Outdoor lighting has the potential to transform your garden, bringing light and color to your outdoor spaces, and it can be cheap to use as well. Using outdoor solar lighting allows a green and low-cost solution to outdoor garden lights and outdoor fairy lights. On top of that, solar garden lights are quite cheap to buy and easy to install and maintain. Elegant and available in many styles, they are ideal for driveways, water features, lawns, and much more.
So let’s start with a little science 101. Don’t worry, this won’t get too heavy and I will keep it to what I would understand as well. First of all, outdoor solar lighting does not need mains power. Stating the obvious I know. No wiring and no connection means less hassle to me. Each of the lights is specially made with a magic solar cell. The little cell soaks up the power of the sun like a sponge and charges a battery inside. This battery is a nickel-cadmium battery (Ni-Cad). Just the same tech. You will find in normal rechargeable batteries and stuff around today. When the sun stops shining, the cell stops working, and it switches to giving out the energy as light through the LED light. Similar to the standard LED outdoor lights you can find in outdoor Xmas lights. Easy stuff, really.
So solar garden lights are great for putting in places where electricity is a little dangerous, to say the least. So pop them around water features and pools for a great effect. At night light reflecting off the water is just so mesmerizing and relaxing. Look how beautiful the Diwali candles look on the pools and fountains in India. You can also try them where getting power is a real pain. Far ends of the garden or around patios driveways and for impromptu parties and get-togethers.
I personally like the other benefits that outdoor solar lighting offers, saving me money to start with. I let the sun do all the work, and that is free (For now anyway). No batteries to replace, no wiring, no bills, it is so simple. That means I can move them around to try different things and also pop them up quick and easy for special occasions. I can also sit bathing in their beauty, knowing I have done my little bit for the environment. Every little counts I think no matter how small. I don’t use power so I can count that down as a green win.
Finally, no electricity running through wires means they are perfectly safe. When you have two toddlers with inquisitive fingers and a cat and dog who love to try things by chewing, that is a real piece of mind. Take putting them around a pool, for example. I could not do that with mains lights and relax as the children played. Water and electricity are not good buddies, let’s just say.
You do have to be careful where you put them sometimes, though. They are designed and built to be tough, but that doesn’t mean you don’t have to think first. Try to keep them out of very windy corners. This applies to most outdoor garden lighting, though. They will stand for rain, but I do advise taking them in late fall and into winter. For a start, there is less sun to power them, but constant battering in such weather will shorten their lifespan. Of course, what you can do is pop them out on a calm day on a sunny or light patch just to charge for the nighttime and then pop them back again. I do this for my outdoor Christmas lighting.
If you treat your solar garden lights and solar-powered fairy lights with a bit of care and respect, they should last you for quite a while. It is claimed that most bulbs will go for about 100K hours before failing. I reckon even at 8 hours a day (Or night rather!) that is about 12,500 days or 34 years! Obviously, they probably won’t go that long as other factors come into play for wear and tear. But I have had some garden solar lighting sets now for about five years, and they are still going strong. I think I should be able to see them through another five easily.
I always switch them off before putting them into a store, take them in if a storm or twister is around and give them a good clean before they go away and when they come out.
So looking at it, outdoor solar lighting is a real winner for me. Safe, cheap, clean, and long-lasting. But more importantly, it is beautiful and lets me show off my garden exactly how I want to.
