Updating Lighting

[egaito]

Been thinking for some time, about how to upgrade the lighting in Sanctuary. Finding nice fixtures for 32v, particularly LED's, which I'm a big fan of, can be tough with the rest of the marine, and even RV world using 12 or 24v.

After seeing the Newmar voltage converters on Sanctuary, I started looking around for alternatives to see if there was anything bigger out there that would let me convert circuits from a panel, or smaller, that could be mounted remotely in different spaces of the boat.

I found a line that includes both, the small unit, 4 amps as I recall, about the size of a cigarette pack, which got me thinking.....(here's where it gets dangerous)

How well do you think it would work to put a converter behind a wall in a stateroom, where there is a 32v circuit already in existence? If the converter is mounted near the wall switch, the switch could still control the circuit, and the wires running to the lights that came with the factory could provide power to new fixtures, assuming the wire is capable of it of course.

I plan to dig into Sanctuary's wiring while I'm at CDR to see what guage is run, but I'm thinking it might work because modern lighting fixtures, with modern reflectors, can be quite a bit more efficient than the older stuff in terms of the light you get per amp of draw. You're limiting your draw through the 32v wire to the capacity of the converter....so if the original wiring was designed to hold 15 amps at the panel, I should theoretically have 15ams to feed into the converter safely, right?

With only 4 or 7 amps coming out of the converter, I'm guessing the wiring to fixtures should be able to handle the load.

What I like about this is that there is minimal rewiring involved, and it's not conversion of the whole boat, rather the establishment of "point sources" of 12v power without having to compromise the existing system, or add another, separate, 12v system (battery, charger, wiring) to the boat.

Has anyone tried using converters beyond the pilot house and fly bridge applications I have seen on quite a few of these boats?

Other than wiring, I'm wondering how cool they run, whether they need ventilation, etc. I'm checking to see if the units I'm looking into are potted and might live happily in the bilge, but I'm sure they'll do fine in the walls and voids of the staterooms assuming they don't build up too much heat.

Thanks,

-Ed

 

[luckydave215]

Simple, unregulated DC to DC converters are transformers, and are not 100% efficient. That means they shed waste heat, and most need at least some cooling. It depends on the amp draw.

 

[egaito]

Simple, unregulated DC to DC converters are transformers, and are not 100% efficient. That means they shed waste heat, and most need at least some cooling. It depends on the amp draw.

Yep, I had that figured, but there's heat, and there's HEAT. HEAT will cause problems, where heat is just something a device gives off and can be ignored.

I may have to try out a couple of these things to see what happens.....but I think it would be neat to have a series of low-draw circuits based on existing wiring, rather than trying to run 12v "backbones" to parts of the boats based on larger converters and new wiring....it would defeat the purpose of installing modern fixtures with minimal effort and expense.

 

[Nonchalant1]

If it's a 15 amp circuit, then the wires can handle 15 amps, but the circuit may have multiple consumers. It's designeed to trip the breaker if everything is on and it exceeds 15 amps. However, Hatt may have used a 5 amp light as one of the consumers in a 15 amp circuit and only needed to gauge the wires to the switch and to the light for 5 amps. However, I expect they used wires caapable of 15 amps anyhow.

Doug

 

[egaito]

If it's a 15 amp circuit, then the wires can handle 15 amps, but the circuit may have multiple consumers. It's designeed to trip the breaker if everything is on and it exceeds 15 amps. However, Hatt may have used a 5 amp light as one of the consumers in a 15 amp circuit and only needed to gauge the wires to the switch and to the light for 5 amps. However, I expect they used wires caapable of 15 amps anyhow.

Doug

This is what I was thinking, and why I started the thread.....

If you tap a converter in too far up the line, there's no telling what consumers have ended up on it over time. But if you tap it in at the switch for a known circuit, and don't overload it at that point, is should be fine.

Without studying the drawings, I don't know if Hatt made a habit of tapping off wires excessively, and yes, there's always the mess that a PO can make, but that mess doesn't seem as common (beyond the pilot house and fly-bridge) on these boats, if for no other reason than that the voltage is foreign.

I need to look at the drawings......

 

[TedZ]

Sorry, and i hate to be a pain but transformers are AC devices only. DC on a transformer causes a meltdown and if you were thinking about it, i obviously don't want you to try that!

There are DC to DC converters...very common BUT you need to check the ampacity of the loads. DC lighting usually takes lots of amps which it doesn't sound like you have. Solid state stuff is low amperage compared to what you need. A simple voltage divider will work fine BUT the resistors need to be big and air cooled with any kind of load. I don't like concealing those even a little bit!

Is it possible to snake a 12 VDC lead from the batteries? The grounds are ok.

120 VAC power supplies are common and put out lots of 12 VDC but they are big. You need to put it on a shelf or something and they have fans, so noisy. Not very satisfactory.

I would look for 32 VDC bulbs and convert fixtures. The higher voltage bulbs draw less amps so the fixture will be happy...that's the good news. 32 VDC bulbs????? Don't have a clue.

Good luck.

Ted

 

[SKYCHENEY]

I thought about doing this in our salon since the PO removed all of the overhead fixutres when he had new headliner installed. Then I decided to go back to OEM fixtures. If you or anyone else removes those old recessed Capri fixtures, let me know. I would like to buy a couple more as SAMs is out and cannot get any more. They work well and 32v medium base bulbs are easy to come by.

 

[egaito]

Sorry, and i hate to be a pain but transformers are AC devices only. DC on a transformer causes a meltdown and if you were thinking about it, i obviously don't want you to try that!

There are DC to DC converters...very common BUT you need to check the ampacity of the loads. DC lighting usually takes lots of amps which it doesn't sound like you have. Solid state stuff is low amperage compared to what you need. A simple voltage divider will work fine BUT the resistors need to be big and air cooled with any kind of load. I don't like concealing those even a little bit!

Is it possible to snake a 12 VDC lead from the batteries? The grounds are ok.

120 VAC power supplies are common and put out lots of 12 VDC but they are big. You need to put it on a shelf or something and they have fans, so noisy. Not very satisfactory.

I would look for 32 VDC bulbs and convert fixtures. The higher voltage bulbs draw less amps so the fixture will be happy...that's the good news. 32 VDC bulbs????? Don't have a clue.

Good luck.

Ted

Actually, I think you explained my point in new words.....

DC to CD converters is exactly what we're talking about

The converters are solid state, which is why I think any heat generated can be dealt with.

120 VAC converters, aren't even in my thought process here...the idea is running off batteries with effective lighting, not running a genset to produce power to be reduced to 12v....110v opens a whole new world in the way of fixtures and options, so what's the point of converting down.

It might be possible to snake a 12v lead, but the whole point is to avoid something like this. I don't want a "3rd system" on the boat of unlike voltage.

Checking/questioning the ampacity of the load was actually one of my points...got it. The idea posed was that new fixtures and bulbs, regardless of voltage, are more efficient. If I'm feeding 15 amps of 32v power into a 7 amp out converter, with today's fixtures, 7 amps is a lot more light, spread over more fixtures, than the existing fixtures provide.

32v bulbs are hard to find, and modern fixtures to house them are also hard to find. If it were easy to stick with 32v, update fixtures and increase DC light output, I wouldn't have started the thread!

 

[TedZ]

Great.

I did check. There are a lot of 32 VDC bulbs, probably none very fancy unfortunately.

A 100 watt 120 VAC bulb uses roughly 1 amp. A 100 watt 12 VDC bulb uses roughly 10 amps. A 32 VDC bulb roughly 3 amps. The point is with the lower voltage you run out of capacity fast. Solid state DC to DC converters in the 15-20 amp range exist but they are big.

Ted