Who would have thought just 10 years ago that an outdoor lighting company would have to learn about troubleshooting electronic components? Most people don’t realize that LED lighting is made up of all kinds of electronic circuitry with diodes, resistors, wires, drivers, and more. Gone are the days of just finding the burned out light bulb.
Regular halogen or incandescent light bulbs have a filament which eventually burns in half resulting in a burned out light bulb. An easy fix – just replace the light bulb.
LED lights are a whole different animal – they do not have filaments. Instead, they have electronics. Electronics that look a lot like you took a computer apart. This is one of the reasons the LED lights cost a lot more that a strand of wire in a glass tube.
Moisture is the greatest enemy an LED light can face and is the culprit most often in a failure. Imagine what might happen if you dropped your cell phone in your landscape and the irrigation system turns on. It’s important to make very sure that any LED product that is installed in the landscape is completely sealed and potted to insure that no moisture can get into those electronics.
The primary problem now when a light goes out is that it’s usually a short circuit in a single LED fixture or lamp causing an entire run of lights to go out. So, instead of looking for a burned out light bulb and replacing it, we may have to disconnect fixtures completely, one at a time, to find the one that is causing the problem. Because of the complexity of the fixtures and the possible troubleshooting, it is wiser to call a professional in than to tackle the problem yourself. Fortunately, it doesn’t happen often and good warranties can prevent this from being very costly and of course if it’s a NightScenes system that is less than 3 years old, there is no cost at all to replace a bad LED fixture.
How is your LED outdoor lighting performing? Does it need a check-up? We’ll be happy to take a look, just drop us a quick note
