With only a couple of weeks to go until the clocks go forward and we move into British summer time! As the days grow longer and warmer, we’ll be spending more time in the garden and outdoor lighting is becoming increasingly popular with homeowners.
Installing lighting in your garden is a great way to add an attractive design feature and will help you maximise the time you spend outdoors on long summer evenings. However, if you’re thinking of installing garden lighting, you’ll need to spend time thinking about how you’re going to install it safely.
First things first and before you start any kind of electrical installation you must make sure that you have a transformer which is a device used to transfer voltage from one level to another. A transformer is an essential piece of kit when it comes to garden lighting; the reason for this is that garden lighting normally operates at 12 volts, whilst the power outlets in your home operate at 240 volts.
The next thing to do is to work out how many garden lights you can safely operate from one transformer: to do this you’ll need to look at the wattage of each individual light and then multiply that by the total number of lights you want to use. If each one of your lights operates at 20 watts, for example, and you want to use eight of them in your garden, you will need to use a transformer of at least 160 watts.
The cabling for garden lighting can be as long as you want but you’ll need to bear in mind that the longer the cable, the less power it will have. It is much better to use as short a cable as possible and, depending on how big your garden is, you might end up needing several transformers.
Any electrical installation can be daunting, especially when working with electricity outdoors. Here at Dalec we are specialists in domestic electrical installations and if you would like further advice or a free, no-obligation quote, please don’t hesitate to get in touch. No job is too small for us and as our team are available throughout Leeds, we’re happy to visit you at a time to suit you.
