by Ira » Sat Feb 25, 2006 7:37 pm
Ooops:
Yeah, Earl. (I thought it was YOUR meatball sauce recipe.)
Steve, drink beer--it comes out of the nose easier.
Mike, let the games begin:
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Friday 6PM, and I go to WalMart to buy a deep cycle marine battery. Just 40 bucks. I'm happy. (Plus there was this GORGEOUS Filipino girl in that aisle buying washer fluid.)
And as a refresher course, the power supply at my boatyard is total crap, so I have to supply my OWN power. The plan was/is to use this battery with my DC to AC inverter to test everything, and to use the battery in the future.
And here's where the fun starts:
I hook the battery up to my charger to top it off, and the charger is acting real funny. The needle is pinning fully charged, but the green LED ain't coming on.
Okay, oh well, who knows, let's continue:
I hook up my inverter to the battery, all should be good with the world, but it ain't working. The light ain't coming on and it ain't making no noise. So of course, my luck, the inverter took a crap after its service from Hurrricane Wilma. (But read on to learn what REALLY happened here!)
So off I go to KMart at 9:30 PM to buy a new inverter (I didn't see any at Walmart and I couldn't find a Latino to help me). I pay the Pakastani at KMart 50 bucks (they hire Pakistanis, not many Latinos), and home I go.
And the same thing. It doesn't work.
(For those of you here with A.D.D., please note that this is only Friday night's escapades. Today's fun is coming below!)
Well, I'm gonna make a long story short here and I'm NOT embarrassed to admit it:
In the world of 120 AC, black is hot and white is neutral. In the land of 12V DC, black is NEUTRAL and RED is hot. So when I was hooking all of this s*** up, I instinctively hooked black to hot and red to neutral...
Blowing fuses like you blow your nose.
Don't ask me HOW I finally figured this all out, but after buying replacement fuses last night (24-hour WalMart) and returning the new unneeded inverter this mornonh (KMart , because they're NOT 24-hour), I was ready to hunt for bear this morning.
Are you still paying attention here??? You may be sorry!
So Friday night ends, and the peace and joy of my people's Saturday sabbath begins:
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Shlep battery to TD. Shlep inverter. Shlep tool box and a bunch of other crap. Hook inverter to battery. Plug my main power cable from the Td/main panel to inverter. Turn everything on. The green light is on, and the inverter makes its noise like it should (Mazel Tov).
BUT....
The red light in the back is blinking--"Overload/low battery output," or something stupid like that. Makes no sense at all. I plug a drill directly into the inverter, and it works fine. I go back and plug my main feed in again, and that light is blinking, and the panel indicators don't come on.
Now, don't ask me WHY I tried this, what made me think about doing this, but I took an outdoor extension cord I had and plugged it into the inverter. I then plugged my main cable into THAT cord, and everything worked just fine.
Can ANYONE explain this to me? Does it have to do with the gauge of my main feed cord as opposed to this extension cord?
Anyway, fast forward, I wire everything, my power source is working fine, but for the porch lamp switch, off acts as on and on acts as off (Duh, I wired that wrong)--but it's also turning the self-switched interior lamp on and off.
I spoke to a friend of mine today who explained what I was doing wrong, tomorrow's another day, but can you believe that you had to read such a long post here and this sh** still ain't working???
Last edited by
Ira on Sat Feb 25, 2006 7:44 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Here we go again!