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Reduced voltage lights makes use of a transformer to decrease typical 120 volt lines to a lower voltage - Landscape Lighting Nashville. The most typical reduced voltage landscape lights transformers decrease the voltage to 12 volts, which is what we used.


Abby and I chose to just mount the landscape lights in the front of the house. In the future we may add lights sideways and also yards, but it wasn't a concern now. Abby then drew up about where she would like lights and also the amount of. It was helpful to consider images on-line to obtain a better feel for exactly how carefully spaced or spread out the lights should be.


When we identified where we desired the lights, we additionally had to make a note of where we had readily available outside electric outlets to be able to connect in our transformer(s). In our situation, we had one electrical outlet simply to the left of our front door and one outlet on each side of the home that we could potentially make use of.

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Ideally one transformer would cover all of our needs. We would certainly plug in a transformer to outside outlets and also run a line of all our lights from there. In our circumstance, this had not been possible since it would certainly've needed running a wire under our driveway as well as also under our front stroll.


Sadly, the transformers are the most pricey part of the whole process, yet there was bit we can do regarding it. The light in zone one would link into a transformer on the left side of our house. The lights in zone 2 would certainly plug right into a transformer by the front door.




Buying every one of the necessary tools for this project was one of the most overwhelming part. There are simply so lots of choices and also alternatives that it can be perplexing at. I'll walk you through our devices decisions. The very first point I did was take a look at low voltage illumination alternatives on Amazon.com.

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Then Abby and I took a trip to Lowe's and also checked out their "Portfolio" brand name of landscape lighting. While it was helpful to see every one of the different lights alternatives in individual to obtain a much better suggestion of what we required, the Portfolio brand name didn't look like it was a greater quality than various other brands we had actually checked out, and the rates were certainly higher than what I was seeing on Amazon.


Below is every little thing we used to install our landscape lighting: Transformers will be the greatest expense of this task. There are a number visit this page of calculators online to help you figure out the power (wattage) of your transformer, however it's extremely simple: Add up the complete electrical power of the lights made use of, multiply the complete wattage by 1.


They have 45, 120, 200, 300, 600, and also 900 watt options. We buy two 45 watt transformers and one 120 watt transformer. Although we checked out the Lowe's Profile brand of landscape lights, we chose to purchase our lights from Amazon.com. The price was much far better and the additional info lights had whatever we needed.

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The largest negative aspect to LEDs made use of to be the chilly shade temperature, however currently it's simple to locate LED lights in whatever color temperature level you like. We're satisfied with the color temperature, as well as it matches our porch lights and also lamp blog post light perfectly.


I believe this offers the nicest impact of beaming up on the side of house. A lot of flood lamps shining up on the home might have overwhelmed everything. I was truly satisfied with the quality of our lights. They appear extremely strong and also well made with sturdy stakes, an angle modification handle, and metal light bodies.


We got the 8 pack of lights Just ended up using seven for our layout. Prior to purchasing our cable, I made use of a tape measure to get an extremely harsh quote of just how much wire I would certainly require. I intended to make sure I had extra, so I purchased 100 feet of wire.

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14/2 or even 12/2. The initial number is the gauge of wire. A reduced number or "scale" find out implies a thicker wire. 12 gauge cable is thicker than 14 gauge cord. The second number is the variety of strands of wire in the wire. 14/2 indicates that it is 14 gauge cable with two hairs in the cord.


Every online source listings somewhat different numbers, yet if you are mosting likely to run close to 200 watts or even more, 14 gauge cable may be as well little. I went back as well as forth between 12/2 as well as 14/2 cord. I wound up purchasing the 14 scale cord due to the fact that some Amazon reviewers had commented that the lights we acquired used 14 scale wire.


Do not stress regarding the cord choice. For the large bulk of residential landscape lights projects, 14 gauge or 12 gauge will certainly work simply great. The last thing you need for this project are the cord connectors. They are affordable, as well as there are lots of options. The cable ports are used to link the two short cable hairs that prolong from each light to the lengthy cord that offers power to all of the lights in the strand.

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The lengthy cable is slid right into a cord owner on the connector, and also after that you tighten up down the connector and also the steel prongs touch directly into your long cable. Also viewing on Amazon.com for connectors, I still could not imagine exactly how this would work, so I ended up purchasing 2 kinds of ports.