Suitable outdoor lighting for patio & front door.

JustAnotherSaver

There is poor lighting on our street. To be honest i don't remember seeing any lamp posts at all. If we have any then they're either crap or broken.

We have a light at our front door, but this is poor because it's switch controlled from the inside, so is a bit of a waste of time when you're looking for your front door key in the dark. It needs to be some sort of motion sensor.
However at the same time, neighbours have cats, so it can't be coming on every 10 seconds because of cats. Equally cars (even though it's a cul de sac), and the Mrs is also concerned about blinding/floodlighting houses opposite.


Then there's the patio. The bulb that was in was a total waste of time - it lit NOTHING. I switched this for a cool white LED B22 which improved things, but very slightly. This is also switched from the inside.
Now this one doesn't HAVE to be motion sensored, although it'd be preferred i think just for security reasons.

Again the Mrs is concerned about it floodlighting the houses opposite.

I was looking at some solar motion sensor lighting units, but then there's the obvious concern with those of requiring sunlight.

At my mums it doesn't really matter because we're in a detached house in the middle of nowhere, so we can have a big whopping light unit flooding the entire garden like a football pitch lighting setup, but that isn't suitable for the house we've bought as it'll be offensive to the neighbours.

Can you recommend something suitable for the needs?

RealWelshWizard

you can get led bulbs with a sensor built into them? would save a new light fitting etc. ? http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/LED-PIR-Sensor-Lamp-Bulb-32-Warm-White-LEDs-Presence-Detector-2-4-Watt-Lightbulb-/231104353195?pt=UK_Light_Bulbs&hash=item35cee493ab

JustAnotherSaver

Can't see that working tbh as what we've got is this both front & rear:



Looking at the link it'll only detect in the direction it's pointing? which is above.

Jonesya

Ok, so you don't want PIRs because of nuisance triggering, why not go for a simple dusk to dawn control on a photocell or (and you might get one cheap off Ebay) something like an Sangamo solar timer which can switch the lights on at dusk then depending on the model, off again late at night and/or on again for a few hours in the morning.

For the fixtures, if you're running them for a lot of hours you want something efficient, have you seen those low energy floodlights that take conventional low energy bulbs? Alternatively you can get 10W / 20W LED floods quite cheaply now from a range of suppliers (£10-15 off ebay). If you angle these fittings straight down you get a full cut-off effect, all the light goes down, little or none goes up and they do a great job of lighting up the area around the house - doors, windows etc to aid security, plus there's no glare so people looking onto the house aren't blinded by the flood lights. You'd need several of them, spread along the sides of the house to give an even spread of light.

I installed something like this around my house, 7 light fittings totaling 62W and it lights it up brilliantly, no glare, really even light and low running costs/environmentally friendly and low light pollution.

This sort of thing:
http://www.toolstation.com/shop/Lighting/Floodlights/23W+Low+Energy+Floodlight/d220/sd2678/p98403

Or this (but much cheaper off Ebay!):
http://www.toolstation.com/shop/Lighting/LED+Lights+IP65+Rated/LED+IP65+Floodlight+10W+820ml/d220/sd3210/p40327

RealWelshWizard

I know someone who has one of these bulbs in a light the same as this and it works fine. :-)

JustAnotherSaver wrote: »

Can't see that working tbh as what we've got is this both front & rear:



Looking at the link it'll only detect in the direction it's pointing? which is above.

JustAnotherSaver

Jonesya wrote: »

Ok, so you don't want PIRs because of nuisance triggering

Sorry but where did i say that? I'm not even sure how you came to that conclusion as i never said that at all or even implied that.

I'm no light guru. I've had a look, sure, but i don't know how good &/or bright units are, how much/little they flood an area etc which is why i've come here - to ask people in the know. If there's a motion detecting unit on the market that doesn't flood a massive area with superbright light then i'm very interested. I'm not ruling out motion detectors totally with a blanket statement.

All i said was:

* I don't want the light to flood/bright the neighbours (the neighbours to our left, our right & directly in front).
* I would like the light to focus directly onto our patio area for the rear & out driveway for the front (or if not the driveway as this isn't totally neccessary then just the doorway so you can find your keys).

My initial concern was having the light unit too 'low' where an intruder could whip it off, but the wife pointed out this wasn't really a problem because we've got a burglar alarm anyway so the light unit could actually go low. Maybe on the extension out back which would be within reach, pointing downwards so it doesn't cover neighbours.

I imagine something like the following would give out too wide a span:


As the 'face' is quite a large area.

However maybe something like the following would be better perhaps:


Or even something very similar to the first image, but with a much smaller 'face':


Maybe i'm wrong but perhaps a smaller face would give a smaller 'flood area' & confine the lighting to just our back garden instead of neighbours gardens instead.


The other issue i had with motion detection was the sensitivity. I wouldn't want a cat triggering it because there's lots of cats in the street, so it'll always be going off, but if it was possible to set it so that a cat didn't trigger it but a person did, then that'd be fine.

So far from it - i'm all for motion detection. In fact i'd prefer it IF it could fit the requirements.