This weekend I just picked up a couple of exterior motion lights and if you follow along
with me, you can learn how to install these yourself.
It's actually not that hard to do even though we'll have to deal with electrical wires which
can make some people nervous.
The good thing is that only basic tools are needed along with a circuit tester.
My tester is a really basic one but it works for what we need to do here.
So let's start out by removing the two mounting nuts on the new lamp.
These will screw off easily and after they're out, the mounting plate needs to be removed.
Now carefully pull out the wires that have been stuffed into the light enclosure.
And this is the light I'm going to replace.
For some reason it stopped working so that's why I'm changing it out today.
So like I just did with the new light, I'm going to take out the mounting nuts which
are holding the light to the wall.
Once they're out, pull the lamp off and let it gently hang by the wires.
Now there are two screws that need to be taken out in order to remove the old mounting plate.
These screws secure the mounting plate to the electrical box in the wall.
These screws are usually pretty short and maybe half an inch long so be careful not
to drop them.
After the plate is off gently pull some of the wires out.
They're usually packed in the box pretty tight but when you get them out separate them so
you can see them clearly.
Now check the black and white wires with a circuit tester to see if there's power going
through here.
As you can see clearly the power is still on so before proceeding make sure to turn
off the breaker for this light.
And now just one more check to confirm the power is off here and it looks like I'm good
to go.
Now remove the wire nuts for the old light.
You can reuse these or you can use the nuts that are included with the new light.
Usually I'll just use the old ones since they're perfectly fine.
Just be careful on the last one and hold the wire so the lamp doesn't drop to the ground.
Now take the new mounting plate and insert the wires through the center.
And then hold the plate up to the wall.
Now an interesting thing happened here that I hadn't seen before in all the lights I've
replaced in the past.
For some reason on this one the screw cutouts on the plate weren't matching up with the
mounting holes in the wall.
They're always in standard locations but it wasn't working for me here.
But I finally realized that I just needed to rotate the plate and reposition the mounting
screws.
So the screws in my installation have to be moved to the other holes on the plate.
And like I said earlier, I've never had to do this before so you may not even run into
this issue here.
But I'm just glad it didn't take me too long to figure out why the mounting holes weren't
lining up.
Ok so now with the mounting screws repositioned, let's put the plate back on the wall and see
if this worked.
I can clearly see that the cutouts are in the right position and now I can start attaching
the plate to the wall box.
Just use the original screws we took out earlier and tighten them so the plate is secure.
The two long mounting screws should be horizontally level when the plate is secured to the wall.
Now it's time to start installing the actual lamp.
There are three wires we need to connect.
The black, white and the ground wire which has no insulation on it.
With a good grip on the lamp, twist the ground wires together.
It's gonna be a bit loose at first but take one of the wire nuts and twist it over the
two wires until it's tight.
Then I'll do the same with the white wire.
At this point, I'm just letting the lamp hang by the ground wire so I have two hands to
work with.
It's probably not the best method but it's gonna have to work for me here since I'm working
alone.
Secure the white wires with another wire nut and then finish this off by doing the same
with the black wires.
When they're all connected, do one more check to make sure they are tight and the wires
won't slip out.
Now carefully stuff the wires into the wall box.
These wires aren't very flexible but do your best to get them into the box.
Now line up the long mounting screws with the lamp and slip it onto the wall.
Take the small decorative mounting nuts and twist them on to finish securing the lamp
to the wall.
The ones I have here are actually slotted so I can use a screwdriver to tighten them
but most of the ones I've seen are the ones that you use your finger to tighten.
At this point we're almost done with the installation.
I'm hoping by now you can see how easy it is to replace an exterior light.
I think pretty much anyone can do this.
So I'm really close to getting done and one of the cool things about this lamp is that
it has a rotatable motion sensor which is great because this is mounted in a corner.
At this point, flip the breaker back on and set the lamp to test mode.
I'll turn on the light switch inside the house and now I can test the light in daylight.
And that's pretty much how you install an exterior lamp!
I've got one more to install but I hope you found this video helpful and if you did please
hit the thumbs up and don't forget to subscribe so you won't miss any of my weekly videos!
See ya next time!