Walkway Lighting
It's funny how we take some modern conveniences for granted. I was reminded of this the other night when someone forgot to turn on the outside lights and I tripped walking up to my house.
Walkway lighting has come a long way over recent decades. When I was young, one could go outside at night and look up and down our street and down into the subdivision in the valley below and see lamp post lights flickering at the junction of each and every house's driveway and the sidewalk leading from the driveway to the house. This was testimony to the marketing genius of the local natural gas utility and its boundless confidence in the security of its supplies. It had convinced the developer of the housing plans to install natural gas powered pole lamps in each yard.
These things had no on/off switch; they burned continuously day and night- until the energy fiasco of 1973. After that, the gas pole lamps were disconnected and replaced with electric models, complete with on/off switches. It had become simply too expensive to operate those natural gas lights.
In a way, things have now come full circle. Outdoor lighting is now commonly seen to operate during all hour of darkness, as solar powered and low voltage electric lighting have come to dominate the marketplace. Now, however, although some people opt for the traditional pole lamp at the junction of their driveway and sidewalk, the trend is to install smaller, less bright lamps all along the walkways and anywhere else light may be desired.
The flexibility of these types of lighting has led to them being referred to by many names: walkway lighting, deck lighting, garden lighting, landscape lighting and decorative lighting, just to name a few. What they have in common is that they are powered by solar power, accumulated by each unit during the daylight hours, or a low voltage flow of electricity from the household electrical supply.
There are literally thousands of shapes, sizes and styles from which to choose. Designers have had a field day coming up with variations on the theme. From the venerable pole lamp to short units spaced about every five feet or so along a walkway, to recessed lights intended for mounting in walls, to more focused lights to be hidden among foliage as highlights, to underwater lights intended to provide a soft glow in fish ponds or even swimming pools.
By far the most common application is walkway lights. In many neighborhoods it's a rare house indeed which doesn't have the sidewalk softly illuminated along its entire length with low to the ground lamp units. They are made to stay close to the ground as they typically produce only twenty to thirty watts of light, which isn't much. However, they have the advantage of not deluging the entire neighborhood with light.
These types of light provide some security, as anyone moving around within about fifteen or twenty feet of them will be easy to spot. However, they are limited that way in their range, and people interested in having security lighting must turn to other means.
Probably the best answer for this issue is to have spotlights running at normal household current mounted strategically around the house and connected to motion detecting switches. If a bad guy (or a stray cat, for that matter) ventures into the invisible beam of the motion sensing unit, bright spot lights will illuminate a broad arc around the house. Some people even have alarms rigged to sound inside the house when the motion sensor is activated, although if there are many cats around that system can drive one to distraction.
Low voltage lights are more complicated to install than are solar powered lights. The latter type has a solar battery built into it that passively accumulates power during the day, as well as a light sensor that turns them on when dusk arrives. They have the disadvantage of becoming dimmer as the night wears on. Each unit is free standing, and all one has to do to get them up and running is take them out of the box and stick them in the ground where desired.
On the other hand, low voltage lights will require a connection to the household power supply by means of a wire running from the individual light units. The wires are unsightly and most people bury them, which requires some investment of effort. A lot of people just hide the wire under some mulch. The electrical connections are simple and hardly require the services of an electrician if the instructions are carefully followed.
Whichever type of light you may decide is best for you, be assured that either on line or at your local home center, you will find a plethora of styles available.
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