Cast Post Lamp Re-Fed and Put Back Together in Orchards, Vancouver, WA

Not everything is a project. Some of it is a light that stopped working years ago and became scenery. This cast post lamp outside a home in Orchards had been reduced to a bare bulb sitting on a broken head with electrical tape holding the wiring together, and Newman Electric re-fed it and put it back together.

Why a bare bulb outdoors is worse than no light

The before photograph is the argument. A fixture head that has lost its globe is a lamp holder open to the weather, with the conductors above it wrapped in tape that has been through several winters.

Three things are going on there at once:

• Water is getting into the lamp holder, which is what corroded it in the first place and will keep corroding whatever replaces it
• Tape is not a splice. It is a temporary cover over a connection that needs an enclosure and a listed connector
• The circuit is still live, in a planting bed, at ankle height, where somebody weeds

Nobody set out to build that. It is what a fixture becomes when the globe breaks, someone puts a bulb in anyway, and years pass.

Re-feeding beats patching

The fix was to re-feed the light rather than repair the existing supply in place.

On an old outdoor run, the failed head is usually a symptom. The supply has been sitting in wet ground in a raceway of unknown condition, and splicing a new head onto a conductor you cannot inspect means being back in two years. A sound feed and a properly rebuilt head is a repair that lasts.

The globe went back on, which is not decoration: it is the part that keeps rain off the lamp holder and stops the whole cycle starting again.

Post lights are worth keeping

There is always a temptation to pull an old cast post lamp and put in something modern and cheap. On a mature planting bed at the front of a house, the old fixture is usually the better object, and re-feeding it costs less than a new post, a new base and a new trench.

That applies to a lot of outdoor and landscape lighting: the fixtures outlast the wiring, and the wiring is the cheaper half to renew.

Post light, path light or porch fixture in Orchards or Vancouver that has not worked in years? Call 360-828-7143 or get the post light going again.