Tossing one of three outdoor lamps

[Corrections.  This post was originally written from a computer distant from the lamps, and I had made a few errors in my original examination.  All 3 lamps turn freely when their appropriate screws are loosened.  However the Kichler is still a problem in that it's far too easy to turn the knob just a little too far and have the lamp fall off exposing insulated wires not reinforced with mesh.  That is partly because you do need to loosen the knob so far to get it to turn at all.  On the others, you loosen a screw just a little and the lamp hinges nicely.  The Thomas lamp swings easily and smoothly from it's backplate so you can easily adjust to have the screws face outward.  I did that and found the lamp to hinge about as smoothly as the Craftmade.  The finish on the Craftmade is clearly spray painted on as I see ripples in the bronze finish now.  The finish on the Thomas is more perfect--such as it is--in crinkled white and aluminum.  The inner ring on the Craftmade is the opposite of a heat sink...it is a rubber seal.  This may be a good idea for an outdoor light if it is not being pointed straight downward.  I intend to point both lamps out to the yard.  The Miracle Bug LED lamp fit the seal with a little gap, perhaps intentional.  The Thomas lacks a rubber seal, perhaps it doesn't need one???  Or perhaps you can obtain such a seal separately.  I still plan to use the Craftmade the but the Thomas might be nicer in some ways.  I think the Kichler has a design problem.]

To replace the panoramic CFL security light at my back door with something less attractive to bugs, I bought 3 different brands of dual floodlight fixtures which will accept any brand of bug light with a standard bulb base.  I've decided I liked the Craftmade BF2 the best (the middle one shown with just one of two lamp bases above).  By my standards, it looks like it has the best construction even though it's also the least expensive one.  The Thomas SL-4942-8 is the runner up, which I plan to donate to Goodwill.  I am very concerned about the construction of the most expensive lamp, the Kichler 6052 AZ, so I decided neither to return nor donate.  I will see if UL is interested in looking at it because it is a UL listed lamp.

The Kichler 6052AZ (which I am judging unacceptable):

I started by ordering the Kichler which was the most interesting looking lamp with the staggered profile that has a distinctly 50's look.  It was the most expensive, but I was expecting a quality lamp as well as a cool looking one.  It arrived in a long box, with the flood lamps pointed in opposite directions to fix.  To correct that, I first needed to rotate one lamp, when I noticed that it had a nut held on with silicone, which seemed flaky, but I was able to rotate the lamp without damaging the silicone.  But then I had to straighten out the lamps.  Each has a knob which you loosen to adjust the angle, otherwise it is held in position by deep teeth.   But I quickly turned the knob too far and it simply came off, causing the lamp hinge to open leaving the lamp hanging from its wires.  Inside the hinge the plastic coated electrical wires were not covered with extra mesh reinforcement.  That's very strange, because the mesh reinforcement is used over the wire everywhere else in the lamp, including in the big surplus of wire available for connection at the back.  The hinge seems like exactly the point where you could damage the wire by doing something like I did: removing the adjustment knob.  Then you have to put the hinge back together and hope the un-reinforced wire doesn't get pinched, stretched, or otherwise damaged.

If they had done this with the mesh reinforcement used over the wire inside the hinge just as everywhere else, I think that would be marginally OK.  It is still a problem IMO that it is so easy to remove the adjustment knob and have the lamp come apart at the hinge.  Also, you HAVE to nearly remove the adjustment knob simply to turn the hinge, because the teeth are so large.  And although I like the idea of having a knob as compared with a screw if it were done correctly, the knob also invites people to fiddle with the lamp position, and if they aren't careful not to turn the knob too far, off comes the light.  Thus, it's an invitation to disaster.

I think the lack of wire reinforcement was not intended by the original designers, but the factory simply had some trouble doing it as intended.  It looks to me like the hinge may be too narrow to allow for both the wire and the reinforcement.  So possibly someone simply decided to leave that portion of the wire unreinforced so the wire would fit.  Another possibility is that the reinforcement is slipped over the wire from both ends, and simply got pulled apart by accident when the lamp was assembled.

Even if you don't remove the knob too far, the hinge moves rather stiffly.  The wire that comes out the back seems to provide resistance to twisting the hinge; it's easier if you simultaneously push or pull the wire out the back.  Of course that is not going to be possible once the lamp is installed.

Anyway, it looks wrong to me, and considering the possibility that I might have damaged the wire when it came apart, or that the fixture is improperly made, I will not be donating.  I will not be returning either because if I simply return this lamp it is likely to end up in someone else's possession, someone who might ultimately get zapped.  I will see if I can send it to UL for examination, and if not, I'll simply throw it away.

Another disappointment with the Kichler was that the staggered bulb cover is thin, much like sheet metal.  It does appear to be aluminum, or at least non-magnetic.  But it does not feel heavy like cast aluminum.  It was advertised as a "cast aluminum" lamp.  The only thing which definitely appears like cast aluminum is the hinge.  The other lamps I ordered were clearly fully cast aluminum construction as advertised, at least for the bulb cover.  You can easily tell the difference, the others are thicker metal which is obviously cast.

After realizing this lamp was not going to be acceptable for me, I ordered two other lamps, the Craftmade and the Thomas.  Both of those look OK to me, but the Craftmade seems a little better so that is the one I plan to use.

The Craftmade BF-2:

You can see immediately that the bulb cover is cast aluminum, much thicker than the metal of the Kichler.  I also dig the bronze finish.  It's a deep and rich brown color and it's so smooth it seems like it could be anodized rather than painted.  In contrast the other two lamps clearly seem painted, and I find the crinkly white on the Thomas lamp looks cheap from a distance (though actually, the white color might be quite practical, and the texturing must have cost them extra).

The wire coming out of the back of each lamp is the heaviest duty of any of these lamps.  Further, there is mesh reinforcement around each wire, as well as around the pair of wires.

The hinge on the Craftmade is larger than the hinge on the other two lamps.  In contrast to the Kichler, it is smooth as silk to twist the hinge into different positions.  The mesh wrapped wire moves very slightly in and out as you do this.  This is what makes me want to use this lamp above all.  The hinge also has some interesting degree marks.  The hinge is tightened with a large Philips screw.

The Craftmade lamp does not use a conventional ceramic base that would be required for the power level (150W).  Instead it has a bare metal base which is bonded to some kind of clear material, which is then bonded to an aluminum heat sink.  That is isolated from the outer shell with some kind of rubber material.  This does not appear to have been done to save money, but to make a better lamp.  Or maybe it was needed because of the compact rear of the bulb cover--but it is only slighlty narrower than the other two.

I suspect the rubber material serves as both electrical and thermal insulation so that the bulb does not transmit heat to the cover and vice versa.  Actually I was a bit worried about that at first.  I could see that the heat sink was bonded with some material to the cover and figured at first they were using the entire bulb cover as a heat sink.  That has the disadvantage that if the bulb cover gets hot from sunlight, it could transmit heat to my LED bulb and fry the electronics.  But further observation revealed that the material between the bulb heat sink and the bulb cover is rubbery, which suggests it would have both thermal and electrical insulating properties, and might even be better than the simple air gap used in the other lamps which could eventually fill up with bug debris.

Above all, it's the silky smoothness of the hinge, enabled by reassuring double-meshed thick wire that I like the most about this lamp, combined with the anodized bronze finish.  I don't really know whether the bulb socket is better than the others, but I suspect it's at least as good.  One potential issue is whether some LED bulbs will interfere with the heat sink on bulb base.

The Craftmade lamp was packed with the two bulb covers removed from the baseplate.  They leave it up to you to attach the bulb covers to the base plate, and so probably you can decided whether to have the screws facing outward for reasonably easy adjustment, or inwards for anti-theft in a high traffic area.

 The Thomas SL-4942-8:

The Thomas also looks like a well made lamp, with cast aluminum bulb covers about as thick as those on the Craftmade but coated in crinkly white paint.  As it comes in the factory box the two bare aluminum hinges are locked with Philips screws which are oriented toward the inside of the lamp.  That means it would be hard for someone to unscrew the bulb cover and steal it.  But it also means it's very hard to actually adjust the lamp.  So I haven't even tried to do that, to see how it would compare with the stiffly-adjusting Kichler and the smooth-as-silk Craftmade.  Actually I'm not so worried about someone stealing my lamp fixture and this is a big inconvenience.  Also the hinge is just as narrow as on the Kichler and so it might also be stiffly adjusting and might also have trouble with the wire flowing through the hinge point.  But I won't know, because I don't plan to loosen those !@#$ screws.  I could also loosen the nuts on the inside and rotate the stems so the screws would point outward.   I could, but I don't plan to bother.

I was thinking, however, just for a moment that I might be better off with the white painted fixture and its ceramic base which is isolated from the bulb cover with an airgap.  That would help keep the electronics of my LED bulb cool.  Now that I see the Craftmade does use a thermally insulating material between bulb cover and base, I'm less concerned about that.

What kind of clinches it is the color.  As it stands now, the white color of the Thomas wouldn't work very well on the back of my house, which is all earth tone colors.  The anodized bronze of the Craftmade is a perfect match for the earthtone colors on my house now.

I would have ordered the Thomas lamp in Bronze but it isn't normally stocked even at internet stores, I would have had to wait for several weeks estimated lead time, and I was curious as to what the white actually looked like anyway.

I might save the Thomas for some future project because in the future, I may be using more white paint in the back of my house, and nice lamps like this with ceramic base may be harder to find in the future.  I used a combination of pure white and Lyndhurst Estate Cream on my Lyndhurst garden house, and I eventually plan to repaint my main house in those colors as well.