If you’ve been installing landscape lighting for any time at all, you’ll quickly realize that almost nothing kills a fixture faster than moisture and insects. Electricity and water are at natural odds with each other, and bugs complicate things by sneaking inside unsealed fixtures, shortening the lifespan of the lamps.
We’ve thoughtfully designed our fixtures to combat these two sources of premature landscape lighting failure. Today, we’re highlighting five weather- and insect-resistant features that ensure our luminaries will brighten your customers’ homes and businesses for many more years to come.
Stainless Steel Snap-Ring Seals
When it comes to moisture intrusion, one of the most vulnerable areas of a fixture is around the glass lens. Many landscape lighting manufacturers use adhesives to solve this issue. Unfortunately, standard adhesives often dry up and fail. We designed a better solution with our snap-ring, compression-fit seals that fit perfectly into the beveled edge of our glass lenses. With these seals, we’re able to help our fixtures stand the test of time and weather.
CNC-Machined O-Rings
Our o-rings are precision CNC-machined right here in Greensboro, North Carolina for the perfect fit, every time. We designed select fixtures with dual grooves at the bottom and top of the fixtures’ bodies to fit our o-ring seals. These o-rings prevent moisture from seeping through the threads where the body of the fixture is screwed into the knuckle assembly at its base and the glass holder at its top.
Silicone “Bug Plugs”
Our “bug plug” protects our fixtures—and curious insects—from an untimely demise.
These silicone plugs are found within the bottom knuckle assembly of our directional fixtures and do double-duty: they provide strain-relief for the internal wires and keep curious bugs out of the fixture. Fire ants are especially a concern as they will happily crawl inside outdoor lighting fixtures and cause internal damage and premature failure.
Internal Cable Glands
Another way we protect our fixtures from the wear-and-tear of weather is with our internal cable glands. You’ve likely never noticed this feature, as it’s well hidden internally between the top knuckle and the base of many of our fixtures. During assembly, we compress the internal cable gland around the wire with strong torque, providing security from water intrusion. This patented method allows us to achieve an IP67 rating on all our fixtures with knuckles.
IP67 Ratings
Many products tout an IP rating, but their manufacturers don’t delve into what the IP numbers stand for or mean. IP ratings (which, fun fact, stands for “Ingress Protection” ratings) are a standard designed by the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) to guide consumers on how dust- and water-proof certain products are. The first number in the rating stands for how dust-resistant a product is (with the highest standard being 6) and the second number in the rating stands for how water-resistant a product is (with the highest standard being 9). Many of our fixtures are rated IP67, which means they’re dust-tight and water-resistant, even to the point of being submerged in water temporarily.
We’re always seeking innovative ways to improve our products. When you purchase a ClaroLux® fixture, you can be confident that it was designed with care and attention to detail. Have any questions about the features of a specific fixture? We’d be glad to answer your questions! You can always contact us at (366) 378-6800.