Installing a new LED flood w/ motion sensor

Wires, breakers, outlets, switches - be careful
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kevm14
Posts: 15200
Joined: Wed Oct 23, 2013 10:28 pm

Installing a new LED flood w/ motion sensor

Post by kevm14 »

I got a fancy one. Defiant from HD, 2350 lumens and adjustable color temperature (3000-5000K for full brightness). Plus, it has a mode where it goes on a dimmer brightness from dusk to dawn (about 3000K, fixed, which is a good warm color temp for night), or 3/6 hours after sunset depending on the setting. I like this as I would manually turn on my garage light at the end of the day and off in the morning (same as front porch but the garage light switch is only in the basement). I set it to provide accent lighting from dusk to dawn, and when motion is detected, it goes to full brightness. I will test it tonight but it is very configurable and each light can be separately aimed, in addition to the motion head itself.

I used one of those siding plates again with the notch to sit flat across a siding bottom edge. I've used these before and while it does add another step, this house does not seem to use junction boxes for light fixtures and while that plate is not a junction box it gives a little more protection to the wire and cavity. I filled it with expanding foam before putting the plate on. The hole cut was much larger than 14/2 wire.

This is what I bought: https://www.homedepot.com/p/Defiant-180 ... /301868377

Defiant DFI-5997-WH, $80.
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The old one was an original dual flood fixture and one of the flood sockets did not work (not the bulb). It needed to go. And it did put up a fight. I had to drill one of the screws out which didn't go smoothly.

I did run into a very strange wiring issue (why not - nothing can be easy) and I am not 100% thrilled with my solution even though it seems to be working fine.

Basically, I was getting like 92V from hot to neutral and did not work in this configuration, first leading me to think I had a DOA light. But I had 120V from hot to ground. And some other non-zero voltage from neutral to ground. This is a 3-way circuit. Maybe one of the wires is switched around. I have seen other strangeness before. So what I did was just swap the neutral and ground and the light seems to work just fine. I am sure a GFCI outlet would trip instantly but I am not sure there is any functional issue with how I wired it even though that is very odd. I did pull one switch out (the one in the basement - the other one is upstairs by the front door) and probe it. The power for the circuit must come from the upstairs switch.

This project took several hours...
kevm14
Posts: 15200
Joined: Wed Oct 23, 2013 10:28 pm

Re: Installing a new LED flood w/ motion sensor

Post by kevm14 »

So much exterior lighting. There are 9 bulbs plus the new LED flood in this picture.
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