Out in front of the house is a small lamp post. It was wired together with the porch light, so a single switch turned on/off both lights. The problem was that there was no good way to have the lights controlled with a dusk/dawn sensor; the porch light would have to always be on or we had to turn them on/off manually. At one point, I replaced the light switch with a timer switch — and it worked for a while, but it was always a pain to adjust with the seasons or if we were travelling.
At some other point, an electircal problem cropped up and the lamp post stopped working. I did some digging around, but not much actual digging. My guess is the fault was somewhere underground between the house and post and it wasn't worth trying to suss out. We onsidered trying to just remove the post, but then I found a solar-powered LED replacement that fit the post (this Hampton Bay light looks similar to what we got). It worked well for a while (I don't recall exactly when, but it was prior to when the other exterior lights were installed/replaced in 2014. Over time, though, charging grew slower and the light turned off earlier even after sunny days (it is in partial shade, so charging would sometimes be an issue).
The solar panels were on the flat top of the lamp and after years of exposure to the weather, they were pretty dirty. One day when Celeste was pressure washing the front steps, I had the bright idea to try and clean the solar panels with the pressure washer. That didn't fix the problem, but it did accelerate the need for a replacement. The thing pretty much stopped working.
This afternoon, the replacement arrived — a Lutec London/LED. Installtion was pretty easy (despite the large number of spiders and ants that had made a home in the old lamp) and it surprisingly turned on at dusk despite only have a few hours of late=afternoon sun. The solar panels on this one are arrayed around the top at an angle, so hopefully they will be more effective than the older one. If nothing else, they are a lot cleaner, which is sure to help too.
