emergency lighting

[bob golding]

hi all

its cold, getting dark, i am out of diesel and its xmas day. garage closed till monday batteries getting low,needed some light. so heres what i just did . took the battery out of my laptop and connected my 18 led array to it. it works. dont know for how long but it  should help me preserve my  batteries till i can get some diesel.  merry xmas all.

bob golding

[sh123469]

Probably won't last all that long.  Laptop batteries are usually only 1.5 to 3 ah depending on the laptop.

I wish you the best with your situation, though.  Maybe someone will be open close to you that has diesel for the gennie.  I hope this  situation isn't wreaking havoc with your ability to keep warm.

Merry Christmas

Steve

[bob golding]

thx fine on the keeping warm. got wood and propane. think i will survive. got a cold as well just to add to to the fun (:- could drag the gasoline genny out but too much hassle.

[skravlinge]

Its xmas, you must have some candles around, to get light some warming and the feeling of the holy day. During a powerloss for 20 hours I heat and light the house with candles. (The funny thing i found I cant  circulate the hot water from my woodstove without  power, I will do some about it).

[Ungrounded Lightning Rod]

When my wife was in college her dad ran the Diesel Rabbit out of fuel in the boonies one day.  She salvaged the situation by feeding it a few galons of vegetable oil from a local store cut with a quart of tranny fluid (to insure it wouldn't gum up the injectors, if I recall correctly).

You wouldn't want to do this as a regular thing.  But it's OK in a pinch.  And you can often find a convenience store with salad oil (and sometimes tranny fluid) available when you can't find a filling station with diesel.  Or you may have a couple containers of it sitting in your pantry.

I hear Diesel DID originally intend the engine to be run on veggie oil, after all...

[skravlinge]

Diesel was presenting his motor running on peanut oil.

[bob golding]

hi all thx fo the comments. i KNOW i have some candles around somewhere but cant find them. finally got some diesel today. the led light is still running, draws just over 100 mA and the battery is 2.8 amp hours. given me enough light to cook by and read. only thing i havent  been able to do is charge my phone and get online. thats 4 days use so far cooking washing up and reading for 2/3 hours. a well worthwhile experiment.

bob golding

[juiced]

I have a 'icp battpak' that i charge with a solar device called the isun.

  i found out the other day that with a 75w invertor and (i think) 5 watt bulb, the invertor would turn on and off while the bulb produced enough heat to warm my hands. Another great travel toy.

  I also bought a bunch of 7ah booster packs that have a fluro built into the handle.