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OT Overhead light for driveway recommemndations

WizardOfBoz

Diamond
Joined
Sep 30, 2006
Location
SE PA, Philly
So I have a junction box on the gable above my double garage door. I have a dual floodlight up there, with a motion detector. Problem is, it doesn't last. Any recommendations for a really durable floodlight/electric eye/motion detector setup that will fit up with a 4x4 jbox?

The c**p at Home Despot and Lowes, Lower, Lowest aren't cutting it.

Thanks.
 
What is failing?

Lots of crappy pot metal like fixtures rot and crispy grade electrics fall apart.

Seek old stock materials and upgrade to current active components.

Most lighting now made in China to price but looking for old world made in USA better.

Estate sales often score some or ebay.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G930A using Tapatalk
 
If you didn't have the motion detector requirement, I'd suggest getting an "architectural" type wall pack. Some of these have daylight sensors, so perhaps you could integrate a motion sensor, but I don't know of any that come that way.

I have a pair of wedge-shape, full cutoff, wall packs mounted 10' up to each side of my 12x12 overhead door, and another 10' above the man door. CFL lamps, which has worked out adequately for me, even in freezing temperature. Full cutoff puts the light on the ground where it's useful, not straight out into the air.
 
Doesn't last mechanically or electrically?

I have a 100 watt LED flood light with motion detect over the roller shutter door on my tractor shed. I am currently on my 6th replacement under guarantee in just over a year. They just die. Before installing the latest one I put a surge suppressor on the circuit. Oddly I have three more identical one inside the tractor shed without the motion detection and they haven't failed.

It's still working currently but it's early days having been in about ten weeks
 
Go to a supply house that real electricians use, box stores sell crap. CED is one we have out here, Consolodated Electrical Distributors.

That would be my choice. Most of the electrical distributors around here can offer up the same stuff you get at Home Depot
or Lowes--they have to if they want to be competitive--but they also carry better quality stuff for the buyers who are willing to
pay more...
 
So I have a junction box on the gable above my double garage door. I have a dual floodlight up there, with a motion detector. Problem is, it doesn't last. Any recommendations for a really durable floodlight/electric eye/motion detector setup that will fit up with a 4x4 jbox?

The c**p at Home Despot and Lowes, Lower, Lowest aren't cutting it.

Thanks.

It is "tempting' to just make the whole problem into an easy fully-integrated Edison-base throw-way:

Element Classic PAR38 Motion Sensor – Sengled USA

However .. "BTDTGTTS" and more than once, already. All prior such excursions have ended in Unobtanium replacements, and net spend of MORE money, not LESS, PLUS the go-fetch and messing about time, so..

Skip the next installment of the endless f***ing around and sever the two functions while you have to mess with it at all.

Put a commercial-grade, weatherproof, day/night and/or motion-detector rig - NO LIGHTS - into its OWN Bell-box, strategically placed. This is security-industry stuff, not just lighting per-se (sometimes one wants IR or cameras, AND/NOT visible illumination), so relay(s) may be required.

Put the more vulnerable heat, power, ephemeral, moisture, corrosion, bugs, material crapouting, AKA "bad-news magnets" in separate mount(s).

Run wiring from controller to fixed mounts.

Optionally add a weatherproof outlet for temporary "task lighting" useful off the same controller.

Initial cost will be higher, but yer good by the first-fail of the "ephemeral grade" stuff, and progressively better-off thereafter.

Around 30 years worth?

The "main" one I am replacing/relocating/expanding was here when I bought a 1970's home in 1990, so I don't really know.

The Lowes/HD crapola and/or Heath-Zenith t'other two sides of the place has averaged anywhere from 5 months to ten years, typically 4 to 6 years.

I hadn't actually MINDED that. It was cheap enough.

I'm just getting too old to want to worry about the next go if I can easily make it "never again in my lifetime" good.

"No G-Damned PLASTIC" is a decent start? The silly s**t ages, crazes, cracks, yellows, some combination or all of the above, even ends up in tiny bits on the ground.

Whom, ever, wudda thunk THAT?
 
As mentioned above, while there are good values to be had from HD or Lowes, exterior lighting ain't one of them.
Neither are motion sensor switches.

Yes, you will take a deep breath when the price is added up, but I guarantee that 10-20 years later you won't remember how much you've paid for it, and yet,
they will still be providing the very same service.

Case in point, in my building I've rewired all the outdoor wallpacks from HID to std. sockets, installed a commercial grade photocell on each.
The wall packs are from 1979, cast Aluminum ( not pot-metal ) enclosure, real rubber gaskets, real glass lenses....
Put on the photocell, screwed in 200W LED bulbs ( those were from HD, but they are Creed )... 7+ years and the only thing I've had to do with them
is scrape off the hornet nests.

Ditto for the motion sensors. The HD garbage may work for a bathroom, but try to use one in the shop and find out what happens when you turn on something as
simple as a bench grinder in close proximity. Don't even need to be on the same circuit, just sharing the same neutral will shut off the lights.
 
Oddly enough, the motion detector floodlight mount that I bought from the big-box store 18 years ago is still working just fine. I've replaced maybe 2-3 bulbs over those years ... maybe I just got lucky with the unit I bought?
 
Oddly enough, the motion detector floodlight mount that I bought from the big-box store 18 years ago is still working just fine. I've replaced maybe 2-3 bulbs over those years ... maybe I just got lucky with the unit I bought?

You might have it A) under the eves where rain and drip are no big deal and/or B) positioned where very little direct sunlight bakes the plastic motion-detector "lense" covers to flinders in too-damend-short order.

North (back) side of the house, under-eve mount has that double-benefit set.

West end garage NOT. They just die there.

South side / front porch has been relegated to ekking-out three more years - if it will do - with 3-years nekked-already bare sensors, lense long-gone.

Meanwhile.. the ancient selenium cell gadget as looked at the South side sun through a small button of a GLASS lense since the 1970's still awaits a new role if I but bother to assign it one.
 
You might have it A) under the eves where rain and drip are no big deal and/or B) positioned where very little direct sunlight bakes the plastic motion-detector "lense" covers to flinders in too-damend-short order.

Ah, you nailed it, at least half-way. There's not much protection from rain and drip, but it is the north side of house, and hardly gets any direct sun on it.
 








 
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