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Topic: cheap diy home improvements -Accent lighting (Read 849 times) previous topic - next topic

cheap diy home improvements -Accent lighting

step 1
go to lowes and get a few of those 2$ shove in the ground LED solar walk way lights.

take off the top and the rest gets repurposed for that pile of "you might need that for something one day pile"

-take solar lamp apart
-desolder the LED
-Make up a wire harness to extend the bulb away fr#om the solar panel as far as you need, i did up 4' extender with 24awg.

-find glass insulators from old power / telephone poles... can be found along railroad tracks in piles here where i live.
-make a mounting bracket for the glass insulator.
-my bracket was some s #2 solid tinned copper from a ground ring project we were doing.

-swap in larger batteries

these work really well and gently light up the deck at night , they run for about 7hrs before they go dead.

cheap diy home improvements -Accent lighting

Reply #1 –
in the last picture above you can see the solar panel and the insulator "lamp shade" together.

All you do is make sure your solar panel is in the sun sorta to the southern facing sky to average out the best solar potential,, and approx 15deg angle.

here''s another pick of the led i soldered on the end of my extention wiring

cheap diy home improvements -Accent lighting

Reply #2 –
i have a couple antique carrage headlights so i grafted in the same concept on their interior.