Battery.. Invertor For A Fan.... Need Help..!

Lookin to go camping electric free. I want to buy a couple car batteries just so we can hook up a couple of low watt bulbs. I already have a case for the battery so it will be portable. What kind of cables/wiring would I need to hook a light socket to the batteries? I'm guessing I would need an inverter too, am I correct? Would I also need some kind of controller so the battery wouldnt drain too low?
      

Hi.  This is not exactly home-improvement-related, but I'm hoping some of the electrical gurus out there can answer my question.  I am building an underwater fishing light.  It will basically be a sealed green acrylic tube with LED bulbs in it, powered by a 12V DC battery.  It will be submerged between 2-5 feet.  I imagine it will be used approximately between 2-6 hours at a time, so the cable will not be submerged in water or a wet area permanently. 



Obviously I am doing this to save $$ (they are expensive otherwise), and I find myself wondering why I can't buy an inexpensive extension cord (lamp-cord-style) and use it for the power from battery to light.  I started looking at garden lighting wire, but that stuff is very expensive.



Would auto electrical wire (with shrink tubing) be sufficient (though I'm not sure I can find shrink tubing with enough length)?  Speaker wire?  LOL. 



Any suggestions would be appreciated!



Edit: One thing I forgot to mention is that I don't want the power cord to be heavy at all.  Nice and light is the key!
      

Hello everyone,I have a question about a forklift battery charger i bought. Ok,its an exide forklift battery charger 36 volts. It weighs a ton so i am having to run a 25 foot extension cord to it. My question is,my 220 wall outlet has three holes so i went to lowes and made a 220 extension cord. Now i get to the ac cable coming out of the charger that hooks to the extension cord(plug was cut off),there are 4 wires coming out of the cable green,white,red, and black......the guy at lowes said i could buy a 3 prong plug for it to plug into the female end of the extension cord because one of the 4 wires is probably neutral and i wouldnt have to hook up but the green,white and either the red or black.....is he right? Inside the charger the red,white and black all go to big fuses and green to ground. Also above the fuses it says "factory set to 480 volts ac". I guess my question is,will this charger only work using a 4 prong wall outlet(mine only has 3) and with 4 prong plug hooked to cable coming out of the charger itself or is the guy at lowes right in saying that only the red OR black wire has to be used? Sorry if this is confusing but ive searched and searched online for 3 days and havent found anything. Thanks in advance for any help-Kevin
      

I have a 120vdc treadmill motor that has a motor controller board and a transformer to operate it. My question is is there any way to rigg it up to a 12v deep cycle battery. I was thinking all i would need is some sort of step up transformer 9-1 if they make it or 10-1. I would aslo like to have speed control which i assume would work through lowering the voltage. It runs fine off the 12v batter just not near the rpms i need. I know it will drain the deep cycle very fast but im not worried about that.
      

light of the battery stay on when the car is off in 2007 GMC
      

I am considering adding solar panels to my home to generate electricity.  I will not add batteries however (to expensive) so when the grid goes down I won't get energy from the panels (you need a special inverter and batteries) so I want to add a portable gas generator for those, hopefully, limited cases.



I just wondered how the solar wiring gets interfaced into my system (breaker panel?) and can I later add a transfer switch or interlock switch when I add the generator?



Or should I do that at the same time (perhaps the interface is complicated)?



Thoughts?



Thx
      

I have a 1/3 horse sump pump. I've read it uses 1300-2900 starting watts (or I guess that means surge watts)



The generator I can get is for $140 and has 1400 peak watts and 1200 continuous. Now this will only be used to power the sump pump when power goes out.



Is it powerful enough? I have no way of testing it out prior to buying.



Its this brand, but a lower end model.



http://toronto.kijiji.ca/c-buy-and-s...AdIdZ357888894



the above model is sold out.



thoughts?
      

I'm trying to fix a problem with a track light installment over the a bar I've just put in. I've done it before. never had issues. but this particular problem is driving me nuts. It just defies logic.  The electrician who actually installed the associated dimmer switches with this dining room area was called as it seems it may be a flaw with his wiring, but he's blown us off and I have to try and solve this myself.



This is how it's all set up. I've been rehabbing our home from top to bottom, and converted our old kitchen into a dining area. Within this dining area are four sets of lights, all controlled from one box containing four dimmer switches. I set up all the new wiring and installation of the lights in the ceiling, and we paid an electrician to come in, check everything out, set up the multiple switches, and connect it all to the board. It's all new copper wiring from beginning to end, as I didn't want to connect or splice in to the old aluminum wiring that was in place. All the new wiring and lights are on a dedicated 15 amp breaker. Three of the sets of lights were set up to be available from the day the electrician came around. The fourth, for the track light over the bar, was left hanging from the ceiling capped off and with the switch off, as I still had work to do installing an overhead wine rack, under which the track was going to be set.



Two days ago I finally got around to putting the track up, but after setting it in place and connecting the power up the lights wouldn't work. I took the lights out to our kitchen, where I installed another track light system some time ago, plugged one of the lights in, and it worked just fine. I then went back to the bar area and used a spare track, then a spare connector, to see if I could isolate the fault, yet neither of the items provided a solution. Now here's the weird bit - every time I tried checking the system out, I'd get 120 volts showing from the wiring and from the track when I'd test with the multimeter. But the second I'd put a light into the track, the multimeter would drop to zero on the voltage reading on either the wiring or the track. Take the light fixture back out, and the voltage would pop back up. Inserting the light was thus completing some kind of odd loop. It wasn't just one light - I double checked by grabbing working lights from the kitchen track and inserting them into the other track - the same problem would pop up. Finally, having come to the conclusion that there was nothing wrong with the track at all, I took the whole assembly over to a nearby wall outlet, used some spare electric cable to connect up to the appropriate slots - presto, the light came on! I even double checked all this by grabbing another light fixture destined for our bathroom, and tried connecting it to the wiring over the bar. Nothing. Yet as with the track light, the minute I took it over to the wall outlet and connected it, the light worked.



So everything logically points to the fact it has to be something to do with this individual circuit, right, because a) the light fixtures work when plugged into another circuit and b) the other three dimmers and lights hooked up in the same box work fine and draw power from the same wire cable/breaker combination. The only things left that I can think of is that the electrician has either wired the dimmer switch up incorrectly or that there's some kind of flaw inside the switch itself. Does this make sense?



A friend also told me to double-check to make sure that the black wire feeding power to the light was indeed the hot wire, and it is.  If I touch it with the black test lead from the multimeter and put the red one to the neutral I show 120 volts. If I keep the black test lead on the black wire and put the red test lead to the ground - I also show 120 volts.



A final point. I know I'm not overloading the circuit - not even close. With all four dimmers maxed and every light on - including the test light on the track - I'd only be drawing 8 amps on a 15 amp breaker, besides which I'm only using one set of lights while I'm working on this problem anyway. This is a dedicated circuit, so there's no additional power being drawn away by something else.



So how am I getting 120 volts from this wiring, according to my multimeter, yet it won't light up ANYTHING and keeps giving off the indication that some kind of loop or short is being created every time I actually plug a light into the track? It's got me totally stumped.



Anyone have any ideas?
      

Having a brain freeze, if someone could take a moment to explain this to me, it would be greatly appriciated. I am wiring four recessed lights in a bedroom, off one switch. I am going to grab power off an outlet. Does the power have to go into the switch box first and then out to the first light? and then on to the others? Can I get power from an outlet and then wire each of the lights and bring the last one to the switch box? I dont want the switch to control the outlet, just the recesed and I am trying to determine where I can get the power from and if it has to go into the switchbox? I am drawing a blank.

Thanks!
      

Would it be cost effective to use 12/2 wire to run 15amp circuits?



I read that using 12/2 wire instead of 14/2 wire on a 15amp circuit will reduce the energy loss from voltage drop over the distance travled. A 2% voltage drop



The book gives the example of 200 ft carrying 120volts on 14 AWG will drop 8 volts, with 12 AWG the loss would only be 3 volts. and then adds this "The apparent savings in initial cost by using undersize wire is soon offset by the cost of power wasted in the wires and by the reduction in efficiency of lamps, motors and so on."



the book is "Wiring Simplified" by H.P Richter