I want to do some landscaping in the front of my house, but would rather not have to run an low-voltage system if I don't have to.

Are there any recommendations for solar-powered landscape lighting?

I basically want a few "warm-colored" spot lights to shine up at trees and a few small area lights.

I cannot recommend any specific lights, but I can tell you what happened with mine. I installed a few string lights on some shrubs. They worked fine for a few months, then they started to fade. From the start they were not getting enough sunlight during the day to keep them lit all night (this was toward the tail end of the summer, and they were placed in full sun). Over the winter things got worse and worse, and then one by one, they stopped lighting at all. My thought was that the batteries had given out and I decided to try an revive them. When disassembled, I found that they had been colonized by ants and were packed full of ant shit. Cleaning out the mess revived one of the three strings for a short time (a few days). I bought four strings but only installed three, I probably have one unopened string around here somewhere. It is yours if you want it (if I can find it, wife might have thrown it out).

Solar is easy to install, no power bill,

Problem with solar is, the amount of sunlight time the light gets to charge, as the sun shifts you might find lights that once fully charged, no longer charge or only partially. This dictates location possibilities

The batteries in the lights will need to be replaced from time to time, they don't last forever and don't provide as much light as wired

The advantage is you can put them anywhere without having wires to run, disadvantage, you have to put them where they get sunlight. So, hiding them in the shrubs to light up features on your home like a column may not be possible.

For those you need to find a solar set with a remotely locatable panel that can be put in the sunlight while keeping the light hidden, then again, you now have an exposed panel.

I never could get decent lighting with the solar versions.
Ran the 12v lines and connected to transformer.
It was a little work but not that bad.
The lighting quality was a million times better.
Got the lighting from Lowes.
YMMV

I had the same results as smschulz.

I had several sets of solar post lights on my deck.

Gave up on solar and bought low voltage led lights.

Been running for 2 years now. Work great bright enough to light the deck for dinner, and no noticeable increase in the light bill.

Have them set to go on at sunset and off at sunrise.

Yep I had the same results with the solar lights. They just don't last. I went to the trouble of running a low voltage wire.

In fact I have 4 different transformers powering lights around my 3 acres. They use such a small amount of power that it isn't noticeable on the bill. The LED lights are a game-changer as far as power consumption and light output. A 5 watt LED spot puts out a good bit of light where a 50 watt incandescent would barely match it. So if you have a 120 watt transformer you can run 2 of the 50 watt incandescents or 24 of the LEDs. Of course, wire size and length of the run play into it as well, but I have one run that is 200 feet long and it does fine.

Anything you get at the box store is cheap Chinese crap with weak output solar panels and weaker batteries. They are like anything else. Spend some time online and do some research. You are going to spend some money but you will have something that does what you want it to. There are several USA manufactured companies that do solar lighting that are higher quality but again open you're wallet.

Be sure look at the places you want the lights and see how much direct sunlight the solar panel will get, that way you know if you can use a light with the panel attached or it will require a separate solar charging panel you can place in direct sunlight leaving the light hidden.

I have a recommendation, but not on the lights themselves.

Be careful seating the light's ground spike.

My story from 2018...

********************************************
Sig2340 posted June 5, 2018 13:37
Four weeks ago I lost my balance when installing a ground-spiked solar light to mark the edge of the driveway.

A small thing, one might think. Fall, get up, dust yourself off, and motor on.

Nope. Not moi.

I lost my balance on the edge of the drainage ditch that runs across the front of my property. It's not much of a ditch, perhaps 18" deep, with the place were I was standing another 12-16" above the top of the ditch. It was far enough down I knew with certainty that if I stiff legged the impact I'd break my hip.

So out I go, with a push trying to clear the 30" wide ditch.

Lacking sufficient velocity I crash into the far edge, about which I pivoted, slamming my left shoulder into the pavement, full force. It hurt. A lot. As in my first thought was I'd broken the head of my humerus.

Turns out I have a double, full thickness tear of the rotator cuff, with a torn biceps tendon to boot.

I have surgery in two weeks to repair the lot.

But the injury and surgery isn't why I post this lament, it's what I'm missing as a result.

I am going to miss seeing The Glitch Mob at Red Rocks Ampitheater in Colorado. I am also not going to get to drive up to Wyoming the next day to shoot my 6.5 Creedmore AR-10 while spending my limited vacation time under the starry skies because I'm not to fly until mid-July, and not to shoot pistols, rifles, or shotguns left handed (which I am) until the end of September at the earliest.

All from putting a solar light in.

FUCK!!!!

*******************************************************************

BTW, this morning I was back at the orthopedic surgeon who repaired it discussing why it feels like I re-tore the damn thing. His take was I hadn't been nice to that shoulder before the fall (two grade 2 separations from MC accidents), so its likely arthritis. But we start with steroids, and go forward from there.

I've never seen anything you can buy at at home Depot or Lowe's worth using. The only actually functional set I've worked on was extremely expensive. It involved a largish solar panel wired to a controller/photocell and a huge marine grade battery. The battery and wiring connections were buried in a underground splice box with conduits running to fixtures to light up a neighborhood entrance sign.

This setup was extremely expensive and I still had to trench from splice box to fixture to fixture.

I'd suggest either using the ones you see at box stores and Amazon seasonally and throwing them away in the fall or running the wiring for LV lighting. LV lighting is exempt from most of the burial depth codes and can be buried using a wedge style burial tool.

I attempted using landscape solar lights with very disappointing results. Lights do not stay on the entire night and dim with each hour until they die out.
I finally installed a Hampton Bay low voltage system from HD and have never looked back. Lights stay on all night and all are bright.
I wish from the start I would have gone with the low voltage system to save the money.

the Chinese stuff sucks. The solar cells are not uv protected and turn to shit in one year. Absolute crap. Not even worth bending over to stick them in the ground. Go with wired low voltage led lights.

I am buying a new house. Despite very nice landscaping, they have no lights. I have no plans to even look at solar. LV lighting is what I will go with. A little more work up front, but better results and less maintenance over the long term.

quote:

Originally posted by holdem:
I am buying a new house. Despite very nice landscaping, they have no lights. I have no plans to even look at solar. LV lighting is what I will go with. A little more work up front, but better results and less maintenance over the long term.

Pro Tip: Don't do what I did and solder splices on your LV line, and then bury them. Typical Tin-Lead solder does not fair well when buried and gets wet. I had to fix things after lights stated to become intermittent after a few years. The tin-lead solder just goes away in that environment. Corrosion I guess.

quote:

Originally posted by radioman:

quote:

Originally posted by holdem:
I am buying a new house. Despite very nice landscaping, they have no lights. I have no plans to even look at solar. LV lighting is what I will go with. A little more work up front, but better results and less maintenance over the long term.

Pro Tip: Don't do what I did and solder splices on your LV line, and then bury them. Typical Tin-Lead solder does not fair well when buried and gets wet. I had to fix things after lights stated to become intermittent after a few years. The tin-lead solder just goes away in that environment. Corrosion I guess.

They are expensive, but this is the UL listed solution for splices. You can also buy a tube of silicon caulk and fill regular wire nuts with it, but that is not a code allowed method.

Why silicone caulk vs dielectric grease? Feel like this is a stupid question, but need an answer.

I bought solar lights at Walmart about 3 years ago. They have worked very well. People above had mentioned that you have to put them where sunlight is to charge. However - I had gotten some that the solar panel has like 10 feet of wire to the light. This way, you can put the panel where it can charge, but put the light where you want. I don't expect them to last very long - but I'm happy they have lasted this long. A word of caution - you will probably end up buying twice as many as anticipated. I only got 2 to start with, but was so impressed with how nice they look at night, I've added several more to compliment it.

quote:

Originally posted by barndg00:
Why silicone caulk vs dielectric grease? Feel like this is a stupid question, but need an answer.

To keep water out. The ones UL listed for wet locations are just wire nuts with silicone inside and some plastic to hold the silicone in place.

In a pinch or just to be cheap one could fill a wire nut with the caulk and wrap connections in electrical tape to hold caulk in. 99.44% as good as the product made specific for the application.

Never had anything in the past decade that would last very long. Everything we've ever tried has petered out after 6 or 9 months...

I can only assume the stuff they install on folks roofs are orders of magnitude better than what's for sale in the hardware stores or amazon.

Check out "solar goes green". I have a bunch of them, they last typically about 4 or 5 years until something breaks on the smaller lights. I have 2 of their large bill board lights on my roof, they light up the entire back yard. At least 5 years old and have never had to touch them.