I made a New Years Resolution, to try to complete/install one RE project per month.
Last months was the instalation of my solar panel, which meant I was now producing consistent reliable Watts, even if I was throwing them away to the dump load.
But on Saturday, I bought the first of my 12V lighting into the house. I was lucky enough to find a bunch of floor polishers in a skip (dumpster), they were of no use to me, but each of them had 15+ meters of good quality, three conductor flex which I cut off and took home. I've used this to get the 12v from shed where the batteries live into the house via the connecting outbuilding.
So, this is the main feed into the house done, and from that to run the individual lights, I'm using a largish speaker wire. The first of these light sets is in my kitchen, the first main room nearest to the shed. I've used those chrome plated flush fittings which are designed to take an MR16 bulb, and I've substituted the original bulb with an LED version.
I installed a second switch in the kitchen, and this turns on a little bit of circuit board holding a 12v low drop out regulator (LM2940), the couple of capacitors it requires to run, and the outputs to the lights via chocolate blocks.
I estimate the total cost so far to get to this stage to be around £350!! so it's not cheap lighting by any stretch. However, I've proved it can work, and Mrs Slog thinks they look good, which has to be the main thing, right?
For me, I'm as pleased with these as anything I've done in a long time, and just keep switching them on to enjoy seeing the beautiful moonlight type glow.
