The Solar Lawn Light Experience
I thought a solar lawn light or two would look good in the garden and be an environmentally friendly way to decorate the house so off I went to the local mega-hardware store. I purchased a set of four black plastic solar garden lights and put them around the place. I paid $20au for all four. They came with a rechargeable battery each. They had shiny solar panels on top, like this one to the right. For a couple of weeks all was rosy; there were these nice little glowing lamps in the yard and I was feeling good and green. After a while though the lamps started to go dim early on in the night. Investigation revealed corroded batteries. The cheap batteries were too cheap. I replaced them with better ones (another $10au). Then, once again, all was good in the garden. It was like deja-vu. The lamps started dimming again, but this time the process was slower, almost not noticable. But sure enough, my solar lawn light collection was steadily becoming less and less effective. Two years later on, and these are the results. One had already been thrown out due to being crushed...I really should mow the grass more often. The other three were in various states of distress.
Only the leftmost of these lamps was still functioning at the time these pictures were taken. After sitting in the sun for 12 hours it could only manage a feeble one hour of light during the night.
The end result is that I have thrown out four whole lights, as shown here (the pencil, though not solar powered, does provide the scale). Now these devices are either on their way to be recycled (hopefully) or are going into the local landfill. It's the two-dollar-rake mentality all over again; if only I'd bought good quality lamps in the first place I would still have them functioning and I would not have to go out and purchase more. The lesson is the same each time. Buy a good quality solar lawn light and it won't need replacing. I have also learned to look carefully at the statements on the boxes, including warranty, UV resistance of the panel cover (which my lights lacked), sturdy metal construction and so on.
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