This is the usual appearance of the halogen can. Dead.
This is appearance with a 9.5 watt 4" Glimpse can retrofit, a jewel in early-morning light. I have recklessly done these difficult second-story replacements having no light to use, but 4" Glimpse.
So pretty!
Now I must take off the blinders, and be responsible for what I have done. After eleven months, five first-floor soffit lights all have brown peppering, clouding still-pretty lenses.
Yes, bugs are compelled to find that guiding light.
Quite a collection on the rim and lens!
Big bugs died too, seeking the light, including a pesky attic-dwelling stink bug and a cricket.
I am liable for what I have done, knowing better, and have promised to take back the 4" Glimpse, mostly at my loss, when a better product arrives. I continue to buy 4" Glimpse, with great restraint. I will not again install one outdoors. Where lights will last a lifetime, it is worse than absurd, to use them in a way that commands difficult annual maintenance.
A message then to lighting manufacturers: don't leave paths to be explored by bugs. Most lights I will use do well in this. Lighting Science Group, please fix and upgrade diode boards in 4" Glimpse. Your four-year old product deserves to be killed by a little competition.
And now after dispensing more anger against manufacturers who don't constantly improve their products in a time of rapid evolution, I see I have overlooked my ticket out of trouble in this job. I needed only two strips of my Nashua Foilmastic tape over the two keyholes, to cover the light leaks. I will go back immediately, and fix all ten lights. I will stop thinking maybe there is an A19 LED light bulb that would have been a better retrofit. All cans, be damned!
Lots of little bugs in just thirteen days!
The dusted and reassembled light is sealed with ~1” strips of Nashua 367-17 tape. Tape adhesion seems fine and durable on these new surfaces. Adhesion will be much less satisfactory on year-old surfaces, perhaps plasticized by bug traffic.
For Glimpse lights installed at first-floor level a year ago, I attached the green tethers. That attachment is now a nuisance. I will detach the tethers to take down lights, and will not reattach them. Note the can light hacking of soffits to 6 1/2” diameter. What a shame. In the future, penetrations will be minimal, in low voltage DC circuits. A house will last much longer than technology in its lighting.
No comments:
Post a Comment