On 25 October everything shifts an hour
In the early hours of Sunday 25 October 2026 the clocks go back, and from that day darkness arrives an hour earlier. Added to the natural shortening of autumn, the difference from September is considerable.
Suddenly you are using outdoor lighting every night that has not been switched on for five months. That is when the blown bulb, the sensor that no longer senses and the drifted timer all surface together.
Timers do not adjust themselves
Lighting on an astronomical timer follows dusk and adapts with no intervention. Lighting on a fixed-time switch does not: from 25 October it will come on an hour late, every night, until somebody changes it.
In an urbanisation that means a stretch of driveway in the dark exactly when people are coming home. It is the first thing to check on the Sunday of the change.
Movement sensors that have stopped sensing
An outdoor sensor collects dust, cobwebs and, near the sea, a film of salt on the lens. The result is a device that triggers in the wind and ignores someone walking past.
Cleaning the lens and adjusting sensitivity and range takes minutes, and saves replacing a device that was working.
Outdoor fittings, not living room fittings
Junction boxes, lamp holders and garden accessories have to be rated for weather. In plenty of properties around here there are indoor fittings installed outside, protected with a bit of tape, and they work right up to the first serious October rain.
An RCD tripping repeatedly after a storm nearly always points to moisture in an outdoor junction box. That is not the RCD failing, that is the RCD doing its job.
Dark hours and an empty house
In urbanisations with many properties closed for winter, a house completely dark every night stands out. A timer switching an indoor light on for a few hours costs very little and changes how the place reads from the street.
It works better than an outdoor light left on all night, which uses electricity, annoys the neighbours and fools nobody.
