Cyclops Light
A friend of mine asked me to look at a pool for a client of his who wants a renovation. This was a 20 year old pool and was in much need of updating. Well that’s not quite right. It needs to be ripped up and thrown away. They need to start over with a new pool, the old one was bad. In fact it’s so bad… how bad is it? It’s so bad it’s another story! Actually the entire pool reeks of very bad design from beginning to end! (Not an exaggeration either, the bad design or the reeking part!) But of all the things that should never have been done on the pool, and there are a number, I just get irritated with this one, the “cyclops” light.
This is what I call a pool that has one large, usually a 500 watt, light that’s positioned in such a way to shine directly into prime viewing area, In this case the house. It’s a given rule for any good quality lighting guy, to hide, if at all possible, the “sources” of the lights. I’m sure that this rule never occurred to this pool builder given the total number of egregious errors in the building of this pool (including a spa, not big enough to hold my dog, and he’s a Shih Tzu… not that my dog uses spas!)
See the light not the source!
Now I realize that some builders don’t know any better and just put things were they always have put things, such as under the diving board. Like the dog chasing the squirrel. “I see diving board… must place light here!”. This strikes me as rather stupid. There, I said it. Dumb. Just because something has always been that way (and it actually hasn’t) certainly does not make it right, just ignorant!
But rather than continue discussing the merits, or lack of them in this case, of hiding the pool light, I thought we could look at this from a “what were they thinking?” angle:
- Blinded by the light they dropped it where they stood!
- No one told them to NOT go into the light
- They thought it was for a train
- They thought it WAS the train
- They wanted to blind themselves so they did not have to see uncle Harry in a speedo!
