On 29/11/2019 17:49, NY wrote:
"John" wrote in message
2.236...
Who fits lights to this specification?

I want an outside light that is brighter than the neighbour's. I want
it to
switch on whenever a car goes past or someone walks by.
It must be aimed over the heads of anyone approaching my doorway. Ideally
the light should flood into the windows of the houses across the road.

Ours comes on and stays on 24/7 if the power goes off for a second and
then comes back on (eg when the high-voltage feed to the village fails
*yet again*). I have to be alert to the problem, and turn the power to
the light off (turn off the lighting circuit MCB, since the lamp appears
to be hard-wired with no switch) and then turn it back on after a delay
of about 10 seconds. It is a confounded nuisance.

On the other hand, that is a useful feature for many people. I can
switch our front light off and on so as to "lock" it on while I do some
work on the car or just look for something in the boot. Similarly, I can
do the same with the garage light when I am cutting something outside,
in the evening. I specifically looked out for lights with that feature
as it is so useful. on the other hand, we very rarely suffer momentary
power failures and I can see how it would be a real nuisance there.
Maybe they should build in a 12 hour timer to cancel that feature
automatically.

The security light is one of several that was fitted to the (pre-owned)
house that we bought recently.

Fitting a security light which has no isolating switch is bizarre.

Our garage light didn't have one. I added one specifically so that I
could turn off and on to turn it on permanently!

Equally bizarre is another security light which is wired into the same
circuit as a normal switch-controlled outside light (ie without a PIR
sensor), so if you want to arm the security light you have to have the
other light permanently on. Or else you turn off the normal light and
the security light doesn't work.

That is weird!

After Christmas I'll dig out our solar-powered security lights from our
previous house and set those up in place of the 500W photoflood lights
which are a liability (they annoy the neighbours and they gobble up
electricity if the PIR fails to turn the light off).

Ours are LED and so don't take too much anyway. Plus we don't suffer
from intermittent supplies anyway.

On the other hand, the trickle charger for the kit-car is annoying,
because if we trip the RCD (common-ish due to high leakage of too many
computers and peripherals with integral filters), I have to remember
that the charger has to be manually reset to resume charging - not so
easy if my wife or son has reset the RCD while I am out and I don't even
know that it has been off.

SteveW