Power wasting PIR Lights

I have just been delivering some envelopes for a club and it struck me how many houses have PIR lights that come on even in daylight. Seems daft when people are also fitting CFLs in the home but wasting money on 300 watt lights that are not needed. (Gripe over)

Reply to
John
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I've finally gotten fed up of replacing the 500w halogens around Lowe Towers. The lamps have a similar life to the fittings: around a year if you are lucky.

I've replaced them with 70w SON HP Sodium lamps, and they do a great job.

The light is a golden colour, less agressive than the rotwieler halogens. A little dimmer, and poorer colour balance, but adequate for the purpose: Illuminating the driveway and walk to the house, Illumintaing the lower part of the garden where the kids kick a football into the goalposts.

Gone from 5 * 500W to 5 * 70W, with revised switching so not all on at once. Generally running at 140W as opposed to the original 2.5KW.

Reply to
Ron Lowe

Crickey - you once had 5 x 500 watts of light. When did you "see the light". Even years ago this must have seemed a bit excessive - or were you drawn into it by the low price of the lamps in the sheds?

Reply to
John

No, it was what the house had when I bought it. I did consider it excessive.

I just never got around to sorting it out.

When one blew, the simplest and cheapest was like-for-like replacement, even though I knew that was not good.

Reply to
Ron Lowe

JOOI, What's the start up time on those?...

Reply to
tony sayer

They begin to glow immediately, and are at full strength within I'd say

2 minutes.

The ones I used are from Screwfix, p/n 79506:

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?_dyncharset=UTF-8&fh_search=79506Cheap 'n' cheerfull. We'll see what the reliability is like.

One of the luminaires was faulty on arrival, I had to dismantle it to find a broken wire.

Also, I had to drill out the holes on the plastic lens to make it a clearance size instead of the supplied tapping size, because the self-tapping screws tried to bite into both the lens and backing case, and failed to pull the lens shut against the case. After modification, it worked properly.

Reply to
Ron Lowe

Cheers thanks for that!...

Reply to
tony sayer

Our local community centre has floodlights (facing outwards towards the surrounding housing) on all the hours of darkness. Damned annoying it is, too.

Reply to
Skipweasel

Not as annoying as the floodlit driving range on the nearbye golf course which is lit up even when the club is closed ...

Reply to
Huge

John :

It's my experience that the light-sensitive components of those lights are often ridiculously insensitive, even when adjusted to the end of their range (if any adjustment is possible). The result is that the lights operate when it gets just a little bit gloomy, often many hours before anyone with normal eyesight would have difficulty finding their way around. And there's nothing that the owner can do about it.

Reply to
Mike Barnes

I've a feeling there are rules about that.

Reply to
Skipweasel

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102 - at least it give you some sort of lever.

Reply to
Skipweasel

I'll have a look at that, ta. Those lights offend me.

Reply to
Huge

And why do they have circular reflectors and are aimed horizontally so that at least 50% of the light is wasted????

Reply to
John

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I noticed while wandering around park once, they had used banks of SON lamps and presumably mercury vapour or some sort of metal halide in alternation. One giving a slightly pinky yellow light and the next a slightly blue light. The combined effect was actually rather nice with a more natural but fairly soft light.

Reply to
John Rumm

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