LEDs Etc

Question about LEDs on Boats

Today I got this request from R, a boater:

Greetings, Sam

I have been looking at your website a good deal lately.  I am in the process of a total refit of an old sailboat I have in Southern California.  One of the things I will be doing soon is adding LED lighting as the main interior source of light.  I am bouncing between the strip LEDs and converting a typical RV fixture to LED.  The real issue boils down to locating a good fixture to convert at a reasonable price or simply using a strip.  Based on what I see on your website, the angle of illumination is 150 degrees in both cases.  Do I have that right?  Your recommendation or advice would be very much appreciated.  In most cases, the lighting will be overhead (in the galley, over the dinette area, in the head/shower compartment, etc.) with a low headroom of around 6' 2-4".  Wide angle lighting is needed.  I would also like to have some red night lighting for night sailing in order not to impact night vision for the crew coming below for a snack or a look at the chart before returning to the cockpit.

If you know of a good source for RV/boat fixtures that would take the appropriate LEDs you sell, please advise and I will take a look at the units online or in some RV supply houses.

Your website is a good source of information.  Thanks for being there.

Regards, R

 

[Smile] It is always nice to have someone compliment your website. Glad it is helpful.

My response to R:

Congrats on your going to LEDs. Let's see how well I cover your questions.

First I will discuss the angle of illumination. We use SMD chips in which the LED emitter is embedded a small distance behind a phosphor coating that covers the surface of the chip. The LED light comes out smoothly in a cone that is about 150 degrees wide, sort of like a flood lamp. It is not a de-focused beam but rather a spread of light. The reason light does not come out the side is that the side-edge of the SMD chip gets in the way. Overhead lighting in your boat would not shine into the upper corners of the ceiling, but put most of the light within eye level across the room. It does work well for us in an RV since most of what we want to see is on the surface of the table or the book we are reading.

That said, we are experimenting with a new fixture called a DL100 (DownLight - 1000 lumens/ft). It is a linear light using our TL2R strips inside a special diffuser (Take a look at the MyT.fLED-C product for some comparisons). It looks sort of like half a fluorescent tube, with a metal plate that attaches to the ceiling (I used velcro). The diffuser spreads the light some more, and therefore the side light is brighter than if you were viewing the LED chips directly. Of course, this is at the expense of some of the light that would have gone down if it had not been redirected. I expect to have the product up on the website in the next couple of weeks, and its cost will be $4.25/inch. So a 10" DL100 offering 800 lumens would retail at $42.50. This is less than some 12-inch ThinLites fixtures. Of course, the ThinLite has a switch - the DL100 does also, but it is a special ON/OFF/dimmer switch at a $35 premium.

You can also attach a plain old lightstrip to the ceiling, either bare or in a plastic, waterproof tube. You still have the need for a switch somewhere. Without a diffuser, you will have points of light that bothers some people.

For the head/shower compartment, you might want to consider putting tubed lightstrips running vertically on the walls, like next to the mirror. This will get the light both up and down where you need it. I would not put a fluorescent type fixture there -- it is a waste of space.

For red light, I propose you determine how much light you want then purchase segments of the ThinLUX.TL0 in the native red color. For comparison, a single 1141 type bulb will provide an effective 140 lumens in a ceiling fixture. The TL0 is 10 lumens/inch, but you can run two or three strips side by side to get a concentration of light. The length would depend on the cockpit configuration. TL0 can be encased in waterproof tubing which is probably a requirement in the cockpit area.

As far as suggesting fixtures, I really don't have a good suggestion. Most of the ceiling down lights for RVs and boats are cans that you embed in the ceiling, and these all produce points of light. I like linear lighting, either with a diffuser like in the DL100 or as LightStrips like our SL1 or TL2R.

Thanks for the good words on the use of the website. Always feels good to be of use to someone. If you have more questions, please send email to sam@prudentrver.com or call me at 512-632-4626.

Regards,
Sam Penny
the Prudent RVer

Preview of a New LED Product: Daylight Trim Lights

Daylight Trim Lights, that's what we call them. These are simply an exceptionally bright assembly of pure white LED lights to accent the underside of the headlights on your RV or truck. They shine in the daytime brightly enough for someone coming down the road to see you.

It is a safety matter. Today many of the cars, trucks, and RVs are a dull gray/brown color that blends so well with the landscape around the roads in the west. At times, especially in late afternoons and dusk, it is hard to see the vehicle coming toward you, and if that missle should wander across the center line to your side of the road, how much time do you have to react?

Some of the newer, more expensive motohomes and tow trucks already have Daylight Trim Lights. They are either an expensive option or are already included in the high price of the original purchase. The majority of the vehicles on the road do not have this feature. They need it.

Take a look. These LED light strips are attached to the bottom of the headlights, or to the framework

below the lights with silicon glue. The wiring is connected to ground and active power points under the hood of the vehicle. The lights turn on when the key is turned on.

If you want a pair of these lights, go look at Prudent RVer. These products are just coming online. Be among the first to be seen on the road. You will be safer if you do.

 

 

3 Reasons to Use LEDs in Tent Trailers

Using LEDs in their tent trailer has been a great change for some people. LEDs run cooler drawing less power and offer more lighting control than the clunky incandescent lights you normally find in tent trailers.

Most tent trailer owners only think about it briefly and then become so busy doing things their usual way they have no time to really try it. Sometimes they are reluctant to try something unknown. Just not understanding the risk-reward ratio holds others back. Other times they never start because they don't know how. And there are always those who don't act because they don't know what the benefits are.

Good information usually helps to clarify things. O.K. then, let's get more info. Let's look at 3 factors that have motivated others to convert their lighting to leds in their tent trailer.

First, LED lights draw less power from your trailer battery. A single incandescent bulb can use half the available electricity in a battery in a single day's time. You make a valid point when you point out that you do not use your lights that much. That may very well be true, however you have limited electrical power available in the battery of your tent trailer, and the one time when you really need the lights, the power may not be there. It may have been used up because you tried to stay too long. And what about those kids who keep forgetting to turn the lights OFF.

Second, LED lighting is safer because it generates less heat than incandescent bulbs -- it does not get hot. You cannot be burned if you touch LED lights, nor can LEDs start a fire like an incandescent or halogen can. Plus, the heat from LEDs does not attract flying insects to buzz around your face inside the trailer.

Third and last, you can choose the level of light you want for the different light fixtures by choosing different configurations of LEDs. You can also direct where the light shines. This all means that you are in control and can shine the light where you need it most.

Stressing the points again, you need to use LEDs instead of incandescent bulbs in your tent trailer for power, safety, and control!

Think about these reasons and how they apply to your situation. They were strong enough reasons to convince many other prudent RVers to convert from incandescent bulbs to LEDs inside their tent trailer. What about you? Shouldn't you seriously consider it too?

If you want to get serious, visit The Prudent RVer & Boater website. Look for the bulb replacement that fixes what you have in your tent trailer.

LEDs Make the Greatest RV Patio Lights

What good are the exterior patio lights on your RV? Decoration? Have a party? Find your way home at night? Scare critters away? See to install water or dump hoses after sunset?  See to complete your woodworking project? Makes your rig look like your RV neighbors? And then, maybe you just like the way they look.

After you have been out several times in your RV, you understand the exterior lights on your motorcoach or trailer are both useful and a bother. They can make the area outside your RV pleasant and useful in the evening, and they sometimes offer protection. But when they just are not bright enough to be useful, or the outside lights attract flying insects, or if they drain your batteries or melt the fixture lenses because you left them ON all-night, you may decide they are just not worth the bother.

That's not right. Your coach came with those fixtures; they belong to you; you paid for them, and you should get your money's worth from them. What can you do to make them worthwhile?


When LED lighting became a part of my RV life, I succeeded in cutting down my electrical power usage while boondocking. I fully equipped the interior of my RV with LED lighting, and could suddenly stay out on the desert until my tanks filled. In the process I began to experiment with using RV LED lights in my patio fixtures and learned a bundle.

* The standard Bargman patio fixture uses the same incandescent bulb as my ceiling fixtures. That meant I could install LED replacements outside as well as inside.

* I tested LEDs in the patio lights in various weather conditions and driving conditions. They survived as well as incancescent bulbs.

* I replaced the melted lenses for those patio fixtures with very hot 1156 bulbs. The new lenses stayed cool with the LEDs.

* I noticed that the flying insects collected around the few incandescent bulbs remaining.  Bugs were not interested in the LED light.

* I replaced the fluorescent tubes and ballast in my Thinlite patio fixture with a fLEDescent and had much better light.

* With configurable zipLED lighting, I increased the light level where I needed more light. Suddenly I could see well enough to do things.

* I removed the hot 1295 incandescent bulb from my scare-light and added LED LightSticks to reach the light level I wanted.

My experiments using RV LEDs in the patio environment were a total success.


RVs have three basic types of patio lights. The first is a single bulb fixture (for example Bargman) with either a 912 glass wedge bulb or a 1141 bayonet bulb. Both burn about 1.4 amps of electricity at 12.8-volts DC and produce about 280 lumens of light when new. They produce less light when covered with a yellow lens and when they age. Some people want more light so they put a 1156 bulb into their fixtures. It uses 2.1 amps to produce 400 lumens of light when new. It gets so hot it is known as the "lense-melter."

The second type of patio fixture is a fluorescent patio light, like the 162 from Thinlite. It uses two F8T5 tubes to provide about 800 lumens of light using 1.5 amps at 12-volts. It, too, most often comes with a yellow lens cover, supposedly to keep the bugs at bay.

The third type of exterior light fixture is the round 8-inch "scare-light" seen high on the sides of some RVs. Its standard is a 1295 incandescent bulb that burns 3.5 amps at 12.5-volt to produce an initial 629 lumens, dropping to less than 400 as the bulb ages.

LEDs can replace them all, for an 80% savings in power and a 100% increase in useable light.   


Ask yourself, "Are the patio lights on my rig bright enough to be useful?" Most patio light fixtures equipped with a single incandescent bulb like an 1141 or 912 are just not bright enough. You can see enough of the patio area to walk around, but there is not enough light to cook or carry on a conversation with your neighbors.

On the bother side, have you noticed that the lights most often left ON all night are the ones you don't see: the patio lights outside your door on the side of your rig and in the rear of the coach. If you still have those incandescent bulbs installed, they typically use 1 to 1.5 amps each, and in 12 hours could suck out 18 amp-hours per light of the power stored in your battery. That is over a third of the 50 amp-hours you can safely pull from a typical type-27 battery before doing it damage. If you leave four or five bulbs ON, you can find your house batteries exhausted the next morning.

But what happens when you replace the incandescent bulbs with LEDs and then forget to turn the lights OFF when you go to bed. An LED replacement for an 1141 or 921 bulb will draw only 0.14 amps, using only 1.7 amp-hours in 12 hours. Your batteries are safe.

An RV patio without LED lighting is like a dimly lit cave at night. You see enough to stumble about, but you cannot enjoy the beauty of the evening or make use of your patio. Be a Prudent RVer and recommend that everyone use RV LED lighting in patio fixtures.

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Use a B15s.4ZL3 or W9.4ZL3 to add more light to your Bargman patio fixture. Use a fLEDP-LS3 to upgrade a Thinlite 162 to LEDs. Use a B15s.ZLS plus three more ZLSs to upgrade a scare light.

Prudent RVer says, LEDs Don't Make Good Space Heaters

I sell LED products to RVers and Boaters throughout the USA and Canada. Recently, I had a strange complaint from a customer in Ottawa. "I turned on my lights to warm my coach, but it didn't do any good. You need to do something about your LED products to fix that problem."

Patiently I explained, "LEDs are not supposed to produce a lot of extra heat. That is why they save so much on power. The halogen bulbs I replaced in your motorhome used 80% of the electricity they burned to produce so much extra heat you could use them to warm your rig. You gave up that advantage when you switched to LEDs."

She replied, "Oh, but how do I heat my RV now?"

Incandescent bulbs reach a temperature of 600 degrees Farenheit to make the tungsten filament glow. Halogen bulbs must achieve a surface temperature of over 1,000 degrees to operate properly. That means that between 75% and 85% of the electrical power used in an incandescent or halogen goes to creating the heat needed to create their light, and that heat radiates out from the bulbs. Bulbs get hot enough to cause third degree burns if you are dumb enough to touch them barehanded.

Another friend complained, as she ordered that every halogen in her Country Coach RV be replaced with LEDs, that she liked a lot of light, and her reason for installing the LEDs was that whenever she turned on the halogen lights to light things up, her husband turned on both air conditioners to cool things down -- even in the winter when they were in Wyoming.

Think about that. Not only is 85% of the power you pump through the bulbs wasted to create heat, but then you must run your air conditioner to remove that heat so you can enjoy cool air in your well-lit coach. The true factor in those cases is that LEDs allow you to use less than 10% of the power required to run with incandescents.

Fluorescents are only a little better. They are maybe three times more efficient than incandescents, but that still means 50% of the power creates heat. And those ballasts can emit a wild assortment of high-frequency AC noise on your DC power lines. My customers complain of non-working refrigerators and air conditioners when the ballasts go bad. LEDs are DC and produce no radio noise.

If you wonder why LEDs are so much cooler, it is because they are 85% efficient at converting electrical power into light. They simply don't need to pull as much current as incandescents or halogens or fluorescents to produce the same amount of light.

But LEDs do produce some heat. That 15% inefficiency becomes heat, and LEDs must be properly cooled to operate. They should not exceed 188 degrees Fahrenheit at the semiconductor junction or they will fail. Well designed LEDs are warm, but you can touch them without fear of being burned. Correct LED design uses metal heatsinks to pull the heat that is generated away from the semiconductor.

Remember, when searching for the best LED solutions to light your coach or boat, don't expect a Space Heater Bonus in the deal.

And if someone asks why you bought both LEDs and a Space Heater, tell them the Prudent RVer told you to.

Prudent RVer says, Live 'Off-grid' on Solar Power Using LEDs

People who live in RVs and Boats oftimes wish to live "off-grid." Off-grid refers to living in a self-sufficient manner without reliance on one or more public utilities: electrical power, natural gas, water, or waste. Such people are often searching for sustainable living, which they think of as cheap living.

Living off-grid is not necessarily cheap, nor is it simple and easy. It requires planning and work, and probably an investment. A key is to reach a balance in all you do. The need for LEDs is a good example.

In many boats and RV coaches with incandescent and/or fluorescent lighting, the installed lighting uses over half of the total 12-volt DC load on the batteries. On-shore is no problem, but if the primary power source is solar energy from the sun, power consumption is an immediate concern and excessive usage can make the difference between staying out as long as you want, or coming back to shore to find a recharge (or running your generator).

Let me tell you of my experience. We run an LED retail business while boondocking on the desert floor and require about two hours of Internet and TV connectivity per day. I typically need 25 amp-hours each day to power our TV, DirecTV Receiver, Internet Access, Modem, Router, and two laptop computers.

In the evenings "Before LEDs" we typically burned four to seven 921 bulbs and a fluorescent that produced about 1,600 lumens of lighting for five or six hours in the winter months. This required about 8 amps for 6 hours, totalling 48 amp-hours. Our expected boondocking consumption was therefore 73 amp-hours per day.

My rig has only 240 watts of solar panels using a solar-boost controller, so on average I could expect to recharge my batteries with as much as 45 amp-hours on a good solar day. That meant I could be 28 amp-hours short at the end of the first day, another 28 amp-hours short the second day, and so on every day thereafter, until my batteries dried up.

But when I switched to LEDs for my lighting, I required only 2.0 amps to produce the 1,600 lumens, meaning I only needed about 11 amp-hours each evening. Now my solar system only has to replace 25+11 or 36 amp-hours each day, and the 240 watt panels can do that, even on an overcast day. I can even surf the web a little longer each night.

Of course, the Big Guys will have more solar, but they also have more toys and more lights. They still face the same issues when running "off-grid." It all comes down to using LEDs if you really want to stay off-grid with solar power.

And if someone asks, tell them the Prudent RVer told you so.

NOTE: this piece was published over SubmitYOURArticle.com on 7/25/10.

Planning(?) for the Unexpected

Yesterday (8/30 - see 9/2 update below) we had a test of our Planning for the Unexpected, an activity every prudent traveler by RV or Boat should do.

We were pulling our fifth-wheel trailer from Sutherlin, OR to a camping spot just north of Lassen Volcanic National Park on our way to the Reno area. We planned to stay in one of the National Forest Campgrounds along Hat Creek, but had not chosen one.

After passing Old Station, CA we drove east on CA Highway 44 until we saw the sign to Butte Lake Campground, 6 miles south, a new place to visit. We left the pavement and drove along on a dusty, washboard road at about 25mph. It was bumpy and dusty as hell.

Maybe it was the bumps. Four miles in Alice mentioned she smelled smoke, and I sniffed the same. I stopped at the side of the road and stepped out. Under my 98 Dodge Ram I saw a black puddle of oil. I immediately turned off the engine and checked out what had happened.

Looking back along the dirt road I could see a long string of oil stain, stretching into the distance. Whatever had happened, the truck had no oil, nor could it hold any oil. All this was unexpected.

I checked our cellphone -- nada, no signal -- but what do you expect out in the middle of a National Forest. If I could make a call, I would call Good Sam Emergency Road Service (part of my planning for the unexpected).

I looked around and checked with my compass. We were in a forest of tall pines, but there was an opening through which I could sight my Internet satellite (having Internet anywhere is another part of my planning). Had there been no opening, I would have been stuck for communications.

Then a friendly couple drove by and stopped and asked how they could help. They were not from the area, but at least they might take me to some place where I could get cellphone coverage. But then a young man by the name of Seth Mitchell drove up and stopped. He said he was a forester working in the area. He could pull my rig up the road to a level spot and he knew where get cellphone coverage. I thanked the other couple and put my faith in Seth.

In some way, another part of my planning is to smile and trust others who offer to help. So far it has worked. It worked this time.

Seth pulled my truck and trailer about 100 yards to where we could get them out of the road and waited while I got the trailer set up. They we drove back toward Hat Creek to the vista point to make my phone call.

The next part of my plan failed. I was among the first to adopt the AT&T One Rate nationwide plan back in 1998 when there was nothing else quite so ubiquitous. Now they are Cingular, but when I tried to make my call, there was no signal. Cingular does not work along the Hat Creek valley. I plan to revisit this choice and probably go to Verizon service. They appear to be doing a better job of covering where we travel.

Maybe I should add a VOIP service so I could make Internet phone calls. That sounds like a good addition to the plan in hindsight.

Seth loaned me his phone and I contacted Good Sam. I had the complete directions for finding our rig in the middle of the forest, down to the latitude and longitude to the nearest second. Charlotte from Good Sam called back in about 10 minutes and conferenced me in with Bob Tucker who is taking the truck into Redding. We made sure he knew exactly how to find us and agreed to communicate by email. I was feeling better.

Seth returned me to the trailer and headed home. I set up the satellite antenna on its tripod and quickly locked in to a good signal. We are now communicating with the outside world and redoing our schedule.

Our rig is fully self-contained and I always carry a fresh tank of water. The propane tanks are full. The rig has solar, so if we are frugal in our usage of resources, we are good for a week or more at this spot. Having all LED lighting inside the rig surely helps. It was all unexpected, but we are actually in a beautiful camping spot. We just don't have any motive power at this time. I do expect to have that problem solved in the next few days.

sam