solar light

Solar powered, motion sensor lights: product review so far

/ Re-Farmer / Leave a comment

Yesterday, the 2 pack of solar lights I ordered came in. I chose these ones specifically because the solar panels and the lights are separate. This way, I could put the lights inside the kibble and water bowl shelters, where it’s consistently in shade, and the solar panels could be installed on the roofs.

In the package were the two solar lights, with motion sensors. On the back (under the cable of the one that’s turned over, in the photo) is a mode button that is also an on/off switch.

Each solar panel comes with a generous length of cable. The lights and the panels use the same type of mount, held in place with a knob that also allows for the angles to be adjusted. They also came with the teeniest remote controls!

Before setting them up, I went through the instructions, which starts be saying to test them first. The solar panels are connected, but placed face down, then the mode button is pressed to turn on the lights and go through the modes. The batteries in the lights already had a charge in them, so they work without being connected, too.

After testing them, I set the first light up under the roof of the kibble house, while the second light was set up on the side of the water bowl house (which is reversed in the Instagram slideshow).

After mounting the solar panel on the corner of the kibble house roof, I ran the cable through the frame and wound it around one of the horizontal supports, to the light. There was still plenty of cable, which was bunched up and held with the twist tie they came with, and it could be tucked on top of a beam under the roof. No hangy bits for critters to catch on!

With the water bowl house, the cable runs along the side, held up in one spot by a hanger I found. There’s already a eye-hook that is supporting a power cord for the water bowl, so the solar panel cable is help up in two places, before the excessed was wrapped up.

The solar panels are shaded in the photo, but the roofs of the shelters all get full sun for most of the day, so that’s not an issue.

What is an issue is, they don’t work.

The lights work hust fine, on their own, but as soon as a solar panel is attached, they turn off. Like a switch. Cable on, light is off. Cable off, light turns on.

I have no idea why.

For now, I’ve left them as they are. I looked up where we got them from, but can’t find contact information (I could easily just be missing it). I ended up leaving a comment in the review section. I’ll see what happens from there. We have 30 days to return for a refund.

I would much rather have working lights, though!

For now, I’ll wait and see what sort of response I get. Otherwise, bye bye lights! We’ll try again, from a different supplier

I like the lights. They are doing the job! Right up until the solar panels are hooked up. They worked when I tested them, so I have no idea what went wrong!

The Re-Farmer

Squash tunnel mods, and what is that? Oh!

/ Re-Farmer / 4 Comments

I had to make another trip into town today, because I forgot something yesterday. I’ve been making more errand trips in the last few days than I do in most months! But that’s okay, because it gave me a chance to find and pick up other things.

Like these modifications to the squash tunnel.

The first is a solar powered, motion sensor spot light. Hopefully, it will get triggered by deer or other critters going after the garden and startle them away. Putting it at the beet or carrot beds would probably have been more useful, but we don’t have anything south facing that we could mount it to. If this works, we can get more (and better quality ones) and install posts to mount them on.

We’ll test it out tonight when, hopefully, it will have enough charge to light up, and we can make sure it is in the on position.

I also finally picked up a thermometer.

Wow.

According to my desktop app, we’re at 23C/73F right now, but out in the corner garden, in full sun, we’re at 32C/90F.

Where the squash tunnel is, there is no shade, even in the early morning hours. It is full sun from sunrise to sunset, so this thermometer will likely always read on the high side. I still wasn’t expecting a 9C difference, though!

Once these were up, I went to change the batteries on the garden cam. In the process, I noticed something very odd in the ground. A strange line of holes.

You can sort of make it out in this photo below.

It’s in between the red dashed lines I added. My foot is at where the line ends.

The meandering line made me think it was following a root or something, but why where there holes in the ground here at all?

When I tipped the camera stand down so I could access the battery case, I found myself right over this line, and quickly saw what made it.

Red ants.

And the line lead back to this.

The camera focused in the wrong place, though. It’s that blurry, reddish area in the background.

That is a red ant hill.

I don’t know their proper names, but we mostly have two types of ants here. Red ants and black ants. The black ants burrow into the ground, creating low hills in the grass with the soil they displace. They are not aggressive, but their burrowing can be destructive, killing off any plants at the roots.

Red ants build their hills with spruce needles, which they will drag over surprising distances. They will build hills on or in logs, under rocks, in the cracks of sidewalks or paving stones, or they’ll just make a hill on the ground, like this one. These hills can become quite large. The one in the photo is about mid-size. Red ants are more aggressive and will bite if disturbed.

We have quite a few red ant hills. A couple of the maple logs behind the house, from the trees cut away from the roof, now have red ant hills in them, their hollow middles stuffed with spruce needles. The metal ring used to contain the fires made to burn out diseased apple tree stumps is still out near the garden, with pieces of metal covering it. I’d moved them to put some invasive vines in the ring for future burning, only to discover it was half filled with spruce needles, and crawling with red ants! And now I’m seeing this new hill, near the garden cam.

As long as they don’t start building hills in the garden beds, we’ll leave them be.

The Re-Farmer