Fish House 12v Lighting Options

[sticknstring]

I'm in the process of wiring my house and need to decide which 12v lights to install. It's a smaller house 6.5'x9' and I was thinking maybe just one bright light in the center and maybe have one porch light outside as well. Looking at FHS, there are many options. Any you guys have tried that you like, dislike, other recommendations?

[stymie]

I would put two lights inside, and LED lights over each hole. At night, the LED lights are all you need and they consume very little. For exterior lights, I have one over each wheel and one by my propane tanks, they all have the switches right on them so I can turn them on as needed. Purchased all from FHS

[sticknstring]

Thanks for the input stymie. One over each crank would be a good idea. I'm keeping the house low to the ice so I'm not sure about the LED's over each hole budget wise. I'll probably run wire and add them as money allows.

Any specifics on the actual 12v lights offered by FHS as far as brightness and functionality?

[Pooh]

i would use 3 lights one on each end, and one in the middle, run down the middle of the ceiling for the inside. and one by the door for sure outside.

[stymie]

I utilized the 12v porch exterior lights for my three outside. If you are trying to keep cost low, you might want to consider LED rope lighting for the interior. The each light in the standard camper type has a 1.2 amp draw. If you plan on fishing late into the evenings you better have along a few batteries for these. Rope lighting around the perimeter of your ceiling and one standard camper light in the center might be the ticket.

[sticknstring]

I ordered 3 interior & 3 exterior lights. Sounds like I'll have issues running all 3 interior on one battery huh? I'll have to wire it so I can turn each one on/off and cut the juice down if need be.

I've got rope lights in the portable and they work great on just a vex battery. Might have to order a few more and toy around with them in the perm.

[Jmnhunter]

the flourescent bulbs in 12v might be hard to find, but i know they sell them for campers --might not be a bad option to reduce power, but it takes a min or 2 to warm them up to full brightness

[Lip_Ripper Guy]

Since we can't post links here it'll take a little bit of a search on your favorite engine to find this. If you look up '12 volt LED tube light' you'll find it at the first result. I have 2 4' strips in my 8x12 and it is almost too much light. You would probably be fine with either (2) 2' lights, or (1) 4' light depending on how much light you need. I have the license plate LEDs for hole lights from Fish House Supply and they work great and were only $10/each.

[sticknstring]

Those things aren't cheap and at 24 watts a piece, I don't see them lasting much longer powered from a single battery. How many hours do you get on your battery setup and how did you wire those bad boys? Nice looking lights. Do you have any pics of yours installed in your house?

I wonder how 2 of the MR16 Three 1 Watt LED's would work?

[Lip_Ripper Guy]

They will run for a very long time on a deep cycle. I have 2 of the 4' lights, a 6" red light, and 4 hole lights that draw about 5 amps if they are all on at once. Once it gets dark I turn on the hole lights and the 6" red light so I am drawing 1 amp MAX. With that set up I should have no problem getting 10-14 nights of fishing out of a single deep cycle. The way I looked at it was that the only time I would think about how expensive those lights were is when I made the initial purchase (or when I dropped my cordless drill on one of them), and from that point forward I would be happy with how efficient they are.

When I turn on the 3 computer fans, and the car stereo it pulls a little more juice, but got 4 days easily out of 1 battery last weekend, and could have gone 1 or 2 more. I'll see if I can figure out how to upload pics.

[Lip_Ripper Guy]

I don't have a picture of the lights in action. I'll try to take one this weekend.

It isn't in this pic, but just below the switches I mounted the 6" red tube about 4" above the floor. This is probably my favorite feature of the house, especially while night fishing. Saves a lot of juice on the battery, and the red light is very easy on the eyes.

EDIT....you'll have to copy/paste that in your browser since I didn't do it correctly.

[Eelpout08]

we put four of the double lights from fishhouse supply in our 6.5x13. each one can be off, one bulb or two. it is plenty of light, probably would have only needed one at each end, but you can always turn them off right? plus it sure doesn't hurt to have extra light when you are trying to tie a 1/6th oz jig on 2 lb test. one thing i wish we would have done is hardwire led's above the holes for charging glow jigs. usually we just have one bulb burning on the ceiling lights and have a few of the stick-on AA battery powered LED's running, that is more that enough light 90% of the time

I found a picture that shows the ceiling lights we used, sorry its sideways, durn computer

[sticknstring]

Here ya go. Nice house by the way.

[JeffB]

Look at the low voltage lighting options in the big box stores. They are sold for residential use, but they are reasonable and you just throw the transformer away or use it for something else. I used led and xenon puck lights that came with a transformer to jump them from 120v to 12v so they worked perfect just as they were. Great lights low power consumption. Many of the track lights are actually low voltage too.

[cribbageboy]

I run a 12v Flourescent Light in my house. The house is only an 8'x10' so it is plenty bright in there. Another tip is to link your batteries. We have two batteries linked together, and they last much, much longer that way. Just go to your local hardware store and tell them you want to link two batteries together. They should get you the connection cables for under 15 bucks.

[erik-the-great]

speaking of looping batteries together we used 6volt golf cart batteries pos side to the neg and use other neg and pos we got 23 hours of use out of them on a full charge looks very nice inside you did a nice job on building it