Something Unique 4U

These lights are different from any other solar light that I've seen during all of my research in finding solar lights to build my "solar light garden." I live in an apartment building on the second floor with a deck outside the living room. Since I don't have a yard I decided to create a "garden" with solar lilies tulips pansies cattails globes butterflies dragonflies and solar fiber optic sprays (which sway in the breeze). Almost every single "stalk" has a bare space of about 6" to 7" between the top of the solar cell and the bottom of the "flower" or globe or butterfly/dragonflies. This grass can be manipulated in the degree of spread and covers that bare space perfectly. I think anybody using garden solar lights would be delighted with the addition of this "grass." (In addition the shipping service/speed was about as quick -- actually quicker -- as anybody could reasonably expect.) It is my understanding this company has just begun using Amazon Marketplace. They possess quality of product and quality of service so do not I repeat do not let their relatively short period of working through Amazon be a deterrent. They are seemingly a company concerned with customer service and that is increasingly hard to find in today's modern world.More detail ...

Reliable Lighting

I've used several of these light fixtures for about nine years and they've proven to be reliable and a source of good garden lighting. They're easily adjustable to focus on specific plants or trees. I've found them quite good. My only concern is that the contact connections often loosen up from the main feeder wire. I've chosen to hard wire each unit when installing them.More detail ...

Horrible cable connectors

This is my second Malibu/Intermatic light set and I have found both to be very difficult to keep lit. I'd love someone who considers this to be an easy-to-use set to tell me what I'm doing wrong. The device used to connect each light to the central cable requires squeezing two spiked halves together to pierce the cable and hoping the spike on each half makes AND holds contact with the wire beneath the outer insulation. I'm pretty good with my hands but getting this connection setup to work - AND hold - has proven next to impossible. Once connected if the light is moved or knocked over there's a good chance the connection will have to be redone. Often it is difficult to tell whether the light bulb is burned out or if you just haven't made connection exactly right. I started to invest the time this spring in getting the set going again (only its second season) and after half an hour without getting ANY of the four lights to work I realized this just isn't worth the trouble... even thought when it works the lights are really nice. I'd love to know if there are wired 4-light sets out there with a more reliable connection device.



PS - I contacted Intermatic/Malibu via email to ask what 4-light sets they make that do NOT have this type of connection device... after receiving a canned reply promising a response within 3 days they failed to follow up within even 5 days and to date they have continued to ignore my inquiry. I guess they either don't have any or have more business than they can handle. Another 'customer service' failure...



PSS - After the above I called Intermatic/Malibu but my only option (even during business hours) was leaving a message which no one returned. On another attempt I reached someone who surprisingly admitted to me she also had lots of trouble with the connection device. She suggested stripping away insulation on the main cable to help those spikes make contact with wire or after stripping the cable removing the connection devices and hard-wiring the light unit. Although willing to give either a try as I stripped away insulation I began thinking "what's wrong with this picture...?"



By the way when I opened the light units to try changing bulbs two of the four units were corroded in the bulb chamber... after being outside about a year.



Speaking of bulbs I had forgotten to mention that when trying to replace bulbs last summer nothing in the owners' manual that I could find tells you what kind of bulb it takes. Two had burned out LONG before any reasonable bulb life. I bought what appeared to be the right type (the commonly used MR-16 which has a built-in reflector). When I tried to remove the old bulb I found that what looks like an MR-16 bulb in the Malibu unit is actually a bolted-in reflector and a separate tiny Christmas-tree-sized bulb.More detail ...

Could have been better...

Like others have stated with these type of lights and systems is you get what you pay for. Don't get me wrong they are not horrid but by no means are they a great system. The problem with Moonrays is the connection. It is made at the light bulb base where there are two pins under the base that pierce the cable. The problems are: The cable that comes with this unit is a very small gauge (18 Gauge is what is supplied despite the picture showing 16 Gauge). In order for the pins to hit the wire when the cable is pieced they have to be perfectly aligned. I learned from other reviewers and just bought some 14 Gauge wire instead which gave me the desired thickness of copper to work with while maintaining flexibility when trying to bend the wire and push the pins into it. To keep the transformer on to check each connection I simply used a small piece of electrical tape over the sensor. I used a small nut driver to push the cable up into the light base pins while using the base of another (screwdriver) to hold the top part (where the light bulb goes) into place. Also contacts for the bulbs come very close together are easily bent. If the bulb doesn't light after some manipulation of the bulb pull the bulb base off look at the wire and likely you'll see the perforations were off kilter though with the 14 or 12 gauge wire this should not be a problem. Use your screwdriver to bend the pins in the proper direction and try again (but don't push the cable up into the housing with anything that will conduct electricity if you still have the transformer on. Having a voltmeter handy is nice so if still the bulb doesn't lite you can check the voltage across the bulb contacts. On a couple of mine it was hard just to get the bulb to contact properly and that's what was wrong even though the cable connection was good. Don't stake any of the lights down until all are connected and all are lit.



Once you get the idea of what your doing on the first light the rest are quite easy to install. Unplug the transformer... install light plug in to check if it works... repeat until finished.



Now all this works great for the pathway lights the spot lights are another matter entirely. What a major pain in the butt to get installed. The major problem with the spot lights is there is no cam (the little thing that in the pathway lights helps to keep the cable connected to the pins) for use in these. You push the pins and cable together and attempt to set the "correct" angle for your spot lights and place in the ground the problem comes that if you Move the angle in which the spot light is set in the slightest without some major coordination of moving the cable along with it the pins will come right out of the cable and your back to square one. Major flaw in setting these up. Setting up the two spot lights took longer than setting up the pathway lights.



So only 3 stars for this product minus one star for the crappy 18 gauge wire they sent and I had to go out and buy 14 gauge wire. Minus another star for the shoddy spot lights.



Otherwise it was a fairly simple set up. I haven't had any problems with my transformer blowing yet so do not know as to the longevity of the product.



If anyone knows of a link to finding decent / equivalent LED's for these lights please let me know. Getting into Lumens / mCd vs Watts is a whole other story.

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This is the one to buy...........

Decent quality steel case.

Mechanical timer.



I had the Hampton Bay 300 watt model....DO NOT BUY HAMPTON BAY TRANSFORMERS. CUSTOMER SERVICE IS VERY BAD AND THERE IS NOT EVEN ANY WARRANTY OR CUSTOMER SERVICE INFO IN WITH THE PRODUCT as I found out when it broke and going to Home Depot for help was a joke. Anyway I am happy so far with the Malibu and it seems that it has a bigger transformer than the Hampton and the overall construction is better. Just to convince you of how bad the Hampton Bay customer service is try doing a search for them online you'll see.More detail ...