Planning to Install Your Malibu Landscape Lighting Kit
Posted by Landscaper | Filed under Installation Guides, Landscape Lighting Advice, landscape lighting kits
Ok, so it’s time to continue our story. Actually, forget about the story. You had enough of that in the last post leading up to this one in which I introduced my devious friends and the sneaky way in which they lured this poor, unsuspecting blogger into installing landscape lighting in their garden. Read that post by clicking here if you’d like to know how easy it is to pull the wool over my eyes.
Today’s article, though, represents what you need to get started installing Malibu landscape lighting kits. It is specific to the Malibu 8 pack metal landscape lighting kit, but it will serve you for just about any Malibu landscape lighting kit. Now that I think about it, though, a bit more of the story needs telling to bring us up to speed. I’ll try to be quick about it.
As I mentioned, Rick and Eryn live in a townhouse so their garden is modest in size. It’s something around 25′ x 25′ with planting beds surrounding a brick patio on most sides and a small pond and waterfall in one corner. Shading the entire setting is a tree near the brick wall of the garden. The tree is nothing spectacular; I don’t even know the species, but it does have interesting branches and bark texture.
Though Eryn has a healthy green thumb, their dog, Chloe, has done a heck of a number on the soil in most of the garden. Suffice to say that not much grows in several sections. They’ve gotten around that by relying heavily on potted plants. Aside from that, the garden’s east and west sides are flanked with wooden privacy fences supporting a few mounted planters. And with that in mind you have an idea of the garden layout.
As Rick and I drove to his local Home Depot, he was already engaging in the most common mistake beginners make as they plan landscape lighting. He was hell bent on overdoing it. Without me along, the guy would have happily settled on three or four times more illumination than he needed. I reminded him that less was more. When that didn’t suffice, I suggested he just buy a massive halogen porch light and saturate the whole yard in excess illumination. Cheaper and more appropriate for the task, I told him. Fortunately the price of the landscape lighting kits did all the arguing for me.
I’d convinced Rick to go with metal lights. As I’ve mentioned here before, plastic landscape lighting kits are definitely less expensive. Unfortunately they are also dimmer due to the fact that plastic melts easily so the brilliance of the bulbs they can handle must be dimmer. Brighter bulbs equate to greater heat. In our walk-through of the garden before we left I’d told Rick I wanted to incorporate spotlights into the plan to up-light the interesting tree and some potted palms. To do so, we’d need a higher wattage bulb and that meant going with metal lights.
So, I’d done a good job of talking up the value of up-lighting and the consequential requirements for metal landscape lights. Of course, metal lights cost more and that cost limited Rick’s enthusiasm nicely. We settled on an 8 piece light kit that met all of our criteria and would even allow for a little expansion if required. And that, my friends, is where we transition from story to instruction.
How to Plan for Installing a Malibu Landscape Lighting Kit
Let me start by telling you that installing this kit is easy as pie. It doesn’t matter if you’re completely new to this kind of thing. What does matter is that you have an outlet outdoors. This is called a GFCI or ground fault circuit interrupter. To you uninitiated out there, it’ll look much like any old outlet. If you don’t have an outlet outside you’ll need an electrician to install one. Otherwise, all you’ll need for the work ahead is a screwdriver, a hand shovel to loosen dirt and an hour or two of spare time. Oh, and you’ll want to decide ahead of time if you want to go through the hassle of burying the low-voltage cable or just cover it with mulch. The latter is obviously the easier choice.
The kit I helped Rick pick is the Malibu 8301-9907-08 8 Piece Metal Tier Light Kit. Don’t let the title mislead you because it contains more than just tier lights. It contains 6 tier lights but also 2 spotlights. Also included in the kit is a 150 watt power pack and 75′ of cable.
Now the first thing you should do when purchasing a low voltage landscape lighting kit is to ensure that the included cable length is adequate for your needs. In our case, 75′ was more than ample. We’d measured our needs at about 40 feet but estimated another 10 to 15 feet thanks to twists and turns. We’d have plenty cable left over.
What size power pack do I need for my Malibu landscaping lights
The second thing you should do is ensure the power pack included in your kit is adequate for your needs. This seems one of the more common questions home owners ask as they consider how they can change up their layout. Whether they want to add some more creative lighting with spotlights or simply extend some lights down a path, they either don’t know that their power pack’s wattage is an important factor or they don’t know how to calculate how many lights they can get away with.
Fortunately it isn’t hard to figure out. All you need to do is add up the wattage of your lights and ensure your power pack provides more wattage. For example, the 8 pack kit Rick purchased includes a 150 watt power pack (also called a transformer). The 6 tier lights are 7 watts each for a total of 42 watts. The two spotlights are 20 watts each for a total of 40 watts. Add the two together and you get 82 watts. The 150 watt transformer is more than adequate and will allow Rick to add in additional lights if he wants to do so down the road.
The final thing you want to do is make sure you know how you want your end results to look. This can actually be the most difficult part of the whole endeavor. It requires more than just trying to decide where your lights will be planted but also how you want to illuminate features. As I mentioned, Rick has some ornamental palms and a tree with some interesting features that I felt could be exploited in the lighting layout for some great results.
As you look around your garden, take note of plants that would cast dramatic shadows if lit by a spotlight. Look at the background on which those shadows will be cast. Examine trees that might do well being lit from below or statuary to which you’d like to call attention. Also take into account boundaries and borders that represent tripping hazards. Remember that those tier lights can do more than just outline paths and borders for safety. They can also help planting beds “pop” at night.
Ok, I’m past my second page of typed text so I think I’ll wrap it up. I want the actual instruction element to stand on its own rather than be buried at the end of a long story. For now you have a good understanding of what you need to get started and what planning you should do before you head off to the store. Check back soon for the full landscape lighting kit installation instructions.
Tags: landscape lighting, landscape lighting kit, Malibu, power pack, transformer
Don’t Let Your Landscape Lighting Make You the Neighborhood Nuisance
Posted by Landscaper | Filed under Landscape Lighting Advice, Outdoor Tree Lights, Planning Outside Lighting
In the grand scheme of things there are social snafus and then there are social snafus. The ones that make headlines include George Bush senior vomiting during a state dinner, George Bush junior giving a head of state a massage and John F Kennedy calling himself a jelly doughnut (for the record, Ich bin eine Berliner means I’m a jelly doughnut where as ich been auch aus Berlin more closely represents what he wanted to say). There was also a French lady who publicly announced that all she wanted out of life was a penis. Granted, the accent was to blame (she meant happiness) but you can imagine the guffaws.
On the not-so-grand a scale are the little snafus that have unintended consequences. In keeping with the theme of this blog, that means landscape lighting mistakes that can really piss off your neighbors.
You wouldn’t be the first and you certainly wouldn’t be the last were you to painstakingly setup the most amazing landscape lighting scheme only to wind up with lights shining directly into your neighbor’s windows. Nor would you be the first to hear about it either directly, through nasty note or through a community board investigation. The good news is that you can do a great deal to head off any potential ill-will.
It’s worth repeating as I have in other posts, that planning is your friend. Take the time to layout your design on paper before you begin work. As you do your garden walk through and jot down on paper where you’d like to place lights, stop at each location and look beyond your own garden to see where light spillover might intrude on your neighbor. This doesn’t mean you can’t place a light in that location, just that you’ll have to work with angles and accessories to ensure you’re not intruding on their lives.
As you put your lights in and test the angle of light they cast, step back and look over at your neighbor’s property. Any light spilling over onto their house or windows should prompt you to work on the angle a bit to eliminate the spillover. Don’t assume that the small amount of spillover is fine. What looks good from your angle may be glaring from theirs.
Not every light you install will warrant such careful consideration. Path lighting is designed to spread a pool of light downwards and is low enough in intensity to prevent offending all but the most easily offended neighbor. If you have such a neighbor, the kind who is just looking for something to complain about, you probably can’t win anyway.
On the other hand, spotlights or outdoor tree lights are often elevated above fence height and produce directional light. These can easily wind up illuminating areas of your neighbor’s property so you should pay particular care as you put them in. When you purchase such lights, invest in louvers for them. Not only will this allow you additional flexibility as you paint your yard with light, it will give you even more control over how much of that light spills over to where it isn’t wanted.
As mentioned, outdoor tree lights are a cause for concern. In fact, lights mounted in trees are probably the single greatest offenders here. When you mount lights in trees for moon lighting or down-lighting a seating area, you do so with your guests in mind. You do everything you can to avoid blinding them with light. The problem is that the angle from which you are viewing may look perfectly fine but the branches which are obstructing your view of the light sources may not be doing so from your neighbor’s perspective.
Even all the caution in the world doesn’t remove the obligation to be neighborly. When everything is installed, knock on your neighbor’s door and let them know you’ll be turning on all your landscape lighting that night to ensure none of it is a nuisance to them. Advise them to check in all their most occupied rooms and to let you know if any of the lights are bothersome. If they sign off on your project, you’re good to go and you may just have made a new friend by being courteous and considerate of their feelings.
Finally, think about using timers. For the most part a fully outfitted landscape lighting scheme won’t require timers. Most of us will only use our deck lights most of the time and reserve the full light-show for when we have guests over. For those who like to have all the lights blazing in the evenings and who might plan to go away on a vacation, ensure your timers will turn off your lights at a reasonable hour so as not to disturb your neighbors with the ambient glow.
There’s no reason you can’t enjoy the beauty of landscape lighting and keep the peace with your neighbors. A little bit of planning, testing and consideration go a long way. And while you’re at it, invite your neighbors over to your gatherings now and again. They’ll be far more tolerant of your lights if they get to enjoy them now and again rather than just being forced to endure them from a distance.
Tags: landscape lighting, landscaping lights, outdoor landscaping lights, Outdoor Tree Lights
