# Running an outdoor heatlamp off a large (car?) battery



## Hermes (Apr 18, 2007)

There are no external power sources in my garden and no practical way of runing a cable into it from inside the house. 
Has anyone successfully built up a battery powered lamp for use outdoors? Are items like this available to buy normally?

Connecting a heat mat up to a battery would also be an acceptable solution. 
Thanks


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## mEOw (Dec 28, 2006)

what for? You could get a car spot lamp and change the 50watt bulb it comes with for a 100watt or 150 watt.. they do give of a fair amount of heat.. 
but dont know if that would be enough for outside.. Depends what you are trying to do i spose.. 
Owen


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## nebski (Mar 26, 2007)

i wouldnt use a battery , batterys arent relyable and they run out and so it could die at any moment.


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## Graham (Jan 27, 2007)

You'd need a very large capacity battery to run a useful size lamp for any length of time, so you'd be for ever recharging it. Can't you just get an outdoor extension cable, put a hole through a wall and run it out? Most houses have at least an outdoor security lamp or something, it's not hard to do.


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## Hermes (Apr 18, 2007)

Hello and thanks for the replies.

Due to the built up nature of the area I live in my tortoise area only gets proper sunlight from about 10:30am so I was hoping to run a lamp low to the ground for a couple of hours in the AM to get the little guy going a bit better. If I feel ambitious I'd also like to connect the lamp to a light metre and a clock timer, so that if it got cloudy it would come on.The lamp wouldn't be relied upon as the only source of heat so it dying would just be inconvenient not threatening 
I was hoping not to have to put a hole in the wall as it's rented accomodation I'm in but if that's the best option then so be it. 

I've had a look about on the internet but apart from photograhy equipment there doesn't appear to me to be much in the way of pre-made battery powered lighting. 

Thanks though  and if someone with good electrics knowledge reads this and wants to tell me how to set something like this up anyway, as an experiment, I could post up my findings. How long it lasted, how often it was used etc.


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