DESIGN A SYSTEM

The following design plan should give you an idea of what is involved in putting together a low voltage landscape lighting design.

Let's say we are planning to use 8 spot lights with 20 watts each, and 5 path lights with 10 watts each. This set up gives us a total of 210 watts.

Knowing how many total watts will be in our set-up will help us when choosing a transformer. There are several options to consider, but we will use the easiest one, a straight 300 wt. transformer with 2 sets of terminals. The allotted amount of voltage drop is estimated at 20%. What this means is that we must take the transformer wattage and deduct 20%, so we should only use no more than 240 total watts. Voltage drop occurs when electricity is lost due to distance or inadequate wire size.

Without using an ohmmeter, the general rule of thumb is as follows:

• 12g wire will handle 100’ and 100 watts
• 10 gauge wire will handle125’ and 125 watts.
• 8 gauge wire will handle 150 feet and 150 watts

For demonstration purposes, let’s assume that all of our lights are going to run in a straight line with the furthest one being 100 feet away from the power source. We will use 12 gauge wire with 3 wire runs. We will put 80 watts on the shortest run, 70 watts on the middle run and 60 watts on the longest run. If the longest run was to be 125 feet away, we would use 10 gauge wire.

When we connect the fixtures to the wire we will use grease filled wire caps. It does not matter which ends couple together, as long as, the caps are tight.

Send us a photograph or digital picture of your house or yard and we can recommend a system design and fixtures that will work well in your situation. We can also digitally enhance the picture for you to see what your yard can look like with a dream lightscape. Please include some reference point and measurements.

Send photographs to:

The Sprinkler Doctor
23705 Van Owen Street #213
West Hills, CA 91307

Attach digital images to email and send to sprnklrdr@lowvoltagelandscapelights.com