Sunday, February 8, 2009

Fix your Garden Light

I bought several cheap Hampton Bay garden lights at Home Depot a few years ago. Part number 498-959. The clear plastic diffuser that supports the electronics has become brittle and fell apart. I suspect its the UV from the sun and has broken down the chains of molecules of the plastic. Instead of throwing them away, I discovered they will fit on top of a Ball canning jar with little effort. First remove the four Philip head screws that hold the two halves of the solar head.


There are four holes already in the solar head. Use two of them with 6-32 machine screws and nuts to attach the canning jar lid. You can see the screw heads in the photo below just inside the lid's rim. In the photo above, you can see the nuts of these two screws

Now the glass won't fall apart like the plastic in the sun. You may need a little caulk around the edges to seal out water. I intend to place mine in my window to light up at night, so theres no water proofing required. If you want more info about the schematic inside, go here to my webpage. I also wrote about the plastic falling apart problem in this 2007 blog.

4 comments:

mattedet said...

Hey Bill!
Great website!

I have a similar issue with my Hampton Bay Solar lights. The cap (with the solar collector) flew off this winter and once the snow melted here in Michigan, I noticed that the three wire ripped off.

The wires are yellow, blue and black. The connections on the he circuit board are labled Sbat+, Sbat- and CDS+.

By any chance do you know which wires need to go to which connection on the circuit board? I am sure I can solder them on.

Oh the model I have is 386-038

Thanks!

Matt E
Macomb MI

Botronics said...

I got a webpage with a schematic showing the circuit of mine. Its probably the same. The yellow is Positive the Black is negative and the blue is the CDS.The solar cell part shows the polarity and the cds is in the middle.
http://home.comcast.net/~botronics/robots.html

Anonymous said...

Perhaps you could get a a solar garden light. Theres no maintenance required, no batteries and they come in beautiful designs

mamalv said...

Do I have your permission to post this on Pinterest ?

L. Vilneff