Utilitech Rope Light

 

I just love rope lights, they are so useful and incredibly versatile. I use rope lighting for everything from adding extra illumination to my barbecues and summer garden parties, to providing fire safety.

I have a rope light fitted under the hand rail on my stairs. The rope light is connected to a power point which has a sensor that is connected to my smoke alarm, if the smoke alarm sounds, the rope lighting turns on. The idea behind this is that if the house fills with smoke, the rope lights will illuminate the path to safety, similar to the floor lighting used on aeroplanes.

Ordering Utilitech Lighting’s Extra Bright Clear Rope Light

I’d had an idea in my head for some time. That idea was to light the pathway that leads down my garden to my swimming pool. I live in a rural area, so when there is no moon it gets pretty dark. I do have flood lights installed but prefer to use them for security purposes, I find the light they produce quite harsh, I wanted something a little more original and classy.

So my idea involved stringing two utiltiech rope lights along each side of my garden path. Then whenever the garden and swimming pool are in use at night, turning them on to illuminate the pathway.

There were three main things that attracted to me to the utilitech rope light. The first was the that is could be used outdoors.

The second was that more than one rope light can be strung together to increase the length. This was particularly important to me as the path to my pool is over 80 feet long. In their instructions Utlitech say that up to five rope lights can be strung together, that’s over 200 feet!

Thirdly, this rope light uses LED bulbs, I was keen on using these because they consume very little power. Also, LED bulbs will last for a very long time, sometimes decades. This is important because rope lights are pretty much sealed units.

I shopped around on the net and in the end decided to purchase four of the lights from amazon. They arrived two days later, thank god for one click ordering!

Installation

Installing the rope lights was pretty straight forward. I affixed hooks to the borders of my path at intervals of 3 feet or so. I then lay the rope along the hooks. When I ran out of rope light, I simply joined on another one.

I then placed the mains cable under some conduit and into the power supply located inside my pool house. The conduit is only a temporary measure, I plan to place the cable inside some piping that will buried under the paving stones.

The only difficulty that I experienced with the rope lights was that they were a little hard to position. The outer plastic casing is flexible but because it had been coiled for transit, I found it hard to get the rope dead straight.

Something that helped straighten it out a little was to grip the rope hard while wearing a gardening glove and pull it through my hands. I then made sure that the rope light was pulled relatively taught over the hooks in order to keep it running straight.

Impressions

The final effect that these rope lights have on my garden is fantastic. The LEDs are placed about an inch apart, the light they provide is a brilliant white. The level of illumination is impressive, the pathway is about five feet wide, the Utilitech ropes have no trouble lighting it completely.

Another positive aspect of these units is that they are very inconspicuous during the daytime.

Final Thoughts 

I am really pleased with these rope lights, their excellent level of illumination, flexibility, durability and low power consumption make them an excellent choice for a variety of tasks.

I am so enamoured with these lights I am going to purchase more and suspend them from various trees around my garden, this should increase the amount of usable space during outdoor gatherings at night.

I highly recommend these lights, they are easy to install, weatherproof and relatively inexpensive for the amount of illumination they provide.