| Troubleshooting your Landscape Lighting |
| Landscape lighting needs the occasional maintenance to keep your
landscape lighting system running properly. To keep your landscaping
lights shining on your fountains and highlighting your shrubs,
you need to clean off the dirt, leaves and prune the nearby
plants. The dirt may have plugged the drain holes on the bottom
or back of your landscape lights, if the holes are constantly
being clogged, you might want to make the holes bigger to guarantee
that the water runs out instead of filling up. After doing
your pruning, you may have to move or adjust the height of
your tier lights, or readjust your spot lights to reflect the
new height of your plants. Once a year check the connections
along the low voltage cable, looking for loose connections,
loose electrical tape or frayed cable. Also once a year remove
all the light bulbs and spray the light bulb sockets with a
silicon based contact cleaner spray. |
 |
|
| |
| Most light bulbs for landscape lights have a rated
life of about 1,000 hours, but actual life is usually longer because
of voltage drop most landscape lighting systems run at a lower than
designed voltage. Replace burnt out bulbs as soon as possible because
the voltage goes up with fewer light bulbs lit, shortening bulb life
on the remaining light bulbs. |
| |
| Troubleshooting - the light bulbs are dim |
- Check all connections at the lights and transformer, make sure
all connections are tight.
- Remove one or more of the light bulbs, if the remaining lights
get brighter you overloaded the transformer, either remove the lights
from the system or replace the transformer with a larger wattage
rated transformer.
|
| |
| Troubleshooting - the light bulbs at the end of
the cable run are dim |
- This is usually caused by a loss of voltage due to the resistance of too
small a cable gauge over a too long cable length, this is called a voltage drop,
the solution would be get a larger gauge cable.
|
| |
| Troubleshooting - one light bulb is out. |
- Test with a light bulb that does work, the
light bulb might be burnt out.
- Check the wire connections.
|
| |
| Troubleshooting - all the light bulbs are out |
- Check if the wall outlet is working.
- Tthe transformer has a fuse
or breaker that might need replacing or resetting.
- The transformer might be turned off, check the timer or photocell,
to test a photocell cover it with electrical tape.
- There might be a break in the cable, check the entire length
of the cable.
|
| |
| Troubleshooting - the light bulbs turn on initially,
but then shut off after awhile. |
- The transformer might be overloaded, try removing
a light or two.
- There might be a short circuit, check all the connections.
|
