Outdoor lighting remains one of the hottest trends in home improvement today. One of the reasons it has become so popular is the flexibility it can offer the home owner in the long term. As your tastes change or your landscape grows, a skilled outdoor lighting designer can adapt and accommodate these preferences. You may be surprised to know that even adding to your existing professional lighting system is actually fairly simple, particularly on older halogen systems.
The most important thing your contractor has to know when attempting to add fixtures to your lighting system is how much the additions will change the electrical draw from the transformer, and then how the other fixtures will also be affected.
If your current halogen lighting system transformer is “maxed out,” we may have to convert some fixtures to LED in order to free up some space, but this could be as easy as replacing some halogen light bulbs with outdoor-rated LED light bulbs. Since the LED lamps use 75% less energy, replacing just a few lamps can free up quite a bit of space on a transformer. This will allow for the addition of several new LED fixtures.
What must be taken into consideration then, however, is the electrical supply (voltage) that is being sent down the line to the remaining halogen lamps. If some of the system is being upgraded to LED, the installer must make sure that the rest of the halogen lamps are not getting too much or too little voltage, causing them to burn out prematurely.
We generally recommend that we replace all of the halogen lamps on a wire with new LED lamps, which may be five or more lights at any one time. This makes it much easier to insure proper voltage is going to all of the existing fixtures and can extend the life of the system.
In cases where there is already plenty of room on a transformer, then adding new fixtures becomes even easier. With LEDs, it may be just a matter of adding some wire at a hub or fixture location, and installing the new fixtures where they are needed. This can be easily discovered in a few minutes with some common hand tools and electrical meter.
Our team of professional landscape lighting installers will be happy to assess your existing system and let you know what would be necessary to make additions to your lighting. Contact us here.
