuel situations...the engine would run on diesel, the outboards on petrol, the heating on parafin, and the cooker on gas, all such fuels being stored on board in varying quantities. A dodgy 12 or 24V installation could impact on any of the other fuels, all being confined in a small space...and no AA or RAC to come to the rescue.
Fire was always the risk, not electrocution...whereas in a 240V situation there is always the risk of both.
Therefore, I would rather see someone attempt a 12v installation than a 230V one...
and having recently been involved in damage assessment on a UPS system in an office, it was obvious that the system was ideally specified for the expected load, electrically speaking, but no-one had bothered about the physical loading of the building, so the shelves hosting the UPS collapsed under the weight...
horses for courses methinks...
 
BTW, we always tested the calor cylinder to regulator joint with a match!
Oh, happy days!
DO NOT DO THIS FOLKS!
(It's fine actually, as long as you ventilate the area properly...
50 years on and I'm still here...and the copper junctions just had an olive and a smear of calor-tite and that was that...of course we ran a risk assessment every time we changed a cylinder!)
 
Electrical, Idiots, mmmm do they really go together well??? Risk of fire jumps to mind.

Never mind Fires from short circuits ,
Wafting away hydrogen ,present after charging .
... is something you don't want to trap accidentally...
(not having a wind blowing under you bonet to help).
Witnessed arc near batteries , freshly charged .
a) Blew top off
b) Blew end out .... May be different with calcium ones
.. but I'm not a car battery expert ..
 
Fair point, but in the normal situation you don't get fizzing gases coming off car batteries on charge. For sure, the golf trolley type, like the car type, are fully sealed, and chargeable indoors with gay abandon (oh...did I say that?)
On the other hand, the older style batteries such as I was used to in the marine environment were not sealed, and often fizzzed under charging conditions...and we had to top them up with distilled water...oh, happy days:)
 

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