# Another solar garden light question and potential project.



## dragontower (Sep 8, 2015)

Hello there, new to the forums here!
Keep winding up back at these forums through google searches, so I thought I would just reach out to the real people for the real responses.

Let me know if you're tired of talking about solar garden lights, I will move on alone with my tail between my legs.

What's in place:
I recently completed rebuilding my front porch, I had this idea that I could put 1 Lumen solar garden lights in the kick board part of the railing system so that some of my porch would be lit. (I live on a dark street.)
The lights are in place and when they turn on at dusk, it looks amazing.

The Problem:
My house faces west, my porch has a roof and the neighbor has a well established tree to the southwest, blocking all good direct sunlight my solar garden lights need.
On the brightest, clearest day, I might get two hours of light at best from the solar garden lights.

The Potential Project:
Replace the factory LED's and circuitry in the solar garden lights with these: http://lighthouseleds.com/5mm-12v-pre-wired-led-white-ultra-bright-15-000-mcd.html (Leaving the original solar cells in place for cosmetic purposes.)
Put a 50W or so solar panel up on the main roof of my house where there is no shade from a porch roof or tree,
Put a deep cycle marine 12V battery in a plastic battery box with charge controller under my porch and run wire to each solar garden light with the new LED's in them.

Any: Thoughts? Questions? Comments? Concerns?

Seeking: Guidance. Direction. Positive Reinforcement.

Thank you all in advance for your time.


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## Bullzeyebill (Sep 8, 2015)

Welcome to CPF. I'm sure you will get some responses. :wave:

Bill


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## dragontower (Sep 9, 2015)

Bullzeyebill said:


> Welcome to CPF. I'm sure you will get some responses. :wave:
> 
> Bill



Thanks for the welcome and the approval of my thread.
I would fill out my location and other profile information but as far as I can tell, I have not been "enlightened" enough yet.

Looking forward to some good discussion about this potential project.

I have a few others in mind but I need to make sure I'm not a burnt out bulb with what I already know!


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## Bricoleur (Sep 9, 2015)

I would absolutely move towards a larger panel setup, and an externally housed battery - regardless of the LEDs you go with!

Simply put, most smaller-scale solar devices have pretty terrible panels, you're going to see greater efficiency with a larger, purpose-bought rig. Plus, then you can start to dabble with "Big Boy" Solar, and get some experience if you either want to expand your lighting, or scale up your solar enough to run some household bits from an inverter!

It's very unlikely that you're located in one of the covered regions, but I have to give a shoutout here to Google's Project Sunroof - a calculator using Google Earth data to estimate available solar power, depending on region and roof geometry. Very cool bit of software. https://www.google.com/get/sunroof#p=0


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## yuandrew (Sep 10, 2015)

Welcome Dragontower

I've done exactly what you described but used 12 volt "Malibu" type landscape lights with LED lamps. My solar panel is just propped up against a wall which faces south and gets direct sunlight from 10am to 4pm most of the time. I used a Morningstar SunLight SL-10-12v controller.

Since made 3 more with a buddy of mine that used to run a shop called So Cal Solar Store of Upland. We used some charge controllers he had left from the store and I found some 12 volt photo-controls on Amazon ( search for ASIN B00F04RTPK ) Fixtures were Pathscapes low voltage LED pathlights from Home Depot and he later tried a different style fixture sold by Lowes. We bent the tubing (harder than it looked) on some of the fixtures so they could be wall mounted under a patio.


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## dragontower (Sep 10, 2015)

Bricoleur: Would you recommend a different LED set up as opposed to the one I am considering?

An external set up would require that I run wire from the potential solar panel on the roof to the potential battery under my porch and then splice in each individual "improved" solar garden light.
I have twelve solar garden lights that make up the LED array of my front porch.

How could I cosmetically appeal the wiring from the solar panel on my main roof to the battery on the underside of my porch then, from the battery under the porch to each LED?

yuandrew: I have searched out your controller and I think for the project at hand it would be overkill, however I could see using it to expand my lighting array to the north side of my house, lighting up my driveway within the future.
The only thing I was not able to find out about that particular controller, is that if it is water or weather proof for exterior use.

Last night after posting this thread, I attached a second solar cell from a busted solar garden light to one of the solar garden lights on my porch. It is almost 2am here and it is still going strong like it was powered by a mains source.
I am wondering that perhaps the time and labor involved with just adding a second solar cell to each solar garden light, wired in parallel, would be more cost effective and easier than purchasing a larger, singular solar panel and battery array, since solar garden lights in my area can be purchased for $0.75/light at the moment.

When I seen that cheap of a price, I bought two cases over a period of two months. I have 70 lights total, minus the twelve on my porch now, minus two or three for experimentation. That leaves me quite a few to butcher the solar cells from and add to the existing installation.

Additionally, I have been searching for a good photo control cell specifically for this project, however, I am a bit leery about finding the best photo control cell device for this application. The cheap "less than $5" street light photo cells that yuandrew is proposing seem to be a bit off-putting.
Reading the reviews for these photocells gives me the impression that there just has to be something a tad bit better out ther.

I appreciate the responses and I look forward to a few more!


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## yuandrew (Sep 12, 2015)

> The only thing I was not able to find out about that particular controller, is that if it is water or weather proof for exterior use.



The Morningstar SunLight controller has the electronics potted in what looks to be epoxy but keep it out of the weather. I had one get left out in the rain exposed while hooked up to power and the terminals corroded. The one I still have does fine inside the battery box. You could mount it under the porch roof or enclose it in one of those Orbit sprinkler-timer cabinets.



> The cheap "less than $5" street light photo cells that yuandrew is proposing seem to be a bit off-putting.
> Reading the reviews for these photocells gives me the impression that there just has to be something a tad bit better out ther.



I remembered the first one we got stopped functioning after a few days but then worked again later when when I tested it. I'll have to ask Richard again but the other two he ordered later were still working last time we checked. 

We also have a Flexcharge Night Watchman photocell left over from the store inventory which we used at first before my buddy wanted to find something lower cost. That one is a much more expensive 40$ marine grade unit.


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## dragontower (Sep 12, 2015)

> The Morningstar SunLight controller has the electronics potted in what looks to be epoxy but keep it out of the weather. I had one get left out in the rain exposed while hooked up to power and the terminals corroded. The one I still have does fine inside the battery box. You could mount it under the porch roof or enclose it in one of those Orbit sprinkler-timer cabinets.



I think if I'm going to spend that kind of money, I would prefer to save $20 and go with a coleman 30A charge controller and be able to buy it locally.
Not only would it be a tad cheaper and likely serve my purpose well, it would additionally allow me to expand the system quite easily.



> I remembered the first one we got stopped functioning after a few days but then worked again later when when I tested it.



I found them for about $3.63 on amazon, I ordered 10 of them for the simple fact that some will work and most probably won't.
I have also read that I might need to beef up the waterproofing, something I will have to check out once they arrive.

My porch solar garden lights are still not faring very well. Even the one I added a solar panel to still doesn't put much light out after more than a couple hours of being active.
In fact, as I'm typing this, only 3 of them on the southern most part of my porch are lit.

At least now, I know I'm on the right track with what I want/need to do.

It's just a matter of saving up the pennies and getting all of the components together.

Thanks so much for the responses!


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