I fitted a new security light to my garage at the weekend, as the one that I had put up several years ago had stopped working.  It still came on, but the LEDs were so dim, you’d hardly notice it.  And that’s the trouble with this new technology: in the old days (which wasn’t that long ago, really), you could easily swap out the halogen bulb… a relatively cheap, ten-minute job. But you can’t do that with these LED ones, instead, you have to replace the whole unit.

So, I bought a new one and set about fitting it.  Should only take half an hour or so. He said.

What I’d forgotten, was that I had fitted the original one about five years ago, before I had an electric, roller, garage door fitted.  The casing at the top of the door that houses the roller and the motor, etc. was now making it difficult to get at the wiring.

Very bloody difficult.

After much faffing about, I managed to do it, but it took an hour longer than I had expected it would… as these things always do.

The next step was to set it up when darkness fell, so, after dragging the mutt around the woods, I set about walking up and down the street and in and out of my driveway, trying to get it set such that it only came on when I actually walked onto the driveway:  adjust, hide round the corner until the light goes off, walk past, adjust, repeat a dozen times.  It’s fair to say I got some strange looks from passers-by whilst I was standing behind the fence, hiding from the sensor and waiting for the light to go off, but, if it’s gonna be done, it’s gonna be done proper. It always annoys me when walking along the pavement at night, to be suddenly blinded by someone’s security floodlight, because they haven’t set it up correctly.

A perfect example of this is the chap who recently moved into the house across the road. The security light that he put high up on the back of his house seems to be triggered by almost anything… including me when I go out the back door to put some rubbish in the bins.  I wouldn’t mind, but between me and his PIR, is the width of my back garden, the pavement, the road, the pavement on the other side and then the full length of his garden. We’re probably talking 20 to 25 metres.

Worse than that, is on the path which runs alongside the woods, where I walk the dog.  There are houses that back onto the path and several of them have security floodlights. One in particular always comes on as I walk along the path at night. The path must be at least 20 metres from his back fence and then another 15 metres of garden.   With the amount of dog-walkers that go up and down that path, I reckon his light must be on for much of the evening.

Any road up… following the attempted garage break-in a few years back (which is why I had to get a new door fitted), I also fitted a couple of LED downlights above the garage door. These come on automatically when it gets dark and do a good job of illuminating the garage door and that bit of the driveway.  The new security floodlight adds to that by being much brighter and lighting the whole driveway.

Have I made it more secure, I wonder, or have I just made it easier for the burglars to see what they’re doing?