Quick & Easy Way to Clean, Renew & Restore Solar Pathway Lights! Wow!! Looks Brand New!!!

hey there how's it going everybody today I'm going to be sharing with you a quick and easy way to renew and restore your solar pathway lights to like new condition unfortunately after even just a short time of being outside in the Sun in the rain the clear coat on these tiny solar cells atop these pathway lights begin to break down become hazy and stop functioning at their full potential the good news is I'm going to show you how in just a couple minutes of your time you can restore these lights and bring them back to life now I'm not trying to reinvent the wheel here as the steps we're gonna perform in this project today have already been successfully demonstrated as a means of restoring plastic headlights on automobiles but rather I'm just reapply and that knowledge towards another type of project in hopes to help in anybody out there who may be interested for this project you're gonna need a spray bottle full of water a spray can of clear coat make sure it's non yellowing and UV resistant some isopropyl alcohol a couple different grades of wet/dry sandpaper 402 thousand grit will do the trick a roll a painters tape and a piece of cardboard or paper that you can cut a square template out of alright so the first step is to simply remove the top off the base of these pathway lights next I'm just gonna give the top surface a quick wash just a standard dish sponge will work fine and if you use the scrubby side be sure to use light pressure as not to damage the solar panel or any other part of the pathway light now on the inside of the lid be sure not to get any water in there that's where the battery and the light and the electronics are this is also a good time to go ahead and clean the rest of the base of the pathway light another great thing about this model of pathway lights is they came with both glass and stainless steel construction adding to durability and longevity of the product so now that we have everything nice and clean I'm just going to tape off around this little solar cell this is going to protect the metal I'm getting scuffed up as we perform the next steps next I'm just going to tear off a couple pieces of sandpaper one from each of the different types then I'm going to take my spray bottle and fully wet down both the solar cell and both pieces of sandpaper starting off using the 400 grit I'm gonna use light pressure to sand away the top layer of grime on this solar cell you can see all the grimy crud off it's important to keep everything nice and moist as you continue the wet sand on the solar cell [Music] all right now we're gonna rinse it off and move on to the 2,000 grit sandpaper same process using light pressure and keeping everything moist I'm just gonna sand this down to a nice smooth finish just a reminder we're just sanding down the clear coat that's why it's important that we apply the light pressure and keep everything nice and wet next we're gonna take a little bit of alcohol and just give this a final wipe down this does a great job at removing any leftover dirt oil and dries quick for the next step so here I just traced out a square the same size as the solar panel and I'm gonna cut that out and use this as an overspray protector as I spray clear coat over these solar cells now this is the most important step in this whole project you want to make sure that when you're spraying the clear coat that you do nice short bursts light sprays you don't want it to be too thick or heavy or start to drip and don't worry if it looks spotty we're gonna put several coats on here and when it's all said and done it's going to look great now we're just going to wait a few minutes for this to dry and then we're gonna come back and give it another coat same exact way again don't worry about any splatter pattern this is all going to smooth itself out as it dries and here we are just five minutes later you can see the solar panel looks great the clear coat is smoothed out everything is nice and transparent we've just successfully restored this pathway light now I'd like to perform this as an annual maintenance in the fall and bring in my solar lights over the fall and winter season when they're not of much use as the Sun is not out all that much that way I can take it out of the weather and then come early spring I can go and plug these back in the yard it will be like a brand-new set of lights [Music] [Music] now if you want to take your pathway lights to the next level I'll share with you a quick tip you can use a little bit of wd-40 if the base of your lights are made of metal and that's gonna clean shine and protect it from any rust in the future of course if the base is made of plastic you could use a plastic cleanser or something like an armor off and get the same results well that's it for now everybody thanks for tuning in if you found anything helpful or entertaining in this video I sure would appreciate a like for us youtubers it's like throwing a tip in our jar so I really appreciate it and if you're new to the channel I'd encourage you to subscribe and with that I hope this video finds you and finds you well take care everybody I'll be talking to you again soon

Channel: Plant Abundance

Views: 1,519,121

Keywords: Solar, Pathway, Lights, Maintenance, How to, Clean, Renew, Restore, Easy, DIY, Project, Frugal, Garden, Lighting, Repair, Landscape Lighting, Walkway Lights, HGTV

Id: O4HGLGpim68

Length: 4min 50sec (290 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 10 2016