Our shower has lighting again!
As both regular readers of these columns know, I absolutely adore our outdoor shower. One of the nicest touches was the landscape lighting, which I broke when I gave away the old solar equipment. The lighting had been connected directly to the huge 12v AGM batteries that were a part of that system. (The new system uses a 48v lithium stack, plus it’s 100 meters away.) My attempt to substitute a 12v power supply failed; there’s apparently a low-impedance (but not zero) short circuit in the buried wiring for the old yard lights.
At this point, the existing yard lights are mostly just rust and corrosion held together by peeling paint, so I’ve ordered new LED lamps. Alas, they’re a week or more away. I miss my nighttime showers. Today I took the spotlight that does most of the illumination of the shower garden and wired it directly to the new 12v power supply. There’s no path lighting yet (hasn’t shipped yet) so it will still require a flashlight to get to the shower, but once in it we can enjoy the tropical garden and the back wall of the Portuguese bread oven.
—2p