Engine room lighting

[Freespool]

Hello all,

I am looking to increase the amount of light in my engine room on my 62' Offshore. I currently (no pun intended) have (4) 110 and (4) 12v lights in each corner of the engine room. It's marginal at best. My neighbor has a Symbol yacht and he replaced all of his 12v bulbs with some type of really bright 12V LED lights. Unfortunately I did not get the model or manufacturer of the bulb, but he said he ordered the bulbs from Monster LED???? The cost was about $30 per bulb, but he said it was worth every penny.

I am chasing down this lead now, but I was wondering if you have any suggestions. Thanks in advance.

PS, I am also open to suggestions of haw to upgrade my 110 lights.

 

[Comodave]

Assuming you have diesel engines you do not need ignition protection so yo can use pretty much any light fixture out there. There are a lot of 110v LED lights available. Are you looking to replace just the bulbs or the entire fixture?

 

[JohnEasley]

Are your 110 volt lights the two-tube florescent type? If so, many places now stock replacement tubes that are filled with an LED strip. Reasonably priced, much lower power draw and noticeably brighter. That's an option.

I replaced all of our florescent tubes with LED and then replaced the 12 volt lights with some LED strips from a bulk roll. Might have overdone it a bit. Afterward, the engine room looked like an operating room!

 

[dhays]

I replaced all of our florescent tubes with LED and then replaced the 12 volt lights with some LED strips from a bulk roll. Might have overdone it a bit. Afterward, the engine room looked like an operating room!

I have 12v red/white fluorescent fixtures in the ER (OK, maybe an EC in my boat) that were supplied by the builder. They give a LOT of light. However, if they didn't, I'd go with the roll of LED lights mentioned by John here. Lots of light, and inexpensive. I actually bought some when I thought some lights in an aft lazarret had failed. Turned out to be another wiring issue so I haven't installed them yet.

 

[ktdtx]

http://www.trawlerforum.com/forums/s3/led-retrofit-38884.html
Here is a link to a thread about lighting.


There was another thread about engine room lighting, photos, and recommendations..can't locate it just yet.

 

[FF]

Be sure to wire in a bright indicator light to show when the ER is lit, someplace up in the cabin.


A light bulb can be a slow draw that could run a bat set to almost zero volts , usually destroying the batt set.

 

[caltexflanc]

A 62 Offshore is a heck of a nice boat. I once had a picture of one as the screensaver on my work computer when we were in the "dreaming stage". Deserves top flight gear.

Have a look at these folks, and contact them with any questions, they are very helpful and expert on boat LEDs. Excellent quality and service, many happy customers on this forum, including me.

https://store.marinebeam.com/

 

[wkearney99]

I've had great results talking with Nate at Marine Beam (e-mail... not so much, just call voice).

I've replaced nearly all lights on my Eastbay with their lights. For the engine room he suggested a red/white square board that has a bayonet socket adapter. Works great. The benefit is it's plug-and-play, no need to change existing wiring. Some will say you can get better results if you completely change your fixtures. I agree. But the added time and expense of moving everything around might not work for everyone.

I've also got some LED replacement tubes but have yet to install them in the Aqua Signal AC fluorescent fixtures. Those do require re-wiring, but it's inside the fixture itself. The idea is re-wiring to bypass the ballast takes one more piece out of the reliability equation. It's tempting to try and use direct replacements, one that can operate even with a ballast, but then you're stuck with replacing the ballast if/when it fails. It's a simple, and cheaper, route to open up the fixture and bypass the ballast.

Again, some will suggest rip, replace and re-wire with totally different fixtures. I don't disagree with that sentiment. But I wanted to maintain the existing look of the engine room's wiring and fixtures. To swap out different ones would have left me with splices in a number of places as few replacement fixtures have the same sort of openings for wiring. I wanted to avoid the appearance change, but also avoid a lot of added labor. Bad enough crawling around to just replace bulbs! Splicing, cutting, sealing, securing new wires and fixtures... was just not on my 'want to do' list.

But what it revealed was a good engine room cleaning needs to get on my winter 'have-done' list.

 

[ranger58sb]

We replaced our 6 incandescent wedge bulbs with LEDs, from marinebeam, IIRC.

Then I also tied into the same 12VDC circuit a 5m LED strip from superbrightLEDs, and ran that around the forward perimeter of our engine room. I still have capacity on that circuit, so my intention is to add another strip of LEDs in the after area of the ER... but just haven't gotten around to that part yet.

-Chris

 

[CharlieJ]

Scandvik E-500 p/n 41389 from Defender http://tinyurl.com/y93of8fy cost $105 a piece and are incredibly bright, watertight and do not emit RF. Costly but...

 

[mcgann454]

Hello all,

I am looking to increase the amount of light in my engine room on my 62' Offshore. I currently (no pun intended) have (4) 110 and (4) 12v lights in each corner of the engine room. It's marginal at best. My neighbor has a Symbol yacht and he replaced all of his 12v bulbs with some type of really bright 12V LED lights. Unfortunately I did not get the model or manufacturer of the bulb, but he said he ordered the bulbs from Monster LED???? The cost was about $30 per bulb, but he said it was worth every penny.

I am chasing down this lead now, but I was wondering if you have any suggestions. Thanks in advance.

PS, I am also open to suggestions of haw to upgrade my 110 lights.

I had four lights in the corners of the engine room and felt even the replacement bulbs would not put off much light. I found some led strip lights with a plastic track you can use to hold it up. I have four runs now, one on each side of each engine and can now see every square inch of the engine room. I tied into the the existing wires form the old lights with waterproof connectors and love the way it turned out.

 

[tiltrider1]

Here is a link to a very bright, easy to install, inexpensive, utility LED light. I use 6 of them in my engine room. My engine room also came equipped with 4 fluorescent 120v light fixtures which I have since remove as it’s useless light compared to these LED lights.

There is no one right answer to your questions. There are many good solutions already offered.

https://www.westmarine.com/buy/aqualitz--cabinled-6-light-bar--17075896?recordNum=56

 

[wkearney99]

And as you seek LED alternatives be mindful that some are producing an excessive amount of RF noise, enough to impair use of your VHF radio and AIS. The problem is important enough that the Coast Guard has issued a warning about it.

https://www.dco.uscg.mil/Portals/9/DCO Documents/5p/CG-5PC/INV/Alerts/1318.pdf

Beware using the wrong kinds of bulbs. You probably wouldn't know it until you needed to actually use your VHF...