Lighting, Light Fixtures, Ceiling and Exhaust Fans - what's the lowest cost outdoor perimeter lighting? (solar charger?)

Electric rates are set to soar 50% here in PA in a year and I currently have older low watt lights (the cheap home depot kit kind). I have a 40-50ft walk area in front of my house where i had about 12 lights that worked adequately and in the back of the house in my spa area, i had a kit of about 10 lights.

I think they are about 11 watts each so 22x11=242 watts and at about 12 cents kwh that is 9 hours for 26 cents a night (12 hours in winter would be 35 cents a night. So that's over $100 bucks a year just for the lights.

This is about one month's electric for me so i want to cut it back as much as i can. Even if there are new solar lights that work well, the walk is on the north side of the house and there are trees there. So not an option. The spa area is on the south side but is rather enclosed with house/trees/fence so at most gets more light than up front but not a full exposure. I do, however, have great southern roof exposure for solar in regards to other issues.

any suggestions on options? Im open to anything as i have a totally open canvas since my house has been excavated and i'm starting from scratch with new grass etc around it. I'd be open to area lighting vs individual fixtures if it used a lot less electricity and didnt look like i was lighting up a parking lot.

I had one idea about using a solar battery charger to power this but will start a separate thread about it so as not to muddle the issue.

Just an opinion..no expert.

LED low voltage lights might work...but you might need to increase the number to compensate for the reduce light output. I guess there are some now that use multiple LEDs in one housing to help with that.

The solar type are ok for something like path lighting...but they won't be worth doodoo in the winter due to reduced daylight. The batteries will also be the major flaw...you could spend more replacing the batteries after a few years than the lights cost originally.

As I said..just some thoughts.

good suggestion about LED, i really didnt know they had them out now. One hit on amazon was

Amazon.com: Paradise GL22870BK6 6 Piece Plastic Construction Lanterns with Super Bright LED Bulbs, Black: Home Improvement (http://www.amazon.com/Paradise-GL22870BK6-Plastic-Construction-Lanterns/dp/B000PY7K6I/ref=sr_1_15?ie=UTF8&s=hi&qid=1245966106&sr=8-15)

shows 6 lights with a 12 watt transformer so ill assume thats total 2 watts per light.

I currently have 22 lights 11 watts each and that costs me over 100 bucks a year to have on

22 lights x 2 watts = 44 watts and 9 hours per night at 12 cents kwh is .05. Then .05 per night x 365 is $18.25.

so even if i need 2x the lights, that would only be 36 bucks a year in electricity.

Of course the cost of LED is higher than traditional but id' make that up in a few years no problem. Plus it definitely is cheaper than trying to buy solar/battery/charger/wire and worry about maintaining that with traditional bulbs.

ill have to begin my search for NON solar powered LEDs

A few of my neighbors have installed LED landscape lighting. For what I see it doesn't illuminate the area at all, just a glowing spot in the dark. The solar-recharged battery models are even worse in that they are a dim glow.

I think I would consider line-voltage LED lamps in regular line-voltage fixtures before I considered the types that my neighbors have installed. No matter what you finally decide it will not be cheap. You may find that even with the increased cost of power it would take many years to pay for the conversion.

Something that may, or may not, be available to you would be "off-peak" metering of a portion of your purchased power. Of course it would have to be an option offered by your serving utility but under the right circumstances it could save you money.

that was one thing i was worried about, how well it lights things up. I guess until you buy one and see, you will never know for yourself though. Which is why i was thinking maybe some kind of remote solar thing may pay off with my regular lights. It's a sure thing from that perspective

what do you mean LED in regular fixtures? do you mean i can just buy bulbs to fit my aged malibu regular lights and that would use much less electricity with my current transformers?

regarding off peak yes i'm getting an offpeak meter installed in the next few weeks and that will cut the bill from 12 cents to 7.5 overnight, but i wanted even more savings, i'm greedy :) Especially when it comes to a possible 50% increase in my rates. So that 7.5 today may become 12 again in 2011

as an aside, I just realized something i may have done wrong and will have to check later on. When the bulbs have blown out in my existing fixtures, i replaced them with 7 or 11 watts because thats what i found at home depot. But i didnt take into account transformer capacity so am unsure if i've been overtaxing them or not. I think maybe the original fixtures were 4.

i think i found out what you mean..is this something like it:

The GeoBulb™ Wedge Base LED Light Bulb is a direct
replacement for wedge-base (T3, T4 and T5 size) bulbs used
in Malibu® 12V type outdoor lights. Unlike average bulbs that have to be
replaced at least once a year, GeoBulb Wedge Base bulbs last over ten
years (at eight hours a night) — saving you money every minute theyʼre
on. The GeoBulb Wedge Base bulb uses less than 1/4 of the energy of a
standard 4-watt wedge base bulb and, when used in a downward or
upward position, is even brighter than an 11-watt incandescent bulb

Cool White (2 Pack) ..... $29.95 OUCH!

Just a different perspective---my walkway is pretty close to my house & having typical soffits along the edge, I installed LOA Flatpack CFL 9W on about 20' centers, flush mounted into the soffit. Nice effect lighting for 11W (actual consumption) per 20'. Had a lot of burnouts at first until I learned (thru this website) to use an isolation relay with the photocel. Ea fixture costs about $20. I've got 15 of these around the house.

i assume you mean this

Lights of America 9W Fluorescent Wall Light (Brown) (9209) (http://www.lightsofamerica.com/en/Products/9209.aspx)

and understand you are saying i'd get more bang with less lights. I think i'm first gonna see about this LED bulb discussed above if i can figure out the right transformer to use or maybe a resistor to keep the volts down. Using my unregulated transformer may be an issue so i'm told from others on this board. My plan was maybe buy 2 lights to see how bright they are then worry about tranformer etc later once i'm sure they are bright enough for me.

also figuring how to mount those cfls may not be that ez for me.

Well, in true Do-It-Yourself fashion, I got some 1/16" sheet aluminum, and with a small metal brake made some open-ended cans to suspend the 9209 fixtures a few inches up into the soffits. Ran lamp cord along the soffit protected with a 5 Amp fuse. Nice effect, because the lights don't shine directly in your eyes.

well no way would i ever cut into my soffits so that can idea is out for me. heck one small piece fell outside my breezeway a few years ago and i never got it back up lol. But i have to admit i like the idea (if this is even possible) of hanging some kind of directional light from there.

my reasoning is, there's no way to cross over my concrete from one side of the front of the house to another. in the past, i just had the cord run across my 1st step because it had separated and there was a tiny crack. But now i have a new first step poured so there's no crack there lol

So is the soffit too 'unsubstantial' to hold any kind of light fixture? or maybe i'm barking up the wrong tree because the idea is to decrease my watts and i do wonder how bright i'd need to light up down do the ground.

just aimless thinking aloud now..still open to any ideas at all.

My soffits are 3/16" thick plywood nailed on 24" centers to the extended ceiling joists, so they're easy to cut out with a jig saw, and plenty strong to support those lightweight fixtures.
While I was at it, I cut out a bunch of similar sized holes so as to install more soffit vents. In the process, I recovered a whole bunch of blown-in insulation that had fallen into the soffits. (...and a dead rat I was tempted to tell my wife about, but wisely did not).

like i said, i'm not very carpentry inclined ;) But i guess if i found the joists i could screw right through the metal into the wood, correct?

but then I'm unsure of the brightness i'd need to shine the walkway and around the rest of the house. And i'm betting there's no way other than trial/error (ie installing some) to see what the light range is. And then i worry about the light pollution from lighting downward from the roof. I guess it comes down to do i want to showcase the walls of my house or just light up around it? tough choice

of course then there's the theory even if i have to use higher watts, as long as i stay below my usage for my other lights, i'm still saving. I just wanted to save a lot, am somewhat greedy with my savings desire.

For trail & error, I bought one fixture, rigged up a pig-tail/extension cord, then surface-mounted it temporarily to a likely spot under the soffit, & wrapped various widths of black construction paper around it to mimic a recessed position in the soffit. Don't know about sheet metal soffits....My folks had a house with vinyl soffits that were too flimsy to support these fixtures. Incidentally, consider the soffit height....mine are only 8'.....much higher and the light may be too diffused.

the height is an excellent point and since you have first hand experience with the 9 watters, I believe I wont be able to hang any lights up like you did. I never measured it but based on my known big window height, from ground to roof is at least 10-12 ft in my front.

took a peek at home depot yesterday, they dont carry any non solar LED walkway type lights. At least im narrowing things down :)