Rewiring a yard light

Thread Starter

tinkerbelle

Joined Mar 23, 2011
2
Hi all; hoping someone here can help me figure this out.
I have a 70W H/P sodium yard light fixture (standard screw base) and am curious if it can be rebuilt to use a standard 120v incandescent bulb and still utilize the daylight to dawn attribute?
Thanks in advance
 

Kermit2

Joined Feb 5, 2010
4,162
It depends on how the light sensor is packaged. If it is part of the starter control module 'thingy' then, no it wouldn't be wise to 'rewire' it.

Basically you would get a suitable socket from the hardware store selection and mount it inside the fixture-bypassing and/or removing the old electronics. While you are looking for a socket base, glance left or right or on the next aisle and pick up a light sensor module. They are not very expensive.

Probably all doable for less than $20 and some time on a ladder. :)
 

#12

Joined Nov 30, 2010
18,224
I'm with Kermit. If the eyeball is seperate from the inductor and starter, you have it whipped. Most of the guts for an HPS bulb are worse than useless for an incandescrnt bulb. Just see if you can get the eyeball and power triac seperated from the HPS guts and use the triac to drive the incandescent bulb in the "medium" base that comes with the HPS fixture.
 

Thread Starter

tinkerbelle

Joined Mar 23, 2011
2
Thanks guys; The unit is still working (sort-of) so I won't be tearing its guts out until it dies.
The reasons I was going to re-do it were (1) The sodium light is brighter than necessary and the ballast requires a 70w bulb, so I can't go to 50w [only got about 12 mos out of the last 70w bulb] (2) The HP Sodium bulb is $22.95, but what really irritates me is that Lowes has all of the HP Sodium bulbs 50w to 400w repriced down to $13.95 EXCEPT the 70w that I need :mad:

I just bought a cheapo ($22/Lowes) man-door light that has 47w neon. The only thing in it is the light sensor and a socket for the proprietary (funny looking bulb socket) bulb. Apparently the sensor has the triac circuitry in it and the bulb has the starter ballast built into it. That goofy bulb is $12-something. I am thinking that I could get another unit like it, strip the sensor out of it and wire it into the OLD sodium yard light using a standard 120v screw-in neon bulb instead of the proprietary bulb. Wouldn't that lash-up work?
 
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