Go Bottom

LED landscape lights

View my Photos
AC5ZO
Join Date: Jul 2003
Posts: 928 Rio Rancho, NM 87144
TractorPoint Premium Member -- 5 Tractors = Very Frequent Poster  View my Photos  Pics

2003-09-22          64551


I have been putting in some landscape lights. In another thread, I mentioned my previous problems with solar lights and suggested that efficient LEDs might be an answer. I have an LED flashlight that will last 200 hrs on a single set of AAA batteries.

Well, I bought some new solar powered lights from Malibu that use LED lights rather than bulbs. These came in a kit from Home Depot for $37 for eight lights. These are accent lights and do not do a lot of area lighting, but area lights are also available. (But, I can clearly see my driveway at night with even the accent lights)

In my previous experience with Siemens solar lights, the bulbs would only last a few months and the lights would not stay on the entire night. So far the LED lights from Malibu stay bright all night and use much smaller batteries. To top that off, the whole light costs less than five dollars and the bulbs for the Siemens lights were more than $2 each and I had to buy about two per year.

These look like a good approach if you can get good sunlight for the night light at least a few hours each day.




Reply to | Quote Post Reply to PostQuote Reply | Add PhotoAdd Photo



LED landscape lights

View my Photos
Peters
Join Date: Feb 2002
Posts: 3034 Northern AL
TractorPoint Premium Member -- 5 Tractors = Very Frequent Poster  View my Photos  Pics

2003-09-22          64591


I have some around the pool for the last 4 years and they look like annemic fire flies.
I saw a piece on NWI on this company that is making them for airport landing lights. I believe they design for 10 years.
The link is to their landscape lights.
Eric ....


Link:   Caemanah

 

Reply to | Quote Post Reply to PostQuote Reply | Add PhotoAdd Photo



LED landscape lights

View my Photos
AC5ZO
Join Date: Jul 2003
Posts: 928 Rio Rancho, NM 87144
TractorPoint Premium Member -- 5 Tractors = Very Frequent Poster  View my Photos  Pics

2003-09-23          64642


I guess that it depends upon what you need. Around the house and where I have electricity available, I use wired lights and they are plenty bright. I didn't like the solar powered incandescent lights that I used before because both the brightness and length of operation on battery power was low. The LED lights seem to have solved the length of operation problem.

I live in a pretty rugged desert area. These LED "accent" lights that I have just installed only mark the sides of a long driveway that runs along the top of a ridge between two arroyos. There are no guardrails on the driveway and if someone decides to drive in and turn around, they could end up in the bottom of the arroyo in seconds. These Malibu lights are not powerful, but you do get enough light to walk the path at night easily. (dimmly lit but adequate)

The Carmanah lights surely look like top quality units, but at $160 to $350 a pop, they are a bit expensive and overpowering for this application. (I could buy > forty of the other lights for the price of one) I would bury wire and use conventional lights before I would buy thousands of dollars worth of these lights to light a long driveway.

While I was looking for the low light units that I bought I also saw longer lived and brighter LED lights for a fairly reasonable price that will do some area lighting. I don't think that they are as bright as my wired lights, but they are certainly better than the incandescent solar lights that I have seen and they are bright enough to read a newspaper by. ....


Reply to | Quote Post Reply to PostQuote Reply | Add PhotoAdd Photo



LED landscape lights

View my Photos
Murf
Join Date: Dec 1999
Posts: 7249 Toronto Area, Ontario, Canada
TractorPoint Premium Member -- 5 Tractors = Very Frequent Poster  View my Photos  Pics

2003-09-23          64643


One of the courses I work on came up with a rather novel approach, they were looking for under eaves and ceiling lights for several buildings (washrooms mostly) out on the course where there was no electricity, or running electricity was just too expensive in terms of tearing up existing landscaping.

The solution was to install flush-mounted LED truck lights, they are powered by a small deep-cycle 12v. battery which is maintained by a small solar panel. They even went so far as to wire up two differenbt circuits hooked to a motion sensor, certain of the lights are two level, marker and signal presumably, the higher intensity circuits and the interior lights come on when motion is detected, the rest of the time it is low level outside lighting only.

It seemed pretty weird at first, but it works fine and the amount of light those little things give off is pretty impressive given the low power consumption.

I thought about using them myself, since the lower power draw means I could run far more of them from a single power supply.

Best of luck. ....


Reply to | Quote Post Reply to PostQuote Reply | Add PhotoAdd Photo



LED landscape lights

View my Photos
AC5ZO
Join Date: Jul 2003
Posts: 928 Rio Rancho, NM 87144
TractorPoint Premium Member -- 5 Tractors = Very Frequent Poster  View my Photos  Pics

2003-10-24          67009


I have had the LED lights in for about a month now, and I like them. These lights are not going to let you read a newspaper at night or land an airplane, but they line my 350 ft driveway with markers that are easily seen. There are no pole lights around my property, and these little lights light up the drive well enough to walk it at night.

The lights have been staying on all night due to the efficient LED technology and the normal sunlight has kept them going strong. ....


Reply to | Quote Post Reply to PostQuote Reply | Add PhotoAdd Photo



LED landscape lights

View my Photos
Peters
Join Date: Feb 2002
Posts: 3034 Northern AL
TractorPoint Premium Member -- 5 Tractors = Very Frequent Poster  View my Photos  Pics

2003-10-28          67375


A picture is worth a thousand words. Get the hint. ....


Reply to | Quote Post Reply to PostQuote Reply | Add PhotoAdd Photo



LED landscape lights

View my Photos
Peters
Join Date: Feb 2002
Posts: 3034 Northern AL
TractorPoint Premium Member -- 5 Tractors = Very Frequent Poster  View my Photos  Pics

2003-10-30          67588


I spotted these lights the other day. They look brighter than the standard Noma/Malabu and are priced about the some. They also look like a little sturdier construction. ....


Link:   Technoscout

 

Reply to | Quote Post Reply to PostQuote Reply | Add PhotoAdd Photo



LED landscape lights

View my Photos
AC5ZO
Join Date: Jul 2003
Posts: 928 Rio Rancho, NM 87144
TractorPoint Premium Member -- 5 Tractors = Very Frequent Poster  View my Photos  Pics

2003-11-03          67913


Peters, your link does not seem to work. I added a picture of the LED light taken on a dark night. It is not the best picture that I have taken, but it does show the light output after being on for several hours. See picture 7.

These lights do seem to dim slightly by the next dawn, but so far they stay on all night and do mark the driveway at night. The Seimens incandescent solar lights that I used before were generally fading by midnight.

I am sure that there are better and brighter lights out there, but for $5 apiece, I am happy with these and plan to install more. These lights mark a dropoff that is easily big enough to swallow a car.

My picture 8 might give you a better idea of the dropoff. My tractor is parked right at the edge where the slope goes down about forty feet and is too steep to walk on. ....


Reply to | Quote Post Reply to PostQuote Reply | Add PhotoAdd Photo



LED landscape lights

View my Photos
kwschumm
Join Date: Feb 2003
Posts: 5764 NW Oregon
TractorPoint Premium Member -- 5 Tractors = Very Frequent Poster  View my Photos  Pics

2003-11-03          67914


AC, I hope your soil doesn't give way under that tractor! LOL ....


Reply to | Quote Post Reply to PostQuote Reply | Add PhotoAdd Photo



LED landscape lights

View my Photos
AC5ZO
Join Date: Jul 2003
Posts: 928 Rio Rancho, NM 87144
TractorPoint Premium Member -- 5 Tractors = Very Frequent Poster  View my Photos  Pics

2003-11-03          67916


The ground here is so hard that I don't even dig it without the backhoe. We have only had about four inches of rain this entire year, so the sub-soil (colichi) is like an adobe brick. I finally cut in a road at the bottom of the slope in the picture. My pucker index got a little high driving across that slope even though I was down near the bottom.

The main purpose of the marker lights is to keep visitors from walking or driving off of any of those slopes in the dark. It gets very dark here and my house is on an island of land in the middle of fifty acres of very rough terrain. ....


Reply to | Quote Post Reply to PostQuote Reply | Add PhotoAdd Photo



LED landscape lights

View my Photos
Peters
Join Date: Feb 2002
Posts: 3034 Northern AL
TractorPoint Premium Member -- 5 Tractors = Very Frequent Poster  View my Photos  Pics

2003-11-03          67921


The site with the LED is technoscout com under home and garden. Unfortunately the picture does not show it lit.

I wanted to see how the lights looked along the road at dusk.
....


Reply to | Quote Post Reply to PostQuote Reply | Add PhotoAdd Photo



LED landscape lights

View my Photos
AC5ZO
Join Date: Jul 2003
Posts: 928 Rio Rancho, NM 87144
TractorPoint Premium Member -- 5 Tractors = Very Frequent Poster  View my Photos  Pics

2003-11-04          67954


I tried to take a picture like that, but the resolution of my camera is not high and all you end up with is a few points of light on a dim background. You cannot see the effect of the light on the road. I have some much brighter wired lights around the courtyard in front of my house, and even those don't show up any differently. When I shrink the images down, the small items that you can see get even worse. I have tried various settings on the camera and it just does not take good pictures in dim light.

I am not saying that these lights make the road bright like a city streetlight, but they do mark the edge of the road, stay lit all night, and provide enough light that you can walk on the road at night. We are at a high enough altitude and the air is extremely dry and clear, so we don't get much backscatter light off of the sky. For the pilots in the group, the visibility often goes beyond 80 miles. Astronomers regularly set up on my property and nearby because the sky is so dark. On a dark night without these lights, you cannot see your feet or the driveway. It is like having your eyes closed or being in a cave.

I saw the SS light that I think that you were referring to. It is a very nice looking light. I think that the cost was $50. So, for 10X of the price, I would expect them to be brighter. But the duration of the light is only 8 hours and that was one of the things that I disliked about the Seimens lights that I had before.

These lights work in my situation. Your situation is certainly different, so they may not work for you. But, for the price of one of the expensive lights, you can try a whole set of these Malibu lights. If you want a very bright landscape light, you should look at the more expensive alternatives. ....


Reply to | Quote Post Reply to PostQuote Reply | Add PhotoAdd Photo


   Go Top


Share This







Member Login