St Augustine, upgrades and repairs

   Here we are, in St Augustine. Its repair, upgrade, and cosmetics time. No idea how long we will be here. We have a list of items that needs addressed. We had some that should have been done before we left, but were not completed because of time constraints. My personal first project was lighting.
   We currently have no less then 16 halogen light fixtures. Each one draws 2.5 amps. Even if we light only one room at a time, this is 10 amp, over 4 hours this means 40 amp hours, just for lighting!!! So we went out and bought a collection of LED lights. We wanted to test what ones were bright, and find the worthless ones. The results are stunning. Out of 3 we bought, only one was bright. One was broken, and one was useless.


1. West Marine brand surface mount: $25. 4 white LED's, adversities 1/10th the power requirements of conventional lights. The only issue is, what conventional light? Really this thing is so dim, i could not even read by this light. The real kicker is, it was broken. it has 4 LED's, 3 of them light up. No thanks! moving on...

















2. West Marine brand LED accent light. $35 Triple intensity beam, 80Ma. This little light was actually brighter then the 4 LED light. It was also too dim to be useful.















3.  Lumitec Aurora. This light was expensive. $89, but we found one that had been returned without a package, got the price down to $50, score!!! The employee price on these is $35, I wish i worked here during our refit.

On the left is the 25 watt halogen light. On the right/bottom is the Aurora LED light. It draws 0.5 amps.

We could actually power 5 of these lights, for the same power as one halogen light. This exact light has a turning bezel, it turns it on, off and dims it. The color is not warm as I would like, however this is a minor inconvenience. We will be buying these lights, in a switched version, without the bezel. These lights are $48 each online. We will be buying 4 of these for our main entry way, and kitchen. It should give us 100 watts of lighting, enough to live on for sure! But the power draw will only be 24 watts. This process will also be repeated on the exterior. All the navigation lights will be converted to LED. What do you think? What have you used on your own boat?


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