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Solar Powered Landscape Lighting – a Cordless Way to Decorate Your Landscapes

July 18th, 2009 No comments

Solar powered landscape lighting is a way to decorate and to light up your landscaping without the use of any wiring. More and more garden enthusiasts opt for solar powered landscape lighting instead of other landscape lighting options. Never again will you have to worry about long and unsightly wires in your garden, if you opt for the solar landscape lighting.

Solar powered landscape lighting produces light with the aid of natural free of charge solar energy, making this type of lighting both cost efficient and friendly to the environment.

Solar powered landscape lighting will allow you to safeguard your children and pets from getting an electric shock, while being in your garden. The lighting wires will never get damaged by animals, since there will be no wires. No wires also mean that this type of lighting can be easily relocated throughout your garden in the future.

Why does the number of homeowners, who opted for solar powered landscape lighting, increase day after day?

1. Solar powered landscape lighting provides the homeowners with a wide range of units to choose from for their landscape lighting design, including floodlights, flashlights, bollard lights, step lights, garden lights, light strings, lantern lights, hanging path lights, wall lights and adorable floating pool lights.

2. Solar powered landscape lighting is made from various materials for you to choose from: stainless steel, plastic, copper, copper finish, bronze, black metal, and chrome coated units.

3. Solar powered landscape lighting comes in a wide variety of decorative lights, such as stone lights, crackle glass globes, mosaic orbs, gazing balls, color changing lights, hummingbirds, butterflies, fireflies, dragonflies, mushrooms, flower lights (tulips, lilies) etc.

Solar powered landscape lighting is one of the most beautiful and functional landscape lighting solutions. Solar-powered garden lights are equipped with solar panels, allowing for a battery to gain enough power to feed the LED (Light Emitting Diode) for more than 14 hours on a bright sunny day. Even on a cloudy day the lighting will get charged from the sunlight, however in this case it will emit light for less than14 hours at dusk.

Solar powered landscape lighting is designed for the night-time illumination of the garden, it is ideal for decorative landscape lighting of the garden stairs, paths, alpine slides, flower beds, pools and other landscape areas. Such lighting can be installed in any location where there is enough sunlight to charge the battery. Many models have special brackets to place them on walls. With the onset of night, the light will automatically go on until dawn, and in the morning it will turn off, shifting to the charging mode. An integrated switch allows you to easily turn off your landscape lighting.

Solar powered landscape lighting does not require any maintenance. Such lighting will never burn out, and it does not need regular electricity to shine. Solar powered landscape lighting will eliminate the need of paying for landscape work, since the homeowner can easily set up solar powered landscape lighting on his/her own. There is absolutely no need for wiring, just mount the units wherever you want, whether on the ground, on the walls or on the polls. If you set up your lighting in the beginning of the day, you will see it start shining the same evening. This type of lighting will serve a homeowner for more than 10 years, as well as it is capable of withstanding very cold and very warm temperatures. Solar powered landscape lighting is stylish and autonomous lighting, capable of creating a special beautiful ambiance in any garden.

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Low Voltage Outdoor Lighting – Safe and Cost-Efficient Lighting Solution

June 27th, 2009 No comments

Low voltage outdoor lighting represents a safe and cost-efficient lighting solution. It is quite easy to assemble and install your own low voltage outdoor lighting system, without having to use the services of a professional electrician.

Dangerous regular 120 watt electric current is stepped down to merely 12 V in the low voltage outdoor lighting systems, making it so much safer. Electric in such systems runs through a loop from one end of the transformer to another.

Low voltage outdoor lighting benefits include:

1. A homeowner can set up his/her own low voltage outdoor lighting system hassle free, with the use of a special kit. Such kit usually includes all of the needed components, such as the cable, a transformer and the fixtures. The only needed component that is not included in the kit is the bulbs. However, it would not be prudent to include the bulbs in the kits, since every bulb may have a different wattage.

2. Low voltage outdoor lighting is a very low cost solution, since it can use light bulbs, starting at nearly 4 W. In addition to regular lamps, home owners may choose to use halogen or fluorescent lamps.

3. Most of the low voltage outdoor lighting kits also come with a built-in timer allowing the owner to set it to come on and off every 4, 6, or 8 hours etc., as well as many kits come with a built-in photocell, capable of turning the lighting on and off according to whether there is sun or there isn’t.

4. Low voltage outdoor lighting is very important for security. Many systems come with heat motion sensors, which would notify you about any intruders after dark.

5. Low voltage outdoor lighting is very easy to relocate, since the wires do not have to be buried deeply and permanently in the ground. The wires can be just slightly buried.

6. A transformer for low voltage outdoor lighting can range anywhere from 150 W and up to 900 W. It would probably be a good idea to purchase a transformer with a little more muscle, so that you can expand your lighting system if you decide to start using the bulbs with more watts.

7. In order to pick the correct cable for your low voltage outdoor lighting system, you would need to know the amount of watts that your system will require. The most common size wire is 12ga, which is capable of carrying 300 W. There also are 14 ga. and 16 ga. cables, which respectively can carry 200 W and 150 W.

8. There is a wide variety of schemes based on which you can build your low voltage outdoor lighting system, including in-ground fixtures, spotlights and deck lights for an ultimate convenience while walking in your garden at night.

9. The price of the low voltage outdoor lighting kits varies dramatically, starting from $15 and up to $300. The systems for $300, however, usually have a much higher quality and are much more environment-friendly.

10. In order to find out how many lamps can be used with any given transformer, you would simply have to multiply the total number of light bulbs in your low voltage outdoor lighting system by the total wattage. For instance, if your transformer is 150 W, you can use 30 lights by 5 W each in your setup.

It is important to consider several things before starting to set up your low voltage outdoor lighting:

1. Make sure not to use an extension cord for the transformer. Instead plug it directly in the outlet.

2. The wires of the low voltage outdoor lighting system are more prone to damages if they’re not buried deeply in the ground.

3. When choosing a transformer for your system, try to make sure that the wattage of your transformer is not over one third of your system’s current wattage.

Low voltage outdoor lighting is easy to implement, low cost and a safe way to light up your landscaping. Low voltage outdoor lighting will make any garden safer, and extend the life of the garden into the night.

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