Leave a Light On: Outside Edition

If you've been following along for a while, you may remember that we have a security light on the back of our house. It has never worked and we never shelled out the cash to fix it.

And then, suddenly, a tree fell on it. So we asked for a new one - it was broken after all, even more so than before. Fortunately as the 2013 electrician predicted, the light itself must have been the problem because the replacement worked! Let there be light!

The light turns on automatically when it gets dark out and stays on all night, getting brighter when something sets off the motion detector. It doesn't seem to have an "off" switch, as far as we can tell. Which can be fun when you look out the window and realize an opossum is crossing through your yard:

However, the light coming from two halogen bulbs had to add up (we don't have a smart meter anymore to tell us exactly how much it was costing). After a few months with the two 75W halogens, we finally got around to putting in LED lights. The problem was that our LEDs were actually brighter than the the halogen they were replacing.

A quick adjustment and we were all set:

The halogen lights had stayed on low all the time and then brightened when the motion sensor went off. The motion sensor doesn't seem to work with the LED bulbs, but the constant low lighting in the backyard gives us a better sense of security than the pitch black nothingness, so we'll take it. It's also nice to have a little light back there in the late evening just to hang out outside, though we might have to make some adjustments when the lightning bugs start to come out.

By the way, the title of this post refers to a post a few years ago when we bought an LED bulb, a cheap lamp, and a timer and set it up so that there was a light on in the house to greet me when I came in after work for the few months of the year that it was dark.