“Experience is the best teacher of all.” -Henry Callahan
Our company has been installing LED outdoor lighting systems since 2008. Our experience has taught us a lot over those years. Like which LED products are very good, and which products we should avoid like the plague.
The LED lighting industry has changed rapidly and dramatically in the last five years – mostly for the best. But along the way, we’ve bumped up against some bad products. It was bound to happen – the products were new and the marketing was usually very compelling. Sadly, in one instance for us, the marketing was a whole lot better than the lamps. In this particular case, we were purchasing LED lamps from a manufacturer who (we found out later) was getting lamps from a factory in China which simply was not doing a very good job. After installing about 900 of these lamps all over the great state of Texas, we had to go back to replace almost every single one of them. Naturally, the manufacturer was happy to replace them – initially with new lamps from the same factory. Eventually, we decided we just couldn’t accept this replacement offer, and required the company to buy back all the bad lamps. Finally, they started to carry a higher quality product developed specifically for the landscape lighting industry, and were able to exchange the bad lamps for new and much better replacements.
It was an expensive lesson for all of us. Although we got free replacement products, we still experienced some serious frustration, and had to pay our team’s labor costs for all of the replacements over a period of about three years. Amazingly enough, we still have a few of these lights out there, but we’re getting them all replaced as they go out.
The big lesson we learned was what to look for when it comes to an LED product that is going to be used in the outdoor environment. It’s important to understand that most LED products that are available to the general public are designed to be used indoors. They may not hold up very well in a sealed fixture, or in environments that have a lot of humidity, like a well-irrigated landscape. Of course, newer LED products – commercial or contract grade products -- that are designed to be used outside do cost more than the stuff you find at the local big box stores. But since they are made specifically for the purpose that they are being used for, they will last a lot longer, as they should.
We learned the hard way to avoid the hype, ask for samples, and test new products ourselves. We engage the manufacturer more directly and read a lot more reviews than we used to – so we don’t repeat a costly mistake. All of the products we use now have a proven reliability history. We have far more confidence in the products we install now than we did in the much earlier days of LED development.
No product is perfect every time; failures will still occur even among the best. Living with a less than 2% failure rate is something we feel pretty good about, and is easy for us to stand behind. That’s what our experience has taught us.
Our LED experience can help you to achieve your outdoor lighting desires with quality LED products. Let us know if we can help you by dropping us a note at info@night-scenes.com
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