A Guide to Garden LED Lights
Garden lights are used for a number of reasons. They can be used to light up walkways at night, provide security, or enhance the aesthetics of a garden. Outdoor lighting, and specifically garden lighting, requires very robust light fittings, and a lot of planning and adherence to safety regulations. Garden LED lights have started featuring more and more in home improvement catalogs, and in landscaper specifications.
The majority of garden lights are small, and close to the ground, so as not to obscure the view of plants, flowers and surroundings. This creates problems, because of waterproofing issues. Irrigation, rainfall and extreme temperature fluctuations, cause condensation on conductors and terminals, which in turn causes short circuits and bulb failures.
Many of the cheaper garden lights use incandescent bulbs, and rely on 110V or 220V mains supply. This creates a real hazard in the garden environment, unless the power cables are armor shielded and earthed correctly, or running inside conduits. This adds to the expense.
Halogen and incandescent lights tend to get very hot, which plays havoc on the rubber seals and waterproofing of the light housings. Failed seals translates to water penetration and light malfunction. Garden LED lights solve a lot of the issues associated with outdoor lighting. The LED's operate at a much lower temperature, while providing illumination that rivals or surpasses that of incandescent and fluorescent bulbs.
LED lights use much less power, and are supplied by safety transformers. This makes them environmentally friendly, in comparison to other lights that also rely on power from the mains grid. The wiring that comes from the transformers carries low voltage, so there are no safety regulations that need to be adhered to: they can be buried straight in the ground without conduit. Only the supply cables to the transformers need additional protection. LED's last up to eight times longer than other bulbs, so there is less replacement needed, and they are far more durable.
Durability means a lot in the garden environment. It doesn't matter if the LED garden light fitting is knocked over by children or animals, or subject to buffeting winds and hard-driven rain, the individual LED's are very difficult to break. What's more, is the the potentially vulnerable electronics that the LED's are attached to inside the light fittings, is usually sealed in resin, making water penetration impossible. The only vulnerable point, is where the terminals are located, or where the sealed cord terminates. Even these connections can be waterproofed with third party resin joining kits.
As far as aesthetics goes, garden LED lights are hard to beat. LED's are available in a variety of different colors, and different color LED's can be integrated into the same cluster for a light fitting. Add in remote control via a smart transformer, and you can have easy-to-program lighting array in your garden. Different colors, color changing sequences and modes can be cycled through, which will enhance the visual splendor of any garden.
By using simple modular control components, such as daylight sensors, you can run your garden LED lights automatically, without using a timer. The low power consumption means you won't get a nasty surprise on your power bill either.