Solar light for lanscaping: Which one?

[Paul_in_Maryland]

My live-in mother-in-law has asked me to order some Bell & Howell solar lights ($29.95 for a set of 2?) to illuminate our walkway. She's been seeing the infomercials. I can't find this brand mentioned online. I like the idea of solar walkway lights, be they embedded in the ground or installed in posts, that need no wiring. But I suspect that most deliver too little light for too few hours.

What specs should I look for? Which brands or models should I consider? I'd like to hold down the cost to about $50 a lamp but if that's unrealistic, I may go higher.

[McGizmo]

I had a reasonably decent one a few years back. It had about a 6"x6" solar array and was mounted on a stake. Somebody decided they needed it more than I did and walked off with it; easy to do.

Many of the ones I have seen lately have smaller solar arrays and I bought one just to see how it would fare. It has an amber LED which typically lights up just enough to know it is a light but not nearly enough to light up any path or surrounds. With long winter nights and dark winter days, I think most of these are hardpressed to break out of the "gimmic" category but that's just MHO.

[James S]

I tend to agree with McGizmo, they aren't really for lighting, more for path marking. Even the ones with a single white LED aren't any brighter than what you'd expect from a single white LED.

If you just want to see where your driveway is, then they are fine, but they dont actually light the area at all.

There are some now that have separate cells and batteries and run a wire to several fixtures, these may be brighter. There are also some others that use a little florescent fixture rather than an LED which might be brighter.

If she really wants to experiment with them, I'd definitely order just 1 pack and see how you like them before you spend a bunch of money. They will not light up things like regular outdoor lamps do.

I've been playing with converting some lamps to luxeon or other large LED's and they work quite well, (not solar ones, regular transformer powered ones) but I'm kind of bogged down in making lots of cheap current limited power supplies for them and haven't actually put any outside yet...

[bfg9000]

I've always wanted a disco-fever glowing walkway to light an outdoor path, and figure modding a single LED inside each frosted glass paving brick would be sufficient to see where you're going. Fully self contained, solar-recharging models are some $250 each reviewed at the bottom of this page: http://www.dansdata.com/ledlights10.htm but i figure I'd rather drill holes and run low voltage wires for cheap.

[hotbeam]

Paul_in_Maryland, PM me your email and I'll shoot you some photos of some "garden" lights.

[Paul_in_Maryland]

PM sent.

The class act seems to be Sunergy's solar spot light(s): each light is powered by 3 NiMH AA cells and uses one Nichia LED plus two TW white LEDs (whatever TW means). They go for about $15 to $20 each in sets of 2, 4, or 6. You could swap out the 900 mAh cells for 2000+ mAh cells to extend runtime.

On eBay, search for the following words:

Sunergy solar spot

[MoonRise]

If you want the lights to light the landscape (and a walkway is a part of the landscape), skip the solar powered ones. Just run some low voltage cable and put lights in.

The solar powered ones typically suffer from small and inadequate solar panels, small and inadequate battery storage, and small and inadequate light emitters. The ones I've seen typically light up enough to be seen for maybe half a night after charging in full sun during the summer. They won't make it through a full night, even after a full day's charge. They will NOT light up the landscape. They will work even less in less-than-full-sun conditions (clouds, rain, snow, etc).

Even the LET mentioned above won't light up the landscape, they'll just glow UP. At least those ones have enough collector area and power storage to make it through a night.

IMHO. Just run low-voltage landscape lights.

[James S]

hey hotbeam, I want to see those too why not post them?