Why Choose Outdoor Flood Lights
Outdoor flood lights will provide you with you and your family added safety, a better-looking lawn, and can even increase your property values. These styles of lighting have a large range of uses, and chances are you will likely start to utilizing all of them. A few commonly seen uses are: lighting up the yard when it is dark, giving your home a more open feel, enhancing already set up decorations, and deterring burglars from invading your house. Take a look at the tips below on choosing the right flood light fixtures for you.
With flood lights, less can be more. Compact fluorescent fixtures are perfect for lighting up outside areas for longer periods of time – creating just the right amount of light to give your exterior a relaxed, warm feel while giving you added security. Incandescent outdoor flood lights that range from one hundred to three hundred watts, on the other hand, can cause too much glare that can reduce the the appearance of your home.
When putting up outdoor flood lights, it is of importance to keep the light’s position in mind in order to make a great aesthetic effect while saving on your energy bill. Choose a downward slope for your flood light to minimize glare and trespass of light into areas that you don’t want lit up.
You will have to choose from incandescent, fluorescent, quartz, halogen or metal halide when you buy your outdoor flood lights, and they are available in height ranges from 8 to 12.5 feet with power from two to two hundred watts. As a general rule of thumb, incandescent outdoor flood lights provide the best look for the exterior, cost less, and last longer. Quartz halogen is a good choice when you want to focus on specific objects on the property, such as a plant or statue. Metal halides are the best for extreme temperatures and for moisture resistance.
Test out different effects that you can get with outdoor flood lights before deciding on which angle to place your lights.
Outdoor flood lights can be placed on timers so that you can have control over when the lights turn on without any effort. This is especially convenient when you plan to be away from home.
Try to find good prices on outdoor flood lights with internet retailers. Searching around online for your new outdoor flood lights will save you a great deal of money. Additionally, but internet retailers also tend to offer a wider range of fixtures, so you will be offered many choices.
Lighting the outside of your home is an art. Find out how to use outdoor flood lights in a way that ensures your safety and makes your home more attractive.
Low Voltage Outdoor Lighting – Affordable and Secure Lighting Option
Low voltage outdoor lighting is an easy to implement, safe and a low-cost way to light up your yard. In order to set up the system, you won’t even have to pay for an electrician, since most likely you will be able to set up your low voltage outdoor lighting on your own.
Low voltage outdoor lighting uses a current, which is 10 times less potent than regular electric current. This low voltage lighting uses a 12 V current when regular current is 120 V. This naturally renders this type of lighting 10 times safer. Electric runs through a specific water proof cable, which creates a loop around the transformer, lighting up the garden.
Low voltage outdoor lighting has several important advantages, the main ones being:
1. It is very easy to set up your own low voltage outdoor lighting. The system usually comes in kits, which include everything needed to assemble the lighting (the transformer, cables and fixtures). You would just have to buy the bulbs with a preferred wattage.
2. Low voltage outdoor lighting is a very low cost solution, since it can use light bulbs, starting at nearly 4 W. In addition to regular lamps, home owners may choose to use halogen or fluorescent lamps.
3. Timers are another very useful feature, allowing you to set the time for the lighting to go on/off for 4, 6, or 8-hours. Some low voltage outdoor lighting systems also include a photocell, which can turn the lights on at night and turn it off in the daytime.
4. Low voltage outdoor lighting is very important for security. Many systems come with heat motion sensors, which would notify you about any intruders after dark.
5. Low voltage outdoor lighting is very easy to relocate, since the wires do not have to be buried deeply and permanently in the ground. The wires can be just slightly buried.
6. It is usually recommended to purchase a transformer for your low voltage outdoor lighting setup, which somewhat exceeds the current needs of your lighting system. This will allow you to expand your system in the future as well as to start using lamps with more wattage.
7. You can pick the low voltage cable depending on the amount of watts required to operate your low voltage outdoor lighting system. Popular sizes of the low voltage cables include 12 ga. (can carry 300 watts), 14 ga. (can carry 200 watts) and 16 ga. (can carry 150 watts). Standard wire size is 12 gauge.
8. There is a wide variety of schemes based on which you can build your low voltage outdoor lighting system, including in-ground fixtures, spotlights and deck lights for an ultimate convenience while walking in your garden at night.
9. The most affordable low voltage outdoor lighting systems may cost as little as $15. However, better quality systems may cost up to $300.
10. It is very easy to calculate how many lamps you can use with any given transformer. For example, if the transformer is 300-watt, then you can have up to 30 garden lights with 10-watt bulbs. Just multiply the number of bulbs in your system by the bulb wattage to find out how many lamps you can use with a given transformer.
Before starting to bring about your low voltage outdoor lighting set up, please consider the following:
1. Always remember to plug the transformer directly into the outlet, and not through an extension cord.
2. The wires of the low voltage outdoor lighting system are more prone to damages if they’re not buried deeply in the ground.
3. The extra wattage of the transformer should not exceed one-third of the total needs of the system.
Low voltage outdoor lighting is a very cost-efficient and easy to assemble lighting system. A low voltage outdoor lighting system will make your landscape come to life also after dark, letting you enjoy your gorgeous landscaping even twice more.
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