After purchasing my second Heath-Zenith motion sensor driveway light at Home Depot (1st one failed in 2 days-2nd one failed in 60 days) I tried to contact Heath-Zenith for support. Their website is now unreachable. After searching blogs, It seems this is a widespread problem. It is also the only brand carried by Home Depot.
As is becoming the norm, it appears that Heath-Zenith will take the money and run. Too bad. They were both great companies at one time.
Maybe 20 years ago. Since then they just build mediocre stuff to meet the price point of big box places such as Home Depot.
Sometimes you just get what you pay for. The models sold to HD are made cheaper than their standard models. Try buying one from a place like
I have been buying a brand called Rab from my local electrical supply house for several years. I don't recall ever having a customer call back because a unit stopped working. They are a little more expensive than the Home Depot stuff, but customer satisfaction is important to me.
Florida heat here. The ones that are in the sun seem to fail from burning out the sensor. They lose sensitivity until you have to do jumping jacks in front of them to get a light. The others I have had fail in various ways. Some seem to have the triac latch "on" and will not reset. Others just seem to trigger themselves after a while and may or may not reset with a POR. I have about 20 installed around the house, inside and out. I usually swap out one or two a year. The funny thing is the most reliable are some el cheapos I got from K-Mart for $14 with sockets and reflector shells. I have not had one fail in the
8 years I have had them (one in full sun). The Heath Zeniths are the ones that fail the most but as long as I can come up with a fairly fresh reciept HD lets me have a free one. The H/Z in my great room has never failed and it is the oldest. Maybe it is the environment that kills them. Others I bought in the same time frame were sleeping with the fishes years ago.
I'll check those Grainger units out. Thanks Roy.
(a moment of silence) NO, DAMMIT, NO, NOT HEATH! WHY MUST THESE "COMPANIES" SULLY THAT NAME?! >:-[=]
It's not the same Heath, (as in Heathkit) anymore. The name has just been sold off and slapped on yet another shitty pacific rim outfit. :(
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