Today I’ll be talking about a very interesting use of solar lights called solar pathway lighting. The solar lights are a great way to a add an element a safety to your pathway as well as a charming addition to your landscaping.
Solar pathway lights come in many different varieties. They can be as simple as solar driveway markers that are playing double duty or you can spice up your pathway even more by using solar rock lights to give your pathway a little bit of a more rustic appearance. The most beneficial use for solar pathway lighting is to improve the safety of walking down your pathway during the night.
We have installed pathway lighting on our property in a couple of locations. Our horse corrals are located about 800 feet from our home and there isn’t any electricity going back to the corrals. Walking out at night to check on the horses if we think there’s a problem was quite dangerous because we live in the woods where there are lots of trees and rocks and it was quite easy to run into a tree or twist your ankle if you weren’t really careful. After installing solar pathway lights, it became much safer and easier to make the long dark journey out to check on the horses at night.
If you’ve ever gone to a movie theater, you know how difficult it can be finding your way down the stairs and to the door after a long movie. Your eyes simply have an adjusted to the lighting in the theater once the movie finishes. Movie theaters have similar lights along the edges of the stairs so that you can see exactly where to step. This is how solar pathway lighting works. They don’t output a lot of light because they don’t need to. Their main purpose is to give you a visual reference of exactly where to place your feet while you’re walking down your pathway at night.
While they are primarily utilitarian in nature, they can also improve the look of your landscaping quite a bit. There are several variety’s of solar pathway lights for you to choose from. If you have a rustic landscape, you might be interested in purchasing some solar rock lights and strategically position them along the pathway to provide your pathway lighting needs.
These solar lights are extremely easy to install because there is no wiring needed whatsoever. You simply remove them from the box and place them in the location that you would like the light to be. The hardest part will be pressing them into the ground if you happen to hit of tree rook or a rock in the area you want them to be. Here’s a tip for you. If you happen to hit a tree root while you are pressing the pathway lights take into the ground, you can use a long drill bit on an electric drill to make a hole through the root. This won’t hurt the tree at all and it’ll make inserting the stake for the solar pathway lighting much easier.
If you have a cement pathway, you might be interested in installing some pathway lights that glue or bolt down to the cement pathway. When shopping for these, they are normally found under solar driveway lights or solar driveway markers. This may be the perfect solution for you if you live in a concrete jungle. These solar lights are just as effective but instead of sticking them into the ground, they are either glued for bolted to the concrete. If you both them to the concrete, you will use a special drill bit that is designed for drilling in cement. Then, you will insert lead or plastic cement anchors into the hole that you drilled and simply secure the pathway light to the cement a bolt.
One of the nice things about solar pathway lighting is that they don’t require any electricity. They get all of the energy that they need to produce the light that they put out from the power of the sun. These small solar light fixtures have rechargeable batteries in them and a solar panel on top. The solar panel converts the energy from the sun into electricity and the rechargeable batteries store electricity for use at night.
They also have photoelectric eyes that automatically turn them on at night and automatically turn them off it in the morning. This is a great feature and it’s makes it quite convenient because you don’t have to remember to turn the lights on or off.
Most solar pathway lighting is quite energy efficient as well to make the charge in the batteries last much longer. In the majority of cases, these solar lights will be equipped with LED light bulbs which are much energy efficient than incandescent or halogen light bulbs.
If you have a pathway at your home that would benefit from some solar pathway lighting, why not invest in your safety and improve the look of your landscaping at the same time by purchasing some solar pathway lights.