DIY Moveable Light Post Fixture
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The credit for this project all falls to my brilliant husband. Our house sits on a busy road and if someone hasn’t visited us before, it can be hard to find… especially at night! Our neighbors across the street have a great light post fixture out by the end of their driveway that my husband has been eyeing for a few years now. The issues, however, with installing a similar post in our yard seemed pretty overwhelming.
The spot where he wanted to put a post falls right on or near the gas line that runs down our road which would have made digging and burying a post a huge “red tape” undertaking. We also would have to trench through our large front yard to get electricity out to the post if we wanted to run power to a light. Both of these issues made the idea of a light post seem out of reach. That is, until, my husband had some time (i.e., a global pandemic keeping us home all weekend every weekend) to rethink the ins-and-outs of his idea.
Borrowing from our Wedding Arbor, Patio Lights and Kid Containment Fence projects, his amazing idea was to create a concrete weight to hold the post upright in the yard without having to dig or bury anything in the yard. I jumped at this idea because it also meant we could move the post if we didn’t love where we set it up. I was sold.
To work around the issue of trenching a power line through the yard, we opted for this gorgeous Solar Post Light Fixture. It has great reviews online and has a really classic look.
Having figured out a work around for the two major obstacles, he decided this past weekend to put his idea to task and began putting it all together.
The supplies needed for this project include:
- Five Gallon Bucket
- 50 Lbs of Quickcrete
- Outdoor Light Post
- Solar Post Light Fixture
- (optional) Retaining Wall Blocks – we used these
- Fill Dirt
- Tamp or Wide Flat board and Mallet
- Leveling Sand
The first step in the process of turning these pieces and parts into a functional landscape feature was to determine how tall we wanted the post and where we wanted to locate it in our yard. The instructions with this pole recommended burying 18″ underground, and since we weren’t burying any of it, we simply cut those 18″ off the bottom. This made the finished piece about 6.5′ tall.
To cut the metal pole, my husband measured up 18″ from the bottom and wrapped a piece of white duct tape around to mark his cut line. He then used a hack saw to cut the metal post. We considered putting a carbide-tipped blade on the circular saw but didn’t want to worry about the sparks flying. The Hack Saw took a little more man power, but, got the job done.
The concept of setting the pole in a concrete bucket is something we’ve done before. We made our wedding arbor using the same idea. This Six-Foot metal pole, however, wasn’t going to be as simple as a wooden Curtain Rod.
To keep the pole upright, we strung a length of rope through two holes that were already cut out of the post (for the cross bar). We took the rope and threw it over one of the rafters in our garage and tied it off so the post was hanging about inches off the ground. We slid the bucket into place underneath the post and began slowly filling the bucket with concrete mix.
We kept stopping every few minutes to double check the levels on the top and side of the post to make sure it was still perfectly straight. By slowly adding the concrete and water, we were able to make sure the mixture was consistent all the way through the bucket and the post remained upright and flush. We left the post hanging overnight and in the morning, it was rock solid and ready to go!
To level out the ground where we wanted to pole to go, my husband tossed down some fill dirt then drove back and forth over the area with his Lawn Tractor to pack it down. After he got the area pretty well flattened with the tractor, he begin leveling the area out, in earnest, with leveling sand.
To tamp down the sand, he used a 6×1 board, a rubber mallet and a Level to compact the sand down and keep it all flush and level. Once the ground was level, it was time to build the wall!
He centered the bucket and pole in the middle of the compacted sand tapping the edge of the bucket with the rubber mallet to ensure it was level and then row by row, leveled and placed each stone. To hide the 5 gallon bucket, we needed to go 5 rows tall. If you wanted to do this without a rock wall, you could pour your concrete into a large decorative planter instead of a bucket and place the planter anywhere you’d like. We wanted to integrate the fixture into our yardscape and the rock wall mimics the Stone Walled Fire Pit my husband built when we first moved in.
Once the wall was complete, he filled in the space between the bucket and the wall with more fill dirt, pausing periodically to check that the post was still leveled up. When the Bucket was buried, he crowned the top of the pole with the Light Fixture. It was more exciting than watching the star go up on the Christmas Tree!
The whole family then anxiously waited in the driveway at dusk to see the light come on and we all did a victory dance when it did! This was a project that had My Husband’s troubleshooting mind working in overdrive, but, he pulled it off amazingly – the post and fixture look like they’ve always been a part of our yard.
My favorite part of this project is that is could be recreated on any scale for any type of home. If you are in a rental, have a condo or townhouse, or even on a patio or garden, you could recreate this on a smaller scale in a Decorative Planter and have a custom solar powered light post anywhere!