Wire system for me to fallow to wire my ice house correctly.

[nlange]

Me and my dad had just built an ice house and its on one of them retratcable trailer i have bought. Its completly almost vented off an the propane lanturn is giving me a headache. today i tryed installing a regular old style ceiling light for the time being fo light. the hard ware store didnt know much but they said you dont need a 12 volt on the fixture but the bulb has to be 12volt so i did all that an ran the 2 wires from behind the fixture to the battery charger pack i have but it dies in like an hour. then i use my vexlar battery and that dies in a few mins. what am i doing wrong and how do i do it right? what do i need? and if i wanted to run like 4 seperate led lights by each hole like i seen in other houses how do they keep a charge? what size wire do you recomend? does it matter if i have to much wire running around?

[nlange]

thanx! please help! thanx!

[AngelicFatum]

You might want to look into Best king Kong LED strips, I haven't used them, but apparently they work very well and run for a long time on a vex type battery. I have a "puck" LED light in my otter and it works pretty well for a spot light for a hole or for tying knots. Check this thread out it's for portables, but it might give you an idea

Ideas for lighting a portable

[Surface Tension]

I'm guessing your trying to run a 75 watt incandescent 12v light bulb. Figure on 6 amp draw, poor choice for lighting. Its going to drain a 7 amp hr battery real quick, if the battery is cold even quicker. Even a 115 amp hr deep cycle dedicated to that one bulb will get you by for a long day. That is not the way to go now a days.

LEDs are the way to go.

[nlange]

its a rv light bulb i got from the hardware store. its 50watts but its a 12v bulb. i could have get the 25watt but they said it wont be as bright. and the ceiling fixture is ok right? i have seen other people do this and it works great but i just dont know how they make them last. also i wana wire it up to have a few lights around the shack. does it matter if i have to much wire feeding around? will that drain the battery more or will it not give the light enouph power? im going to be getting a battery that is 115 amp hrs, 700 cranking amps, 620 cold cranking amps for 50 bux from a friend. its used a little but should be good. would that work well?

[The_Duckslayer]

The more wire you have to go through the more resistance there will be. I am not one to cut it with just barely enough wire to make the connection but I usually leave a 6 inch leeway in the event that I have to rewire something. Would not think that the fixture would make any difference as long as it provides a good connection from the bulb to the wires. Battery should be OK as long as it is a deep cycle. Don't forget there is a difference between them and a car battery. Deep cycles are made of a long slow drain and caranking batteries are made for shot perions of hi current draw. Hope that helps... Take care and N JOy the Hunt././Jimbo

[acman2u]

You need lower wattage bulbs. I have 4 rv fixtures in my crankdown and they also drained the deep cycle quickly. I ended up buying breadboard (blank circuitboard) leds, and resistors and building led boards that fit into my fixtures and connected them into them. I also built some 3 led lights to hang at the holes for better visibility of my spring bobber and it does EXCELLENT at charging my glow lures. I run forever on these lights as they draw almost no power, what kills me now is my fan.

With leds you get superbright light but more shadows but I will never go back to the old ones. Wire is not your problem, the load is.

DONT buy LED strips for your perm you wont be happy, go with fixtures.