Hooking up external lighting to Jandy Controller

[ummgood]

I am new to the pool game and have had my pool finished for just over a month. I am really in need of some way to really light up my yard. My house has a 14' tall slab foundation so the small porch light already present under my patio 14" in the air really doesn't illuminate my pool area at all. Even if I turn on every light in my house the light really doesn't make it down to the pool. I really need to light it up so at night in the winter I can check the filter baskets, skimmer baskets, etc... Plus going down the stairs to the pool can be quite dark at night making it difficult to get down there. I was hoping to mount a flood light to one of my deck posts that will light up the entire pool area and hook it up to a new breaker in my pool equipment sub electrical box plus maybe another less bright light for when we are outside at night and need a little light. I don't need the lights on all the time and would like to turn it on/off with my PDA remote for my pool so I can illuminate the yard without having to go down to where the circuit breakers are. This way I can use my remote from in the house and light up the stairs so I can safely make it down.

I would love to have this wired to a standard switch in the house but that really isn't possible with the way my house is elevated and the lights already present are in masonry so I would need a major remodel to expose the electrical from the house. Right now I have a sub panel by the pool equipment that I could hook all this to. If I use LED lighting it shouldn't be much more current draw that I am already using down there.

I have a PDA-P8 controller and have plenty of free aux connections (I purposely upgraded so I can do this type of thing). I know I'll need a relay as the controller itself can't source the kind of power I need for flood lights. I am very handy with electrical work and have an electrical engineering degree so I am more than capable. I just need some guidance of how to connect things to the controller and it would be helpful if someone has done something like this before.
Any suggestions?

 

[JoyfulNoise]

For landscape lighting around the pool and deck area, you really want to use low voltage, 12VAC LED lighting. You can buy 300W intermatic transformers and hook them directly up to your automation panels 120V relays. You simply use #12 AWG landscape wiring which can be directly buried in the ground (below the frost line is best).

To do 120VAC flood lights is more difficult because you have to bury those lines in electrical conduit. So it requires a lot more digging and planning. You can look into various WeMo or other types of switches that can directly connect to your WiFi setup. I would do the 120VAC flood lights separate from your automation panel.

A lot of this depends on the relative layout and distances of the light sources to you pool automation panel.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk,16k gal SWG pool (All Pentair), QuadDE100 Filter, Taylor K-2006

 

[ummgood]

Thanks for your input. Perhaps this will help...

I would like to run conduit where I have the red line. I could put a breaker in the electrical panel for the equipment (I still have space) and then use a relay to have the equipment automation turn the power on/off to the lights mounted to the deck. I would only need to run a little conduit with no digging. I was thinking of putting a couple normal outdoor lights on one relay and a flood (for really bright light to light up the pool when I need to work) on another relay and use two channels of my pool automation to turn them on/off with the remote. I would prefer to only have one remote for all of this. I already have a remote for my outdoor fan (which is up on my patio above this photo), and a remote for the pool. I am all overwhelmed with the remotes already