When I first built the house I put in halogen floods on all four sides of the house. They were cheap and put out a lot of light. I also added a pole mounted halogen flood later on my driveway. Unfortunately I discovered that halogen bulbs do not last long and they last even shorter if the fixture is vibrated when its on. My pole mount light had that issue when the snow plow guy would be pushing snow. On occasion with the light on, the snow would push on the pole and shake it and I would lose the bulb. I would be without a light until I finally got around to putting an extension ladder on a round pole and hoping it didn't slide sideways. I finally switched to an LED flood and its been fine since. I did go a bit overboard on sizing and it lights up a very large area. I had picked up another lower wattage LED for a frequently used flood on my house but was waiting for the bulb to break. It broke a few months ago but in getting ready for snow season I swapped in the new LED. The PITA for the LED floods I have seen and bought is they don't use the same form factor as the older halogen floods which were usually a cast aluminum housing with threaded fittings. A threaded conduit would be used to connect the light to aluminum cover for an electrical box that had three tapped holes. The light was supported by the pipe and it made wiring fast. The new LEDs usually are a slightly larger form factor and use a bracket type mounting with a short pig tail wire stuck out the power supply. This means I have to remove the old light then come up with way to mount the light and then find a way to wire it into the old box. I had some nylon threaded cable bushings left over in my stash from solar work so I grabbed one and with a thread adaptor bushing from my fitting bucket it screwed into the old cover. It was a tight fit as the light sits under the soffits at the peak of the gable end but with some cedar spacers I got everything to fit. This was all done mostly one handed off an extension ladder.
I checked to see if it worked during daylight and then waited until dark. I hit the button and got my driveway back. I swear the LED has a wider beam pattern than the halogen floods. The halogen lights up the center brighter but it fades out on the edges. The LED seems to be more uniform. I am glad that I went with a 100 watt equivalent instead of the 300 watt on my pole as I expect my neighbors would not appreciate it. The surprising thing with these floods is the price has not dropped a as quickly as the household LED. I think I paid $100 for the 300 watt flood several years ago and paid around $70 about a year ago for the 100 Watt. I see Amazon carries then for two for $100 these days. There are really high output lights in the same form factor that I expect might be good for lighting up a large parking lot but too much for me.
I do need to mess with the flood I just installed this spring as I have had bird nests up on this gable end flood in the past. It was getting cold to do more work but I need to go up in the spring and put in some hardware cloth to keep the birds out as even the LED fixture gets hot and its not good to have birds nest on it. I have heard of a few house fires caused by bird nests on halogen lights. Hopefully once that is done I wont need to mess with it again.
I checked to see if it worked during daylight and then waited until dark. I hit the button and got my driveway back. I swear the LED has a wider beam pattern than the halogen floods. The halogen lights up the center brighter but it fades out on the edges. The LED seems to be more uniform. I am glad that I went with a 100 watt equivalent instead of the 300 watt on my pole as I expect my neighbors would not appreciate it. The surprising thing with these floods is the price has not dropped a as quickly as the household LED. I think I paid $100 for the 300 watt flood several years ago and paid around $70 about a year ago for the 100 Watt. I see Amazon carries then for two for $100 these days. There are really high output lights in the same form factor that I expect might be good for lighting up a large parking lot but too much for me.
I do need to mess with the flood I just installed this spring as I have had bird nests up on this gable end flood in the past. It was getting cold to do more work but I need to go up in the spring and put in some hardware cloth to keep the birds out as even the LED fixture gets hot and its not good to have birds nest on it. I have heard of a few house fires caused by bird nests on halogen lights. Hopefully once that is done I wont need to mess with it again.
