Winter Care of Your Solar Lights

No solar light will work if covered in snow or ice . Solar lights optimum environment is in a place where it gets at least 4 hours of sunlight. The recommended operating temperature range for most NiCd batteries is -4F to 140F for discharging, 32F to 113F for charging, and -22F to 122F for storage. Unfortunately, in the northern half of the United States where we get snow, cold temperatures and short days, this doesn't really work out. In this kind of weather it is best to simply bring the fixtures indoors.

If you are using your lights to outline a garden, the garden is now dormant anyway. If you line your walkway with solar lights, chances are it has mounds of snow along them. If you have them as decorative pieces in your backyard or patio, that area may be covered in snow and even if it isn't, chances are you won't be sitting out and enjoying them any way. The beauty of solar lights are that, like your holiday decorations, your garden hose, your outdoor furniture, you pick them up and bring them inside for storage.

Storing solar lights indoors allows you to clean them up for the next season. The batteries, unless they are old, more likely than not will last a few months without being recharged, but to be on the safe side, get a battery charger and charge them up.

Taking care of your solar lights during the off season will allow you to use them again once the snow is gone and the warm weather returns. Spring will arrive and once again you will be able to put them outdoors again.

If a particular arrangement worked well the previous season, you may want to diagram where each piece was before pulling them up. Sometimes a new arrangement may work out better. That is the beauty of solar lights You can move them around to wherever suits the mood.

Jerome Sturgeleski started a website in May of 2005 when he decided to share his passion for enjoying his yard after hours. He thought that if his newly renovated landscaping project could be lighted after dark it would be enjoyable even in evening hours. He started small and is now offering many different types of solar lighting that would fit in in any number of applications.

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