Due to the local wildlife who treat our estate as easy meat, I've decided to get some external lights to the driveway at the side of my house and to the rear garden. This
Does anyone have any thoughts? Or alternatives?
Do you have to ask... That's the going price for black painted pressed steel.
Well that says it's diecast ally, but which bits? If the mount and lamp housing it should last more than one winter.
I question the spec of 500W that is an awful lot of light, you won't be able to see anything in the deep black shadows it will create. The "wildlife" will be able to hide in those shadows...
Several much lower power lights along the side wall over the drive would be better. They will tend to mutually "fill" the shadow a given lamp produces and with less light about the shadows won't be so black. You only need to illuminate the drive so anyone there can be seen, you don't need 500W of halagen light to do that.
Of course you are now going to say your garden is the size of a football pitch...
500w halogens are obsolescent. If you want that much light from one fittings, go with cfl or other options, but not halogen.
NT
TFFT. The sooner they're obsolete (with no spares available anywhere) the better.
Steinal are the mutts nuts - really well made, top quality. They do a
150w as well.
They had some ali ones in lidl for £7.99. They had florescent bulbs but you could fit halogens if you wanted.
One that looks the same as the link is £10 in b&q BTW.
In message , Hugo Nebula wrote
Overkill. You will find that these lights will start to annoy you (and your wallet) when they go off with the passing of every stray cat/dog/mouse. They will annoy your immediate neighbours even more.
These lights, that are burning half a kW, are designed to light an area the size of a football pitch.
I have one mounted to illuminate my 80 ft back garden but it is on a switch operated manually on an infrequent basis.
You don't need to blind the potential thieves, vandals or the postman in the winter.
Consider using fittings that take low energy bulbs. The very presence of illumination, and not its intensity, is likely to act as the deterrent. Go outside with an extension cord, table light and a selection of bulbs to see how little energy you need to illuminate the area to want to "protect".
However, as for price of the lights you quote. you will find it is a very competitive market and these kind of lights are dirt cheap everywhere and worth the money. The only advice I would give is that when you install them put a little grease on the screw thread that holds on the cover and then you can replace the bulb a few years down-line.
Be aware that CFL's when used outside in cold weather are like candles initially when turned on from cold and need time to warm up operating temperature before giving out full illumination.
There are LED based ones now that will be better in cold weather but as to how much light they give out is another question.
Stephen.
In message , Stephen writes
I find 150 halogens OK for ample illumination of 25m or so of yard. Passing cats will trigger the sensors though:-)
A problem is that, unless they are mounted very high up, the close coupling of the sensor to the rectangular lamp housing make it impossible to tilt the reflector to only illuminate your own land. A separate sensor might be appreciated by those of us who drive tractors with dusty windscreens at night!
regards
If they start at all... My conventional florry tube garage light is very reluctant to start if it's below about 5C...
I spotted some LED ones digging about on tne TLC site from the link given for the tenner jobbie. They don't give lumens (grrr...) only
300/140W equivalent. Not cheap =A3250 (IIRC) for the 300W equivalent. Not that you want that amount of light of course... I would expect lower rated ones to be a vailable.In message , Stephen wrote
But the OP is not attempting to read with the light.
...For pixies, maybe. 10m x 8m.
My electrician did think that 150W might not be enough. With the higher wattage floodlights we could experiment with 400W, 300W or 200W elements to find a reasonable level.
In message , Hugo Nebula wrote
It will more than enough to cause a nuisance to near neighbours. Having fitted 150W, 200W, 400W or 500W lights you may soon afterwards to get some robust requests to disable them.
Whatever your electrician does make sure that you have a way off manually turning them all off. The PIR sensors often have a mode where switching on/off in a sequence can put them into a mode to leave the light on. This can happen during mains disruption or after power is restored after a power failure. Having a couple of kW of lighting permanently on can get expensive.
Perhaps have low level lighting pretending to provide light for a dummy camera with a bright flashing red LED. Wouldn't this provide the same type of deterrent?
100-200w is around the sort of total suitable, so about 25-50w of cfl. If you're lighting that much with just one fitting you need it mounted high up, and be sure you can reach the bulb & cover from an upstairs window to change it. Its always going to look better if you use more than one light fitting, but if youre not diying of course that would add cost.
An unlikely possible alternative is low voltage LED dice. You could mount them within reach, and wire it without the complications of mains voltage, making the exercise quicker and easier.
NT
I can recommend these (or similar)
I would highly recommend the Steinel units too. I have used several of them, mounted high enough that 500 Watts isn't excessive considering the area they illuminate. As others have pointed out they are very sensitive
- even moths will set them off - but they need to be to work well at that height!
Although you can't adjust the sensitivity you can aim the sensor independently of the light (though not in the tilt direction, unfortunately) and they are supplied with masking pieces which you can fit if there's a source of nuisance triggering in one particular direction.
There is also the advantage of having UK-based support. One of mine did fail (stuck permanently on) and after describing the fault to a Steinel technician they sent me a new one without needing the faulty unit returned first.
Richard.
Seconded. A few years ago I fitted 2 PIR lights to a bungalow in a remote village & the owners kept finding them on all night. It wasn't till I noticed the clocks on the ladies oven & microwave blinking (3rd visit) that I sussed it.
Brief power interruption/resumption during the night put them in manual mode.
The smarter sensors revert back to normal mode at the next sunrise.
In article , Richard Russell writes
let you know what they are like when it gets dark enough!
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