Home Improvement | Be cheap and DIY:

A while ago, I picked up a solar panel from a Volkswagon dealership when my friend purchased a Volkswagon Jetta. On the way out of the dealership, I peered into one of their closets, and saw a bunch of these panels just sitting in boxes and piled on a shelf. The salesman told me they shipped with the new cars for use during transportation so the batteries would not drain out. They hooked up to the OBD sensor port and mounted on the windshield with suction cups and directly charged the battery from there. Pretty cool, and so was the salesman as he gave me and my friend one panel each.

The panel had been sitting around collecting dust till I scored some replacement UPS batteries (smaller 12v sealed lead acid batteries). But the only thing I could think of doing was cutting off the OBD sensor plug from the panel, and wiring it directly to the battery in order to give it a recharge. It was only until I noticed that our address number sign was missing a bulb andÂ was wired to a small transformer above our water heater, did I begin to dream about a better life for the poor, lonely, solar panel.

Solar panel from nice VW dealership

I work at a computer liquidation company, so finding LEDs was no problem as many computer peripherals, server cases, and the like have these things mounted in/on them. I found three bright white LEDs (I figure they pull about 3.4volts drawing 20Â milliamps each after googling), and found an appropriate resistor for use with the system (I used the LED resistance calculator at http://ledcalc.com/), by taking it from an old cisco router powersupply (its actually a 240 ohm resistor and the calculator called for a 100 ohm one, but it doesnt seem to affect it much).Â I also upgraded my battery to use my old car battery that died from my car…I just charged it for several days with my solar panel till it was 12.7v.

The LED diagram that the LED resistance calculator gave me

As illustrated in the diagram, I wired myÂ LEDs in series, attached the resistor to the positive lead on theÂ LED chain and tested it with my battery. It worked!

Wired up LEDs in series and soldered the resistor to the positive lead

I then unmounted my address number sign and had to pop out the female plug which the bulb would screw into. That gave me a nice sized hole to thread the LED string through.

LED string threaded and secured with some tape and a pluggy thing big enough to cram in the hole where the original plug used to be. In this picture, im using one of the UPS batteries to test it with. Now, I needed to unhook the original wiring which went from the address number sign to the transformer and reroute that with some wire to my car battery/solar panel setup. I went into the garage, and unscrewed the two wires from the transformer.

Transformer with the two wires still connected

I then ran some speaker wire that I had laying around to those two wires to act as an extention, and connected it to my car battery.

Car Battery. You can see the gold speaker wire (connected to existing address sign wiring), and the black wires (connected to solar panel).

I then reconnected the wires from the original address number sign out in the front of my house to the string of LEDs I tested earlier. I remounted (two screws) the address number sign, and replaced the hood which fit over the LEDs.

Address number sign remounted with hood.

I was pleased that it was still working, and waited till dark. I did have to adjust the direction of the LEDs, as they were extremely bright and would streak a beam of light over only certain parts of the sign making it difficult to read. I ended up taking off the hood, liningÂ the insideÂ with tin foil, andÂ oriented the LEDs towards the center of the sign and pointing towards the hood. The tin foil reflected and diffused the light so it was more evenly dispersed.

Address sign at night time.

Im happy with the results, and the idea that I wont be spending any electricity on powering up a stupid address sign at night. It also makes my house easier to spot as the light from the LED is sort of bluish white, and looks completely different from the other houses in my neighborhood.

When renovating our house, we opted to use hardwood floors in the living room and hallway, and carpet in the bedrooms and office. This was opposite of the way we purchased the house as it had carpet in the living room and hallway, with hardwood floors in the bedrooms and office. After shopping around at several bayshore contractors for good quality carpet, we ended up using Home Depot as they had higher quality carpet, with cheap installation. We were quoted roughly $2100 for full house installation (both berber carpet and the thick berber padding) and the removal of old carpeting and pad. Going with the same configuration at a San Francisco Bayshore contractor was around $2500 and they didnt carry theÂ the soft name brand carpet we wanted).

Anyways, we opted to get a rather light uniformÂ carpet color (Color is almost white – which may have been a bad choice considering were thinking about having kids sometime soon) and within the first year of having it, weve stained it several times. I then decided it was time to invest in a carpet stain remover and went to Target to do some shopping. I brought home a product called “Spot Shot” and decided to give it a try (I got mine for $3.29 for a 14 oz can). Out of all the other options for carpet stain removal, I opted for this one because of two main selling points:

: What Spot Shot looks like…taken from their web site (shhhhh)

The ability to remove OLD STAINS from pets, greasy foods, motor oil, red wine, blood, grape juice, show polish, cola, mud, coffee, and lipstick (I liked this one because the stains have been sitting in the carpet for a while now).
The ability to do so without scrubbing and rubbing. You just have to blot the area after use.

I did pick up another product called Oxi Clean, but it comes in a powder form and you have to mix it with water and rub and scrub…Im too lazy for that (its a sunday!), so I went with Spot Shot as you just shake the can and shoot itÂ (there might have been a subconsciousÂ pull forÂ me to select this one, me being a man and all).

Here is a picture of the spots I was trying to remove. The spots dont really show in the pictures, but they were noticeable and would not come off with just plain water and a paper towel.

Before Spot Shot

After Spot Shot

The directions tell you to just spray the stuff on the stain and to not oversaturate it. I covered it pretty well with the liquid and let it sit for a few seconds. Then I used a clean LAP pad (clothlike thing they use to wipe up blood in the hospitals…my wifes sisterÂ is a nurse in the OR) to blot out the stain. To be honest,Â I did scrub and rub a bit to see if i could get it to work faster, but I dont think I needed to. The directions mentioned that I might need to repeat until the stainÂ isÂ removed,Â it was just barely noticeable after the first application, so I did it twice. After theÂ second application, the stain was gone.

Overall, the product reminds me a lot of brake cleaner, just spray it on and wipe it off (it actually evaporates fast though). I even used it on one of my kitchen table chairs and it removed an old oily stain. Im pretty impressed with the way this product worked, and no longer stress too much about when we have kids, as this stain remover should do the trick with anything they get on the carpet. I guess this post turned into a Spot Shot review…

So with this done, when my wife comes back, ill show her how awesome I am and get more love points!

Be cheap and DIY:

Category Archives: Home Improvement

How to replace your address number light with a solar powered LED system

How to remove spots and stains on carpet