From Fence to Retaining Wall - Part 3

Probably since the day we moved into our current house, Carolyn has wanted a lamp post at the end of our driveway. Although we have a nice street lamp at the end of our cul de sac, between that lamp and our little garage carriage lights there isn't much to light the way.

So, when we were discussing the plans for the retaining wall, Carolyn insisted we also look at wiring down to the end of the wall and putting in a lamp at that point. You've seen the lamp during the daytime in previous posts. Tonight our neighbor Wayne connected the power so you can see what it looks like in the night.

My son Ed is showing me one of the uses for the 4 x 4 left over from the old fence. We're going to use it to display our house numbers.


Trying to find a good switch for the lamp led me to Home Depot and the above pictured switch. As you can see it has a built-in clock. One can, of course, use it like any normal switch - press on, press off. But in the automatic mode one can program the lamp to come on at dusk and turn off at dawn. It doesn't do that by light sensors but by using your approximate latitude , date, and time. If you'd rather use it manually or set specified on/off times, that is possible. It's even possible to have a different program for weekdays, weekends, all days, or specific single days.


Such flexibility comes with a price. The installation instruction guide was four pages long and the "simplified" programming guide is almost 2 pages. As the days get longer, it will be intereseting to see if the lamp keeps up with the time.