One thing that has always annoyed me about hire-boats is the poor lighting... or rather, poor lighting controls.
I'm not sure if you can see from the "plan" but we've positioned led ceiling lights throughout the boat
23 in all ...
These are the one's we're going to fit
They come from Aten Lighting (other suppliers are available) and the full spec can be seen here: http://www.atenlighting.co.uk/led-touchdownlight-silver-recess-flat.html
They are only 2watts each so even with them ALL on - it'll still only be 46 watts... or in terms more widely used when talking about "power" - the full lot would only draw 3.83amps. If you compare this to having 23 x 10 watt halogens drawing 19.16amps, you can see the benefit instantly... taking less out of the battery bank IS the way to go.
The MAIN reason we're going for these though is that they are switched - without "showing" a switch if you follow - the lense is the switch and it's operated by gently pushing it. Being able to individually control lights will be a welcome change for us - whenever we've hired boats, it's usually been a case of having to have ALL the lights in a certain area on... with these, we can leave just 1 on in the background when watching telly... or just have the 1 above your head on when reading rather than everything else on a particular switched circuit.
Of course the down side of them all being switched is the price - they're £13.99 each... that's a whopping .£321.77... oh well - it'll hopefully be money well spent.
We're also going to have 2 wall mounted (well bulkhead mounted) reading lights in the front cabin and another 2 on the wall in the lounge near each chair... just in case the ceiling ones end up a bit too bright to comfortably read under.
These as also from Aten http://www.atenlighting.co.uk/led-reading-light-sl.html and are £13.49 each... which brings the interior lighting bill (before switches) to £375.73
In addition to these, I've also already got (in a box in the attic now) a couple of strips of colour changing leds to fit in somewhere -
My orignal plan was to have them under the gunwhales in the lounge but I saw a boat recently with them under the plinths in the kithen and it did look quite cool... we'll have to see. They ARE a power luxury though, drawing 5amp so they may well end up back on Ebay ;-)
Until next time...
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