Let’s take a look at a few landscape lighting timers and how they can control your outdoor lighting system
One of the most common problems that we find on landscape lighting systems in the Austin, San Antonio and surrounding Hill Country area is the use of cut-rate mechanical timers to control the on/off operation of the outdoor lighting system. Even though we see this issue everyday, there are several good reasons why a cheap timer is a bad idea on a good lighting system.
First – and most critical – is that these timers are usually designed to be used indoors only. Moisture, insects, dirt and other elements of outdoor use cause these timers to malfunction regularly. Another reason to avoid sub-standard timers is their inability to handle power outages. These timers must have electricity at all times or they will lose time and programming. You’ll notice the outdoor lighting system not turning on until well past dark, or staying on during the day when this happens. Also, manual landscape lighting timers will not automatically adjust for seasonal changes in light and darkness. It’s not fun having to constantly adjust the timer to keep up with the daily time of sunset or Daylight Saving Time.
Controlling a high quality lighting system should be almost effortless for the property owner. There are a number of ways to accomplish this, and we use a lot of them – but we never use mechanical timers. One of our favorites to use is an astronomical timer. This timer is set to operate according to your actual location, using your longitude and latitude settings. This allows the system to operate only from dusk to a specified time or dawn, and automatically adjusts each day. This is far better than a photo cell since it’s not affected by shade, clouds or debris on the lens. The timing system works completely automatically, even for Daylight Saving Time, so there’s no need to make any manual adjustments. Additionally, the astronomical landscape lighting timers have a battery back-up eliminating failure even if the power goes out (the timer, not the lighting). Another control device, universal powerline bus/radio frequency, allows us to operate the landscape lighting and the home’s exterior lighting together as a unified system. The program will permit us to dim the home’s exterior lighting to the same levels as the landscape lighting, creating a lovely, uniform lighting scheme across the project, operating from dusk to any selected off time. This UPB/RF system is programmed and then managed from almost anywhere in the world using an IPhone, IPad or other WIFI device as a remote controller.
The main point here is that we want the operation of the lighting system to be as effective and efficient as possible. We don’t want lights to be on when not needed, and we don’t want anyone to be forced to constantly deal with the inconvenience of making adjustments all the time. These professional control devices may cost a little more than a cheap mechanical timer, but will easily pay for themselves by reducing energy waste turning the lighting system on unnecessarily. The effectiveness of a quality timer also ensures that your lighting system will work when you want it to without wasting your time with the inconvenience of manual adjustments.
Like they say, timing is everything and we like to help everyone save time and money. If you are in central Texas and you notice that your lighting is not operating when it should be, just contact us here and we’ll be very happy to take a look.
