It does the hard work of taking your 120V power supply and stepping it down to a safe 12V level. The transformer is the brain of your landscape lighting system. Even if you don’t think you’ll be overloading your wires at this stage, it means that it’s easier to upgrade your system in future if you decide to. If you can, then always wire in parallel. It means that, if one light breaks, you’ll still have some working lights because only the part of the circuit with the blown light will be broken, the other loop(s) will be fully closed and work fine.It scales back the load on each loop, meaning you’re less likely to have problems with voltage drop (more on that further below).Wiring in parallel has a couple of key benefits: You don’t have to worry about multiple circuit loops.īut that’s the only benefit, and really it’s not too much more difficult to wire in parallel, especially if you’re starting from scratch and can plan it out properly. The benefit of choosing to do it this way is that it’s usually a simpler job. Wiring in series means that your circuit is one continuous loop. This will help you decide on the type of wiring you’ll use and your transformer.īut it will also help you decide whether you want to wire your circuit in series or parallel. You can hardly just jump straight into digging up the garden and connecting all your wires.Īs part of that planning phase, you’ll be working out how many lights you’ll want to use, which will help to tell you how much power they’ll draw. A step-by-step guide to installing your landscape lightsĪny landscape lighting installation – or a lighting installation of any kind – starts with planning.Installing landscape lighting is relatively simple, but there are a few things you need to consider, so let’s look more at: You’ll need special wire rated for outdoor use too. The transformer is plugged into the main power supply and then feeds a low voltage current to your lights. To install landscape lights on a 120V circuit, you’ll need a transformer to step the power down to 12V. Instead, you’ll want to create a setup that involves low voltage lights that are much safer for outdoor use, wired up to make sure they’ve got just the power they need. Generally, you’re looking at porch lights that would be wired on an internal circuit or maybe a couple of spotlights that plug directly into an outlet.īut when you’re talking about a proper landscape lighting system, they aren’t practical. There aren’t many 120V lights you can even buy to use outdoors. Generally, when we talk about landscape lighting, we refer to low-voltage lights on a 12V circuit. It’s very rare for anyone to use 120V lighting outdoors.
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