It is really happening. The weather turned bad, started to rain solid for two days so I decided to get to work on the barn lights. I had torn apart the DeWalt charger, cut slots into it and torn out the guts with a pair of pliers but had not finished unsoldering the pin connectors and soldering on new power supply wires. I turned the Apprentice loose in the barn getting tools together and cutting some boards while I went back into the house and finished converting a DeWalt charger into a DeWalt battery power supply station for a 12V light system I am installing in the barn. I have a five switch box and am hooking the power supply up to it. When the battery dies just plug in a fully charged battery and the lights are back up!

I was able to actually test it out and got power! The regulator I bought will maintain a 6V to 20V output you just have to set it. I was going to set it at 12V but figured with wire resistance I was going to loose voltage the further away from the power source it got. The LED lights will work on a 12-20V range so I just set the output to 20V and hope the battery lasts. Until we start using the system we won’t know how much power a battery will supply. Each light only consumes 10W and each string of lights is only four sets of three lights and one set of four.

The Apprentice and I started running wire to get the five sets done but we ran out of wire. I had only bought 300 feet and really needed about 350 feet. So we did not wire the momma/baby area/tack room as the lights are only about eight feet off the ground. Some of the lights are 16 feet in the air and require some acrobatics to get to let alone run wire along beams and walls. I bought two strand red/black wire so it would be easy to run. I also bought these clamp on connectors that just go directly over the wire. They looked like they would work but I thought they might be an internet scam. I bought them anyways as they looked perfect for what I needed. They worked!! I was thrilled and relieved that I was not going to have to fix everything I had already done. I was able to get one run completed with the lights all wired in and give it a test to see if it would work and it did! I was super stoked as I had just read about the charger hack online and did not know anyone personally that has done it. I had plans for finishing up the barn this weekend but ended up doing some fall cleanup.

The trash guy forgot to pick up our trash this week, by the time I got a hold of him at the end of the week to ask why we got skipped he was very nice and apologized. He brought out an extra can and told me he would pickup any extra trash I had next to the cans on my pickup day. So I spent all of Saturday cleaning house and generating trash. I have two piles of boxes and paperwork and two trash bags full of garbage and one can is so full the lid won’t close. Now we are both happy.

The Apprentice is off to farrier school. I may see her on the occasional weekend while she is at school. She told me she is only two hours away and wants to work. We will see if she can break free or not. I should be able to get the barn lights up and running next week. My wire should be here by Thursday.