I came up with this idea to get these lights higher for better light distribution. After several ideation drawings and sourcing components, I arrived with this pretty professional looking solution.
Materials:
-U-Bolt wedged into drilled holes on fixture
-cable management clips to mount to fence
Looking great! I have some solar lights but they're a PITA since they refuse to hold a charge all night and besides the summertime, they barely hold a charge an hour after it gets dark. I'd like to put up low voltage landscape lighting but my parents won't let me.
Nice mod, I used to charge the NiCad batteries on a AC charger if they didn't charge properly. It helped a bit but eventually I still had to get a new battery.
I have a plug-in battery charger. They will make it through the night the first night and that's it. I wonder if the solar panels on top are going bad. Some of mine have become dayburners too lol. I'll stick a new battery inside and the light won't shut off so i just stick it back outside and it's dead in a day.
This year I had to ditch old batteries, they released corrosive material on contacts. Used Steel wool to clean the corroded contacts. 4-pack of NICD AA batteries was $10 at canadian tire. Lights stay on hours longer, but not any brighter, and they seem to remain dim through the night when the battery life runs down.
Nice. I like the idea of mounting them on the fence... Never thought about doing it with regular lights like this, but I've been wanting to do this with some solar spotlights (instead putting them near the top, light pointing down) but the the fence needs some repairs before I'd trust it (new poles as some are rotted out) I just have it sorta slapped together from the last time the wind took it down...
I bring all my solar lights in for the winter & remove the batteries (no point in putting them through that abuse, plus the backyard gets no sun in the winter anyway). Its now time for them to go back out, I've been testing batteries...any that my charger shows as not holding much of a charge will be going (it has a 'test' feature that will show how many milliamp-hours a battery holds)
@Mike: those ones that become dayburners, and the ones that won't charge even with a known good battery. Its generally not the solar panel, but the little charging circuit... from the ones I've had fail & taken apart which is multiple, most common thing is that water gets in & rusts things out, other times some part has failed (I don't bother trying to diagnose or fix). These days so many of those little lights are like anything else, very cheaply made....
Ah cool. My older Westinghouse solar lights would just dim out but the new ones annoyingly flash on and off, sometimes slowly like a traffic signal might do and other times flash like a strobe light really fastly.
Login
I bring all my solar lights in for the winter & remove the batteries (no point in putting them through that abuse, plus the backyard gets no sun in the winter anyway). Its now time for them to go back out, I've been testing batteries...any that my charger shows as not holding much of a charge will be going (it has a 'test' feature that will show how many milliamp-hours a battery holds)
@Mike: those ones that become dayburners, and the ones that won't charge even with a known good battery. Its generally not the solar panel, but the little charging circuit... from the ones I've had fail & taken apart which is multiple, most common thing is that water gets in & rusts things out, other times some part has failed (I don't bother trying to diagnose or fix). These days so many of those little lights are like anything else, very cheaply made....