When I finished this project up, I got so much satisfaction that I just had to have more! How to do that? That was easy, about 10 years ago I had installed landscape lighting up around the house. At the time, it was half fun and half chore to install them. I got “the kit” that included 15 plastic fixtures, a couple of spotlights (never installed those), the transformer and 100’ of 14 gauge wire. The included bulbs were 4 watt incandescent. The transformer had a mechanical timer and they turned off and on at the proper times once set. All well and good. Over the years, once and while a bulb would blow and I would use one from the unused spotlights to replace it. Sometimes when I was mowing or blowing leaves, one of the globes would blow away. Sometimes I couldn’t find it. The bulbs can cost 2-3 dollars apiece which can add up. Eventually, I started to notice the same fixtures sold separately and on clearance at various stores. I would grab what I could when they were $1. I figured great, bulbs and spare parts. The point of this part is that I just wasn’t that into the landscape lights, they were on the periphery of my interest. Then along came my project in the OP.
When I finished it, it was obvious, the next thing to do was upgrade the existing lighting. That will be fun, and easy! The bulbs in those fixtures are 4W T10 incans. So I went online and found some suitable replacement LED’s here:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/171076233212?item=171076233212&viewitem=&sspagename=ADME:L:OC:US:3160&vxp=mtr
They came in today and I set about to install them. But wait, LED’s run on DC. My existing system is AC. But then, an LED is a diode, it shouldn’t matter right? It will conduct in the positive cycle of the AC and block the current in the negative. If anything the light wouldn’t be quite as bright. Maybe there would be flicker.
Anyway, I decided I would just plug one bulb in and see what happens. It worked, no flicker that I could see but older people may develop “long persistence eyes” Also I confirmed that he LED bulbs work each way they are plugged in. Going great, so I went about removing the old incans and replacing them. As I went through, I could see that the system was getting slightly brighter every time I replaced one of those 4W incans with an LED. Not only would I save money on electricity, but I would end up with more light and less stress on the power supply. Finished!, but wait, I want more. I want more satisfaction, I want to keep extending the fun I’m having. So I think, what if I install a full wave bridge rectifier at the transformer. Now instead of just passing current through the LED’s during a half cycle, I can get current going through both. It should be even brighter. So that’s what I did, I happened to have one from a power brick that blew last week (the filter cap, probably the most common failure). The bridge was still good so I used it. After that, I had to turn some of the bulbs around as I now had polarity to follow, and the lights are a little brighter. If there was any flicker that I couldn’t see, it would now be flickering at twice the frequency, from 60Hz to 120Hz. But I still want more, more satisfaction. So that last thing I did was round up all the globes and brought them in the house and washed them in the kitchen sink. As I was doing that I thought how odd it is that the very globes that would blow all over the yard when I did the leaves, the globes that I could hardly be concerned enough to even make sure they were secured properly, are in the sink and I am washing them. And I am happy to do it! After they were cleaned up I re-installed them and they look great!
The reason I wrote this long story is because tonight I reaffirmed something I had already learned and I hope someone here can benefit from it. One is that you don’t have to spend a lot of money to possess something that you can hold dear. The lights that I just converted over to LED, the ones never paid attention too, are now endeared to me. Not because they were expensive, but because through my efforts they became better. Same as when we mod a flashlight. It doesn’t have to make economic sense, it just has to become endeared to the modder, for whatever reason. The other thing I learned is that the really nice metal fixtures as in my first post do not look any different in the dark! It’s the light we’re interested in here.
Now the pics:
This is a brand new fixture, one of the spares that I had originally purchased for parts to maintain the ones installed 10 years ago. Everything is plastic, but they look great at night.
The bulbs. From left to right, the 10W halogen in the fixture of the OP, the replacement G4 LED from FastTech. Next is the original T10 4W incan from the plastic fixture above, then the LED replacement that I bought off eBay. The last bulb on the right is an earlier effort that I bought from DX a couple of years ago.
If I remember correctly is was 2 or 3 dollars and was a putrid purple in color, eck!!! I only bought the one as an experiment and it was awful. These new bulbs from eBay are not quite as warm as the FastTech ones, but they will do.
Am I finished? Part of me wants to do more. I suppose I could add a filter capacitor to the bridge and up the voltage as it reads a little low. 9V AC before I installed the bridge and 9V DC after. A capacitor that is large enough should bring the voltage up to about 12.5, but you know what? I am going to leave well enough alone. Sometimes the enemy of good, is better.