If your outdoor lighting system is more than five years old, it’s probably time to think about an update. There are several reasons to consider this investment:
- Your landscape has probably changed a lot in five years. Plants have grown and matured. You may have added or removed plants.
- Your use of the spaces may have changed. Perhaps you are entertaining more, or need to enhance additional areas on your property.
- You want to renew or change the atmosphere, or highlight different focal points.
- You may have older halogen lighting which uses a lot of energy and takes a lot of maintenance to operate properly.
So, how do you go about updating your lighting? An important first step is to make sure the transformer and wiring are in good shape and can handle any changes. As long as you have a professional stainless steel transformer, it’s probably up to the task. If you have a small plastic transformer, it’s likely in need an upgrade as the life expectancy is much shorter. To insure your wiring is okay, check your fixture and hub connections. These are the places most likely to have corrosion due to poor connections. Make sure that the copper wire is shiny and not green. If you see green wire, it means that you have corrosion and some of the wire needs to be replaced. Be sure to cut the wire back to a place where corrosion is no longer visible. 
Now let’s look at your plants. I’m sure that they’ve all grown quite a bit in five years. Does your light seem to be too dull now? It may be time to increase the amount of lumens that the fixture is using to accent the larger plant. If you are currently using a halogen lamp, we recommend that you switch it to LED. This change allows you to increase the amount of light you are casting onto your plant, and also lowers the amount of wattage (energy) at the fixture saving room on your transformer and cutting your electrical expense. You may also need to consider adding a few fixtures if your landscape has grown too much. Once again, using LED fixtures here will allow you to add onto your existing system much easier. If you feel that going back with halogen is your best option, it might be necessary to increase the size of your transformer to accommodate the increase in load. It will be important to rebalance the electrical load to insure proper voltage is going to each of your fixtures. Halogen lighting is not nearly as forgiving as LED when it comes to voltage at the fixture.
If you have an older halogen lighting system you may be able to convert the whole system to LED by simply replacing the lamps (light bulbs). There are a lot of products out there now that will allow you to do this — but a word of caution: please make sure that the LED lamps you buy are rated for outdoor use in sealed fixtures! This is very important. If you go to the home improvement store or lighting showroom and pick up some LED lamps for your system, you could be very disappointed in the outcome if you fail to select the right product. And you will have wasted a lot of money since you’ll be replacing those more expensive lamps again very soon. In many of these cases, those cheap or unrated LED lamps don’t last as long as regular halogen lamps. The great thing about conversion to the higher quality, outdoor rated LED products is that it will save a ton of work in the future, and they will last for many years. The energy saving is pretty darn good as well, about 75% less energy used.
Take an objective look at your landscape and lighting. Move some lights around to get the best effect or try something different just to freshen up the look. To experiment, you can add some wire to each fixture, and then go out at night and move them to the optimum location. When you like what you see, come back out the next day and bury the wire. This will also help to determine if you need to add a few things. Once again, if you’re converting some or all of your lights to LED, you won’t need to worry about overloading your transformer since you’ll actually be reducing the load on it.
These were just a few tips to help you see the possibilities for upgrading and lengthening the life of your lighting system. Please feel free to ask questions or leave comments below and we will happily respond. If you would prefer us to come out and evaluate your system for upgrading, please contact us here.
