Mine is less than 10 years old and already it doesn't go on most of the time when people walk up to it, and it's even harder to get it on by flipping the switch. 20 tries and I give up.
But few** porch lights now have "frosted"** glass or the equivalent that is hard to see clearly through. **What word am I looking for?
Why is that?
It was easy to get 10 years ago.
**And the ones that have the right glass are missing other things, like like IR sensor, daylight sensor, or they look like they belong on a chrome skyscraper, instead of my 1979 house which was the boyhood home of the first governor of Maryland.
Most have clear glass, or seeded glass which is just clear glass with a few imperfections.
I wanted "frosted" so people couldn't see inside and realize it's not a gas flame or a candle, or whatever they used to use. Mostly that they couldn't see that it's a light bulb.
I believe what he wants is a *lamp fixture* that has frosted panes, probably for the front door or similar. I'm surprised they aren't readily available. I wonder where he looked?
Thomas, that's the closest to what I want. Frosted is the wrong word. When I searched for frosted, I got white. I think white glass existed 300 years ago but it was not used for coach lights.
I looked for cracked, or crackle, and it's markedly better than plain, but I think you can still see what's inside. like in this one:
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I want like you suggest, cracked, only a lot more cracked. I'll look for more of the cracked ones.
Don't get me wrong. I know no one will be fooled into thinking I have a gas light, but it shows I'm trying.
I see now they have "flame bulbs" that are reddish and flicker. It uses multiple led's that go on and off separately to flicker, but I don't want it to flicker. There are different sizes but here's one with a video
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The other restriction is, I liked when a motion sensor turned it on, and a couple of my neighbors wanted us all to have lights that stay on all night. By golly, I found one design that with a dimmable bulb, stays on all night at about 35% and goes up to 100% when someone comes to the door. I like that. Only found 3 models listed however, so far.
Yeah, that was my real question. I don't expect you guys to go shopping for me, and with the other features I want, I don't expect you or me to find it. I'm just wondering why there are so few. Maybe there were never that many but the one I have now is like that.
Amazon. They have hundreds of different models, it's amazing, but maybe they only come from a few makers.
I looked in HD too but they only had one or two models that came close to what I wanted. (When I bought the last one, it was at HD. They had two makers and unfortunately I didn't note who made this one so I could avoid the brand. It's been giving me trouble for a while already, and I think it failed much too soon.)
I'll look in Lowes.
Ace is more hardware than furnishings, and it's 20 minutes to get there, but maybe I'll look on their webpage too. yeah, Ace has 120 things under porch light and only 17 are light fixtures. (Most are light bulbs)
I really like Amazon. It's better than being at the store in person because I can take my time and read the detailed description. It used to be that mail order catalogs only said a little about what you were going to get. You had to either already know things about what was for sale, or just wait to see what you got. But Amazon goes into so much detail. (One flaw is size, where sometimes they only give the dimensions of the box it comes in.)
There are quite a few that have cylindrical glass now and I don't think that existed for the first 250 years coach lights were made, so I don't want that.
As an aside, I used to live next door to Swedenborg House in Chicago and a friend rented a bedroom there. They had religious services on Sunday, for example. Emanuel Swedenborg was a "Swedish pluralistic-Christian theologian, scientist, philosopher and mystic" wikip says. And one of the 30" x 30" or bigger double hung windows broke, and it was curved, and when they replaced it, it was $150 in 1968 money. The glass company had to try several times to bend a flat pane into a nice curve. That's why you sometimes see windows like that replaced with two or 3 narrower flat panes, to save money.
So I'm sure there were no full cylinders of glass 300 years ago.
Or they come in pairs.
This one is called frosted and it's frosted almost enough, but it doesn't have the motion or daylight sensor and it's $180. I wonder it's so much.
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It's interesting that some are rated to last so many years "when used 3 hours a day", even though they have a light sensor that will cause them to run on average 12 hours a day.
It was easier before the web. I'd go to the store and they'd have one, maybe two that I liked at the most, and I'd make a choice and go home.
Given that I know what's best, how come more people don't want what I want?
Who wants to see a lightbulb in a fixture style that goes back 300+ years. Why did God give us curly light bulbs for dining room chandeliers** if people wanted to see regular bulbs?
**The mere fact that they're called chandeliers, from candle!
Here's the company site - easily found in the product description -
- order from them or look for a store in your zip code :
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ps : the original link was only to present the product - not for your international cross-border shopping pleasure. pps : the 13 % is HST harmonized goods & services tax in Ontario
- if the company ships to USA < ? > you might not need to pay it ? John T.
Aha. This is model 4133, but under products is 4135
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all the same things plus Dual Brite, which I think is that 35% brightness feature. So this one has everything!! I didn't think it could be found. Thanks a lot.
And it comes in black, bronze, and silver.
The glass is called seeded, but it seems much more "seeded" than some others that just have a few blips. "Seeded Glass is a type of glass that undergoes a process in which air or gas is injected into molten glass before the sheet is fully formed."
This page also has the install and owners manuals. I like that a lot. I like to read them before I buy something, but one is 4 pages dense with text and the other is 28 pages (thank goodness only 9 are in English.) It's still a lot to read.
Life is so much more complicated then when all there was was on and off.
BTW, REMEMBER A PREVIOUS THREAD?: the video that shows installation says to add tape after putting on the wire nuts, and shows him doing that.
It's also intersting that in the video, the base of the light is bigger than the base on the house to which it is mounted. It looks bad. (I don't have a base on my house, so not an issue for me.)
Then they also get to sell you a designer bulb ;-) I have 2700 degree LED flame tips in my coach lights. They look like
60w but use night light sort of watts. Once LED got away from that "Stalag 13" bright white, I became an adopter. In reality, LEDs can be any color they choose since they use all 3 primary colors. I have some ceiling luminaires that are switch select able. (2700, 3000, 3500)
I got by all of that decades ago when I set another box for a motion detector head below the porch lamp, before MD porch light were around. I have a dual bright sensor in it now but I keep it off when it is off. We have enough light pollution around here and I don't want to contribute to it. The only place I use the dual bright is in the great room light.
When I was working on the Ca D Zan project in Sarasota, one of the things I was doing was giving AHJ blessing to gas light chandeliers that were converted to electric in 1926. They were not as enamored with burning stuff to produce light. They put those reproduction Edison style bulbs in them to preserve the
1926 look.
BTW that is why lamp parts use pipe sizes. Originally they were all gas light designs.
Our neighborhood has no "street light" poles. Each house though, has a light on the front lawn so the street is not really dark. I also have carriage lights on the garage and ceiling lights on the porch that I sometimes put on.
In the back, I have a couple of solar powered lights with motion detectors.
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