You probably wouldn’t be surprised to know that we get a lot of calls for help from folks whose outdoor lighting systems don’t work properly. Whether or not they could reach the guy that installed it, or simply lost faith in them, we don’t always know for sure; but we always do our best to make the new customer happy with their lighting. On this particular occasion, the call came in and we went to check it out.
We found that the system was actually made up of some fairly good lighting fixtures and transformer. They installed very high quality LED MR16 lamps, as well. We didn’t ask, but I’m betting the client spent a pretty penny on that lighting system, and it was only a couple of years old. So, what could have gone wrong that prompted the call?
Well, it turns out that word was getting around that the original installation company wasn’t as reputable as the homeowner had been led to believe. The client knew that our company was doing a lot of work in her neighborhood, which is one of the finest developments in central Texas; she thought we might know what we were doing and perhaps we could repair her troubled system.
I’m including photos in this blog to demonstrate why it is so important to not only use good lighting products but to install them properly. 
After some basic troubleshooting, we discovered the problem. You can see in the photos that the original installers used regular yellow and red dry use only wire nuts to make their wire connections. This allowed water to get into the connections, causing some serious issues there. The water corroded the wire, making what should be a very efficient LED lighting system operate very inefficiently. Our technicians had to go in and dig up every connection, cut out the corroded wire and reconnect everything properly. Then we had to clean up the messy transformer installation so it looked better. Finally we checked all of the voltage and amp readings to insure that everything was working exactly right.
While we were there, we found a fixture that was not working due to a manufacture problem. Since we have great relationships with every major outdoor lighting manufacturer, we were able to replace the light under the manufacturer warranty at no additional charge to her – quite a bonus! Since we didn’t install this fixture to begin with we didn’t really have to do that — but this client had already had enough bad things happen with her system. It was easy for us to do a little something extra to give her some good news.
When you go out to dinner, an expensive beef filet can be turned into a very bad steak when it isn’t prepared properly no matter how high the quality before it is cooked. The same applies here – you can use the best parts in the world, but if you put them together poorly, all you end up with is junk — and that’s what happened to this nice lady. Luckily, we were called in soon enough to save it.
