dark nights and generators

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oliverspal

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help please the nights are closing in fast and as usual im not ready.we have no power to our field and stable .i need a generator of some shape ,or maybe battery .ideas please .what do you all recomened i only need it for an hour in morning and evening .ive been on ebay but i dont know what im looking for.i dont want it to waste fuel.i need to power 2 lights and maybe a plug .i can take battery home to charge but then i,ll have to rig it back up in the dark ideas please and not to large a budjet thanks
 
You will be able to get a cheep 2 stroke genny for about £50 now, but always prone to being stolen, I dont know a lot about inverters but what i have heard as been good, maybe worth you investigating
 
We have a genny, but rarely use is (just for clipping).

We have rigged up small lights that you use in caravans, they can be bought cheaply from camping shops, and wired to run directly from a battery (the shop could advise you on how to wire them - it's not difficult). This is a pretty cheap option, your main cost will be the battery, and probably the charger. I should add that we thought we would use the genny a lot more than we do, the lights are enough for rug changing, making feeds etc. The bonus is that you aren't deafened or gassed either!
 
Dito Peterpiper!
I have two car batterys (1 for a spare when the other runs out, I then take it home and put it of charge for 24 hrs) brought form Halfords £20 something....
I use the car battery for 4 car head lights for a quick souce of light and i brought a generator from B&Q for £100 (last year)for the winter to give us more light at nights, I also brought lights for the stables in and out from B&Q for about £2 each all with a metal grill on the front. and hooked all theses up and put on an extension lead and placed in a protective box. It seemed to work well for us last winter but would like to have a better Generator, one that has a button on to start the dam thing and not a pully to start it.
 
We use an inverter. basically you put jump leads on your car battery and mains power comes out the other end, works fine for lighting etc. The one we have is rated at 1000 watts so can run power tools etc.
Then when you are finished you drive the car home and that recharges the battery. the one we have cost £100.
 
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We use an inverter. basically you put jump leads on your car battery and mains power comes out the other end, works fine for lighting etc. The one we have is rated at 1000 watts so can run power tools etc.
Then when you are finished you drive the car home and that recharges the battery. the one we have cost £100.

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Whats an Inverter...
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"or should i no!"
 
push button would be better than pully thing .and yes whats im inverter.unfortunaty i live in the middle of no where so going shopping in a big store is a no no .and i always get conned in to buying what i did not want.but some great ideas though i think the generator is the way falword though.petrol or oil
 
oh petrol, but you can get diesel generators now.. whats the buget!! i no the more you pay the quiter they can be, and may be place some concret on the ground with a good strong chain. or you can buy solar lighting now but i think they are crap, tried it last year... get a good car battery and some crocodile clips to put the lights togeter, just to get you going..
 
I hate generators after having one stolen and another catch on fire, and the pully thing is a pain in the buttocks! ......i would go with an inverter, also have come down in price now, basicly runs off a 12 v battery, and converts it to 240v, or as LUCYBRUKNER uses, 12v battery and carvan lights
 
catch fire next to wooden stable please tell me this does not happen often ?how long do they tend to last ?just been looking at a suitcase one designed for caravans how many lights can i run of a 12v one .could i run a flood light from it or would that be pushing it?
 
The inverter I have will run two 500 watt halogen flood lamps, it is about 15 inches long 9 inches wide and 2 inches thick, and bolted to the wall of the stable block just inside the door, it takes seconds to connect to the car, and instant free mains power, this is where we bought ours and this is the updated model to ours http://www.mdsbattery.co.uk/shop/product...epartmentID=113
 
Hi, could anyone that uses a 240v inverter tell me how long their battery lasts? I had one last winter but think (so we were eventually told) we had the wrong one and the lights would only run for about half an hour!
 
The only draw back with an inverter is that the more power you need the bigger the battery to run it, however I had my inverter plugged onto my diesel pug 205, and I made a couple of barn doors, using my circular saw and power drill and still had plenty left in the battery, if you use a good sized leisure battery the power flow is more constant and they last better than a normal car battery, I am going to put a small home made windmill (built around a car alternator) on the stable block roof so the battery has a constant trickle charge.
If you want lots of lighting for a long time go for sodium lights, they take a little while to get to a full brightness but once fully on the are very bright and use a fraction of the electric.
 
We have a generator, it has been really good but i agree with other comments about how one with a start button rather than a pully would be so much better, but then so much more expensive! Also it is rather noisy to say the least! It cost us about £150 about 2 years ago, but it's since cost us about £100 to get it serviced etc as the pully seized up . they do get nicked regulary so ours is chained inside a concrete box (which has ventilation)which is padlocked when were not there.

I must admit though I'm now really concerned about using it after reading that someone's caught fire as it's right near our wooden stables. Can you tell me more Clipertyplop?
 
cor this is a mine field .so i do want pust button. flood light.quick to power up.petrol as we dont have neighbours a locked box so cant be nicked.safety cut out to prevent fire.about 140 pound to spend .and a big enough tank for a weeks fuel which will be 2 hours daily and also one which requires least servicing and wont mind being un used over the lighter months.anyone recomend now a make for me ? and cheers guys for all your imput so far
 
I have spoken to a few people today about winter, no elic ect ect and they have said to get an inverter 3000 about £150 to buy and a few car battery (one for a spare when the other is on charge) you can even boil the kettle from one, and power lots of lights and quickly as weell so you don't have to mess around in the dark...and may be a cheep generator for a back up...
 
Just remember tht whatever you do, the more you expect, the more it will all cost ! I would suggest you seriously consider whether or not you need mains voltage at the yard or not. If you just need lights then it's a hell of a lot simpler to go for a 12v lighting system powered by a couple of leisure batteries than going through the hassle of wiring up a mains powered system. If you do decide that mains is necessary then i'd recommend a 4 stroke petrol generator...but again, consider your requirements carefully. Electric start is great, but you won't get an electric start generator for less than about 500 pounds. I have a 2.5Kva (2500 watts) generator with recoil start that camefrom Focus DIY at a cost of 150 pounds. It will run for about 12 hours on a tank of fuel. It's not the quietest genny in the world but again 'silence' costs
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You can get cheaper genny's than mine that will put out 1000 watts or less but just remember that if you want spotlights they will draw anything from 500 watts EACH so you can't run too many of them. Clippers will probably draw a fair amount of juice too.

Inverters are great if you are going to leave yor car engine running to maintain the battery charge but if you are planning on using isolated batteries then they may not last long. Again it depends on how much you spend on your batteries (use deep cycle leisure batteries and NOT cheap car batteries !). Inverters actually waste energy in the inversion process so even without anything on you will be draining the batteries. They also require a minimum of 10.5volts to operate or they cut out automatically. A portable TV on our lorry lasts about 1 hour on a big battery to put it in perspective...
 
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