Trained technicians for landscape lighting installation is a must.
Any time you are dealing with the hazards of electricity, including solar, you
want to spend extra for quality work. This is not an area in which to cut
corners. There are many systems available and you can get blue in the face
trying to decide which one is best for your home or business. The first
step is to plan for what is absolutely necessary and then go from there.
 There
are two types of landscape lighting fixtures, line voltage and low voltage
landscape lighting. Line voltage lighting is 120V, which is the regular voltage
inside our home that we use for all in home appliances. Installing line voltage
landscape light fixtures will require an electric junction box to be installed
at where the fixture is and the wires preferably be contained inside conduits so
that it is not exposed to the elements.
More work is involved when installing a line voltage lighting system, and it
is less flexible, as we cannot freely move the line-voltage light fixtures. A
line-voltage landscape lighting system is also considered less safe than a
low-voltage system. A low voltage lighting system operates at 12V instead of
120V.
Having low voltage fixtures is recommended because they are more energy
efficient compared to line-voltage incandescent light fixtures and the
low-voltage nature of the system poses virtually no risk of safety hazard out on
the landscape. Therefore by having low voltage lighting outside is preferred
since it’s safer, easier to install, and allows more flexibility.
In order to install a low voltage lighting system, an extra component is
necessary, the transformer. A landscape lighting transformer typically converts
the voltage from 120V (or 277V in some cases) to 12V. In this tutorial, we will
focus on the various aspects of installing a low-voltage landscape lighting
system.
With general electric and lighting knowledge a low voltage lighting system is
fairly easy to install. Even though there is no need of intricate wiring a basic
knowledge of the system and its aspects are needed for a proper installation of
outdoor lighting fixtures. The basic terms needed to install a set of path
lights or other landscape lighting fixtures are the transformer, power source,
hub, cables, voltmeter and the fixtures.
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