Customer Reviews

Low Voltage Landscape Lighting

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First the best: a very focused, single-topic essay by an experienced designer/installer. Now the rest: it is 75 page (47p.text, 28p.charts) slap-dash print-out with a glued (not sewn) binding and card stock cover. Dense and repetitious and sorely in need of an editor and proofreader. Much attention paid to the dreaded voltage drop but all tables and formulae. No mention at all of the use of a volt meter to quantify results. With a volt meter he could have measured the output of a loaded transformer (vs. unloaded) and discovered that a good portion of what he thinks is loss due to resistance in the cable is actually poor transformer performance. None of the books I've read mention transformer "regulation" which is the ability of a low voltage transformer to maintain 12v output under load. Many if not all cheap transformers drop a volt or two under load so if you want 12v at the lamps you need more than 12v at the secondary transformer connection. A better solution to voltage drop is to use minimum 10 gauge cable and a multi-tap transformer (12v, 13v & 14v outputs) and then select the appropriate output voltage after testing the system with a meter and all lamps operating. You can then quantify the actual voltage at the first lamp and boost it to 12v if necessary. I applaud the writer for his earnest advocacy of 12v systems and the attempt at thoroughness. It would take a committed and handy DIYer to extract all the value from this little booklet. Many so-called professional installers could also profit from a close reading. No photographs, just some crude line drawings and charts that look like how-not-to in some of Edward R. Tufte's books.