We live in a small village and have one of the few old mercury lamps
right outside the bedroom.

It used to come on at dusk and go off just after midnight.
Something has gone wrong or been adjusted because it now
stays on until 2.30 am.

Does anyone know how they work ? I assume the switch on is
light sensitive and the off a timer. About 6 in the area seem to be
linked to the same timings.
Can I just ask the council to readjust something before I purchase
some blackout curtains ! ?

Chris

"Kris" wrote in message

Can I just ask the council to readjust something before I purchase
some blackout curtains ! ?

"to report problems with street lights, traffic lights, pedestrian crossings
or illuminated bollards or to complain about their location, please contact
your local council. If you are reporting problems with temporary traffic
lights, please provide relevant contact details where possible.
If reporting a problem with the street light outside your house, the more
information you can give, the better (that is, the light is out altogether,
its going on and off, its burning all day, is intermittent etc.), include
the number of the column - if you cannot see this then please state the
exact location or adjacent house number.

If the lamp column outside your house is leaning or damaged, an inspector
will come out to assess the damage and then determine how urgent the job is.

If you would like to find out the service available in your local area,
please contact your local council. Your council will also normally provide a
service for emergency or out of hours situations."

you can find your council he

http://www.direct.gov.uk/QuickFind/L...649&chk=70Dj6f

"Kris" wrote in message
...
We live in a small village and have one of the few old mercury lamps
right outside the bedroom.

It used to come on at dusk and go off just after midnight.
Something has gone wrong or been adjusted because it now
stays on until 2.30 am.

Does anyone know how they work ? I assume the switch on is
light sensitive and the off a timer. About 6 in the area seem to be
linked to the same timings.
Can I just ask the council to readjust something before I purchase
some blackout curtains ! ?

Chris
Not an expert, but I believe that street lamps are switched on by
a light sensitive switch, probably there is one between umpteen
lamps, you could see them on top of the selected lampost, a little
perspex cylinder, none of which helps you of course. On the bright side,
they are replacing old lamp with new full cut-off fixtures on a replacement
basis nowadays, so that should cut down the glare a bit for you when
they get around to your lamp-fitting.

Andy.

Kris wrote:
We live in a small village and have one of the few old mercury lamps
right outside the bedroom.

It used to come on at dusk and go off just after midnight.
Something has gone wrong or been adjusted because it now
stays on until 2.30 am.

Does anyone know how they work ? I assume the switch on is
light sensitive and the off a timer. About 6 in the area seem to be
linked to the same timings.
Can I just ask the council to readjust something before I purchase
some blackout curtains ! ?

If you can find the sensor, and arrange a tripod with a laser pointer
pointed at it, with a small power supply in place of the batteries,
that may work.

In article ,
"Kris" writes:
We live in a small village and have one of the few old mercury lamps
right outside the bedroom.

It used to come on at dusk and go off just after midnight.
Something has gone wrong or been adjusted because it now
stays on until 2.30 am.

Does anyone know how they work ? I assume the switch on is
light sensitive and the off a timer. About 6 in the area seem to be
linked to the same timings.

It's probably just timer driven, but using an automatic daylight
adjustment for the 'on' time, which is a standard feature of
timeswitches which used to be used before photocells took over.
It sounds like the timeswitch has lost 2½ hours. They usually
had a spring backup to cover powercuts, but that will run down
eventually.

Can I just ask the council to readjust something before I purchase
some blackout curtains ! ?

Yes. They probably subcontract it out, but they'll know who the
subcontractor is. They might just swap it for a photocell, in
which case it will be on all night.

--
Andrew Gabriel

On Fri, 1 Apr 2005 01:29:52 +0000 (UTC), Andrew Gabriel wrote:

In article ,
"Kris" writes:
We live in a small village and have one of the few old mercury lamps
right outside the bedroom.

It used to come on at dusk and go off just after midnight.
Something has gone wrong or been adjusted because it now
stays on until 2.30 am.

Does anyone know how they work ? I assume the switch on is
light sensitive and the off a timer. About 6 in the area seem to be
linked to the same timings.

It's probably just timer driven, but using an automatic daylight
adjustment for the 'on' time, which is a standard feature of
timeswitches which used to be used before photocells took over.
It sounds like the timeswitch has lost 2½ hours. They usually
had a spring backup to cover powercuts, but that will run down
eventually.

Can I just ask the council to readjust something before I purchase
some blackout curtains ! ?

Yes. They probably subcontract it out, but they'll know who the
subcontractor is. They might just swap it for a photocell, in
which case it will be on all night.

Err, no, there are such things as 1/2 night controllers......
--
the dot wanderer at tesco dot net

"Kris" wrote in message
...
We live in a small village and have one of the few old mercury lamps
right outside the bedroom.

It used to come on at dusk and go off just after midnight.
Something has gone wrong or been adjusted because it now
stays on until 2.30 am.

Does anyone know how they work ? I assume the switch on is
light sensitive and the off a timer. About 6 in the area seem to be
linked to the same timings.
Can I just ask the council to readjust something before I purchase
some blackout curtains ! ?

Not sure who is responsible these days, but this used to be done by
Electricity Boards in the days before privatisation. It is a simple
adjustment of a timeswitch that is required.

Colin Bignell

In article ,
The Wanderer writes:
On Fri, 1 Apr 2005 01:29:52 +0000 (UTC), Andrew Gabriel wrote:

It's probably just timer driven, but using an automatic daylight
adjustment for the 'on' time, which is a standard feature of
timeswitches which used to be used before photocells took over.
It sounds like the timeswitch has lost 2½ hours. They usually
had a spring backup to cover powercuts, but that will run down
eventually.

Err, no, there are such things as 1/2 night controllers......

Which is exactly what I described in the text you quoted in full.
I used to have a mechanical one (could be set for 1/2 night, full
night, and a few other plans). Quite a remarkable piece of
mechanical engineering. Mine didn't have the spring reserve option
fitted, but I believe streetlamp ones normally did.

There was also a chip which could do something similar developed
some ~30 years ago. It switches on at dusk and tries to switch off
at a fixed time. It does this by measuring the length of the dusk
to dawn period to estimate the time it gets dusk, and thus works
out how long the light needs to be on after dusk in order to switch
off at a fixed time. When reset following a power cut, the first
night it will leave the light on all night as it has no idea how
long the dusk to dawn period is. On subsequent nights, it will
have learned the dusk to dawn period and calculates when to switch
the light off. The learning would cover a few days of data so that
one dark afternoon would not throw it wildly off track. However,
this appeared on the schene just as councils were reconfiguring
all their streetlighting to run all night and converting from
expensive error prone daylight adjusting mechanical timeswitches
to cheap reliable photocells, so I'm not sure there was ever much
uptake of it. I bought one and played with it on a breadboard
layout, but I never deployed it in any finished design.

--
Andrew Gabriel

Ian Stirling wrote:
Kris wrote:

We live in a small village and have one of the few old mercury
lamps
right outside the bedroom.

It used to come on at dusk and go off just after midnight.
Something has gone wrong or been adjusted because it now
stays on until 2.30 am.

If you can find the sensor, and arrange a tripod with a laser pointer

pointed at it, with a small power supply in place of the batteries,
that may work.

Increase the laser power a bit and it may never bother you again.
Theres a chance the police might though.


NT