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Exterior Lighting Over Garage Door

scarbelly | Posted in Construction Techniques on January 7, 2011 11:03am

I am curious to hear how people have wired their exterior lighting over a garage door. I do not want to put a flood light above it. I am looking at more attractive options for low level safety lighting like a jelly jar or something similar centered over the door. The problem is, I can’t flush mount a box because the header is there. I can’t flush mount boxes on the sides either because of the jack and king studs. The round exterior boxes with the screw in plugs are 4 1/2″ round. And most lights that are not flood lights have 5 1/2″ bases or larger, so it doesn’t seem like a good fit. Does anyone have experience with this issue? Are there larger diameter exterior boxes out there? I am considering just rewiring the light with longer leads so I can make the connection behind the wall at a junction box there. Any problems with this? The interior is all concrete, so my wiring is surface mounted EMT. Any tricks with 1/2″ EMT that might solve this issue? Thanks.

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  1. Clewless1 | Jan 08, 2011 09:46am | #1

    Why not mount it above the header? You don't need a larger Jbox for larger fixtures (I may have misunderstood you here).

    Whatever you do ... by a fixture that is both dark sky compliant and does not result in light trespass ... that is ... no light is directed at the sky and no light spills to your neighbor/street/etc. These are harder to find, but they are out there. Jelly jars and spot lights are the worst (in terms of practicality and quality of lighting). We found a great fixture at lows ... a quarter opaque sphere w/ flat lens pointing down. Nice looking and it gets the light generally where you want it ... in the driveway and on the door.

    I'm attaching a pic ... it's not a closeup, though ... couldn't find one. I mounted above the header ... probably ON the header.

  2. User avater
    xxPaulCPxx | Jan 09, 2011 01:01pm | #2

    I mounted mine using pancake style circular boxes.  At 1/2" deep they will sit flush or behind the siding, and only require a 1/2" hole to feed the wire if you use the kind with built in clamp.

  3. gfretwell | Jan 09, 2011 06:01pm | #3

    I put in the regular motion set on my shed with the bells over the lamp holders and put 30w R30s in there so I don't have the stallag 17 look. 60w pointed down is plenty of light to see where you are going. That also mitigates that light pollution thing

    I agree on the pancake box if you want a stylish light. The canopy will end up tight to the wall, covering the whole thing. A standard hickey that comes with the light will work fine on a pancake.

  4. gfretwell | Jan 09, 2011 09:11pm | #4

    There is an echo in here

    Sorry Duplicate post

    1. DanH | Jan 10, 2011 12:26am | #5

      Quadruplicate.

  5. dudleydorightdad | Aug 02, 2011 04:08pm | #6

    light over garage door.

    Since you are running surface on the interior, get youself some 1/8" lamp tubing ( the fine thread miniature pipe that will protrude in some fixtures for a fancy retainer) that is long enough to pnetrate through the headerand just far enough into the juncction box to install a retainer nut. If you get a long enough piece this will also serve to ground the fixture if you fasten it securely to the fixture. This might not work with a Jelly Jar but the nicer fixtures generally already have some of this type tubing incorporated into its design that can either be coupled to or replaced. Extend (replace with longer as nop room in tubing for splice) wires if necessary. But this gives you a minaturre conduit through any type of facade. I have used it throught brick, deep concrete, and many unusual situations. Accuracy of your hole is important for fixture placement with this technique but qorth the effort in simplicity. I have taken 3 bulb fixtures and split wired them so they have one bulb dawn to dusk and the other two on a motion/ wall manual control, tied with the garage door opener via relay so when approaching and pop the door lights perk from 1 bulb to 3 bulb. Sorry I meant to join and respond to you way back when. It is a little more involved until you find a good supply of lamp parts, but once you locate materials it is a piece of cake and certainly beats hacking 4 inch holes into stucco walls or argh solid material when there is a garage on the other side of the wall..

    SAY  WHAT  YOU  MEAN   and    MEAN  WHAT  YOU  SAY   then   LEAD OR GET OUT OF THE WAY!

    dudleydorightdad   aKa Me

  6. Amish Electrician | Aug 02, 2011 06:59pm | #7

    Look to these folks for some ideas: http://www.stoncolighting.com/stonco/index.asp  They're quite affordable, user friendly, and available through any real supply house. Much better than the usual box store kludge. The 'jelly jar' or 'bulkhead' lights fit the round boxes.

    You're blessed if you have solid concrete - though your comment about a header make me wonder. In any event, the idea is to mount a box on the inside wall, directly behind the light. Make the run through the wall using something called 'running thread,' also available from the supply house. You'll also need two lock nuts and a bushing on each end of the running thread.

    Another thought is to completely conceal the fixture between the joists of that deck; doing so will let the light shine on the drive, yet not shine in your eyes or mar the appearance.

  7. DanH | Aug 02, 2011 07:15pm | #8

    Please don't make the same post twice.  It's unnecessary and confuses the hell out of the server software.

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