We went solar with our landscape lights

I love having landscape lighting but it sure is a pain to keep up with. It's a pain to install in the first place, you have to have an outdoor plug, then you have to install the transformer and run all the wiring, then attach all the lighting fixtures. So we did all that about 3 years ago when we had our backyard landscaped. The bulbs are always going out and the wires are constantly coming up out of the ground and our yard guys have even cut the electrical wires a few times.

In the last 3 months or so it seems like almost all our bulbs went out at the same time and I just got tired of making trips to Home Depot and Lowes so we just let them go. I had been thinking about upgrading our lights to solar landscape lights for a while and it just seemed like the right time to do it.

I would have bought solar lights to begin with but I always felt like they were too dim. You've seen those solar walkway lights that barely glow and they sure don't light up the path you are walking on like they are supposed to. There have been some big improvements in the last year even in solar landscape lights so we were ready to make the change.

We went to Lowe's to check out the selection and for outdoor spot lights we had two choices - one had 3 LED bulbs per light kit that retails for $19.96 and one had 4 LED lights per light kit that retails for $29.98 . We bought the lights with 4 LED bulbs - the more LED's the brighter the light will be.

Here's a shot of Q installing the new lights next to our pool-

Here's the new solar light next to our old hard-wired landscape light (just below the solar light sort of in the shadow)

The new lights are much larger in size so they aren't as subtle - they really stuck out to me, but it could just be because they are new and I'm not used to them. The solar panel pivots on two different axes so they are easy to position to get the most sunlight.

I know you want to see the lights in action at night but I would need a tripod for my camera because the shots are super blurry otherwise. You'll have to take my word that they work just as well as our old hard wired lights - they might even be a little brighter. I love knowing that we aren't using any electricity with them too, really if I could I would convert my house to solar power. If we decide to stay here another 5 years or so, we still might. We have so much sun here in So. Cal it just makes sense - and if I was on any kind of city council committee regarding building codes, I would make solar panels a requirement for all new housing construction over 2500 sq ft. If you can buy a McMansion, you can afford to buy a solar paneled McMansion....and I'm stepping off the soap box now.

If you are thinking about installing outdoor lighting, give the solar section a good look. If you are on the fence, buy one and try it out for a day and night - I think you'll be impressed. Just remember the more LED bulbs - the brighter the light will be be. We also bought walkway lights that only have one LED bulb per light and we were really disappointed.


While doing some research (a.k.a. reading the SkyMall catalog on the plane back from Austin) I found this killer solar landscape light with 8 LED bulbs for $59.95 from Hammacher Schlemmer. I haven't seen this light in action but with 8 LED's it must be really bright! I think that if we decide to add landscape lighting to the front of our home two or three of these would be all we would need.



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