Cohousing-L Mailing List: Pathway Lighting

[patty m gourley (cohousing]

Hello, and thanks for the posts about common house furniture.  Now I have
a new question:

What have you used for lighting on your pathways?  We recently received a
bid from the electrical contractor for the outdoor lighting.  It came to
$32,000!  The plan shows pathway lights (34", malibu style) every 8-10
feet along the flat pathways and then one for every single step, on both
sides of the steps.    Our site is slightly sloped, so there are areas
where there are 2-3 steps.  The plan seems obsessive to some of us, who
prefer to see the stars at night, and in fact we want to get rid of
pathway lights altogether, except in the areas where there are steps.   
And to others in the group (a small minority) the plan is perfect.  These
folks feel they need all that candle power to walk safely at night. 

As a compromise, we are getting bids from another source, the renewables
division at Real Goods, here in 
California.  Several of us Tierra Nuevans are Hard Corp members and like
the idea of using alternative energy.  The engineer there who helped me
on the phone seemed to think that hard-wiring the pathway lights would be
the best way to go, since solar path lights often get shadowed by the
canapy of landscape trees and shrubs.  So while we wait for them to
receive the lighting/site plan, in order to give us a second bid, what
have the rest of you done for pathway lighting?  Have any of you started
out with no outdoor lighting, then retrofitted as needed for the extra
dark places, if any?  Have any of you experienced having an outdoor
lighting plan (parking lots/pathways) that felt too "lit" after move-in,
and then had to turn off some of the lights?

Thanks,
Patty Mara
Tierra Nueva CoHousing
San Luis Obispo County, CA