Our neighborhood does not have street lights. Instead, each house has one of those pole lamps in the front yard.

For some reason, when we moved in, our lamp was gone. We are looking at getting a new one.

Question: Is there a big advantage between gas and electric?

We have a gas line in place. Seems like most on our street are gas, but some are also electric.

Talking about one of these:



Idiot question of the day: If its gas, how does it know when to come on? With electric, you could have a light switch in your house or have a light sensor on the bulb where it comes on when it gets dark. What about a gas lamp?

[This message has been edited by DRE06 (edited 12/11/2013 10:19a).]

Our gas lamps just stay on all day

edit: our lamps use mantles, not an open flame, so they have to stay on all of the time. I've found that these throw off much more light as well.

[This message has been edited by riz (edited 12/12/2013 11:38a).]

It's an electric igniter on a timer. Simple. Sort of like your gas heater (although that usually uses a glow plug) or propane grill (but on a timer, not a regulator).

[This message has been edited by helgs (edited 12/11/2013 5:49p).]

Watchlisting this thread. I have an electric post that's about to give up the ghost, so if folks have recommendations, I'm all ears.

Don't have a recommendation but I would love to replace the lamp on the front of my house with a gas one. I love the way they look. Just don't want to pay to run a gas line, I assume it's expensive.

quote:

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Watchlisting this thread. I have an electric post that's about to give up the ghost

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Good 'ol Lake Highlands. I think mine is the original from 1965. Burns through light bulbs every 3-4 weeks. Also on my to-do list.

Used to have a gas lamp at my old house.

As long as kids wouldn't use the lamp post as a vertical surface to beat with sticks, the mantles would last a long while. Gas stays on all the time, but the usage is very little.

Used to love my uncle's old neighborhood. Everyone had a gas lamp and at night could see down the long straight road at all the lamps. Was a cool sight. Now they are either electric or pulled out.

~egon

Any recommendation for a place to get a post in Houston.

Someone dropped off a flyer at our house in West Houston about a year ago that looked like nice posts for reasonable prices. Of course now that I've decided to pull the trigger, I can't find the pamphlet.

For switching from electric to gas, it'a about a day's rental of a ditchwitch. Hired out, two pros will finish in less than 4 hours' time. But, they'll collect the ditcher early and take it back at the end of the day.

At least, presuming that the yard does not have a lot of roots, random in0-use & abandoned irrigation plumbing or landscape lighting or the like.

Also presuming that one is not in one of those unfortunate Dallas neighborhoods with very shallow Austin Chalk strata.

A good DIY could probably get the trench in, and do a better job of not clobbering roots, sprinkler lines etc, but, it's likely going to take a full day--but you'll save the mark-up on equipment rental and the labor for two guys doing so. But, have a conversation with the plumber who will put the line in, first. That trench needs to be a correct depth, and have room for the base material that goes under gas piping.

For the electric fixtures, do not use CFL. In case you missed the Do Not Use CFL lamps. (That is, unless you fork over the $$$ for hard-use, cold-temp CFL--you need the stronger-built circuit boards in the lamps.)
Use LED lamps instead. You also need to use a much smaller watt/lumen output lamp than seems right. That lamp will work just fine at 25-30 incandescent equivalence, if there are more than one socket, divide the size by the number of sockets. So, a three-socket lamp really only needs 10W equivalent lighting.

That's from a distinct peculiarity of night-time lighting. The physics involved mean that the illumination fall-off is about the same despite the source. The difference in the brightness, though, is what triggers dilation on the pupil, which makes the dark, "darker" as the pupil attempts to adjust.

Which is why you can use 2.5 or 3W LV fixtures at 10 or 12 feet apart and get excellent illumination at night.

Yeah CFLs absolutely suck outdoors. We have two fixtures with two bulbs each and we've already lost one after 9 months or so.

There's a place in spring that sells the lamps cheaper than any place I saw online. I just replaced ours after breaking the glass. I'll look the name of the place up and get back to you.

thanks.