This really shouldn’t be a big deal, but it is to me. For the last 7 years, the lights on my garage have been on. The previous owner either installed them himself or had a friend put them in. They were on a circuit that couldn’t be turned off and on. So, they were on, ALL THE TIME! That’s how they were when we bought the house and that’s how they have stayed. We’ve looked into switching them out with dusk-to-dawn replacements over the years, but we felt that would kick off a mass replacement of all our outside light fixtures. We were looking into it again this week and decided to look into dusk-to-dawn conversion kits. That search led to a bunch of YouTube videos, which led to a dusk-to-dawn lightbulb adapter, that in turn led to the Holy Grail. LED lights with a built-in dusk-to-dawn light sensor. I couldn’t believe it when I saw those. How could there be something so perfect out there all this time and we didn’t know? Guess you don’t know if you don’t look, right? I ordered a set of three from Amazon. The price? $15.10 for the set. Which beats the $40+ per fixture road that we were heading down. That would have been an equipment cost of at least $240 to replace all of the outdoor fixtures. Throw in the cost of labor (mine or a professional electrician) and that price goes higher and higher. I was so excited to get them installed that I did it on my lunch break (I work from home). The hardest part was waiting for sunset. It reminded me of how it used to feel waiting for Christmas morning. Finally, evening approached and I made numerous trips outside to stare at the lightbulbs. They still hadn’t come on. I was starting to get a little worried but decided to wait it out some more. My wee bit of patience was rewarded when the sun finally set. Both lights were on and it was a beautiful sight to see. My biggest takeaway from this whole experience was that doing a little bit of research can save you big in the end. I know this is not a new concept, but it’s always good to be reminded from time to time. 🙂
