Exterior Camp Lighting

[pickerdd]

This isn't directly related to our Airstreams, but I'm hoping you all will have suggestions or be able to point me in the right direction. I need to put together an exterior 12 volt lighting system for our large tent at a music festival I'm going to attend in September. I'm tired of the glare and such of the propane lanterns and want something else.

We camp in an area that doesn't have 120v and I won't be able to run the generator at night, so I need to build / buy a 12 volt light system for the camp. We considered camping in an area with 30amp shorepower, but that has unfortunately changed. If we had shorepower I would build a bunch of bucket lights, but now I need to build lights that can run off of a couple of 12 volt car batteries. I don't want to tap into my AS batteries unless I need to.

Any suggestions?

Thanks!

[wahoonc]

Originally Posted by pickerdd

This isn't directly related to our Airstreams, but I'm hoping you all will have suggestions or be able to point me in the right direction. I need to put together an exterior 12 volt lighting system for our large tent at a music festival I'm going to attend in September. I'm tired of the glare and such of the propane lanterns and want something else.

We camp in an area that doesn't have 120v and I won't be able to run the generator at night, so I need to build / buy a 12 volt light system for the camp. We considered camping in an area with 30amp shorepower, but that has unfortunately changed. If we had shorepower I would build a bunch of bucket lights, but now I need to build lights that can run off of a couple of 12 volt car batteries. I don't want to tap into my AS batteries unless I need to.

Any suggestions?

Thanks!

What ever you do go LED. I have seen 12v LED rope lights that put down a fair bit of light. They come in spools up to 250' long.

Aaron

[vswingfield]

superbrightleds.com has some LED Spot/Flood lights in their Truck Lights Section. Scroll down to the bottom of the page.

[ventport]

Go to evilbay and search "12 volt LED"

[pickerdd]

Thanks for the suggestions! Superbriteleds.com and LED4RV.com have some spots and rope lighting that would work very well. Great suggestions and thanks!!

[pickerdd]

I ended up buying 3 spots with switches from Dan at led4rv.com. They are plenty bright enough to set up one spot for each big tent and they are very efficient. I'll install switches and fuses between the led spot and the battery. I'll investigate led rope lights next time. This is a much better solution than propane lights.

[Protagonist]

Definitely consider 12v rope lights for next time. They're available in several colors, and cost about $1.00 per foot of length if you buy by the spool.

For a tent, you could run a rope light around the top of the tent wall, where the wall meets the roof, and secure it to the tent poles with cable ties.

You would want exterior-grade rope lights, which are 1/2-inch in diameter, and have one LED per inch of length. You can cut it at any point in between the LEDs, and just have to put an end cap over where you cut it. When buying by the spool, you'll probably have to buy end fittings separately, one fitting with power cord and one blank end fitting per cut rope light.

Most rope lights stay cool to the touch. White tends to get a little warm, but not hot enough to burn. For reasons too technical to go into here, white LEDs are made a little differently than other colors. All rope lights can develop hot spots where two ropes (or two different sections of the same rope) touch each other, so try to avoid that.

Best results come from using LEDs embedded in clear ropes, but you can also get them with colored ropes, too.

[pickerdd]

Great information. I'll definitely go that route next time. Thanks!