Help with landscape lighting please

[Shaf77]

I am a little stumped here and looking for help please.

I will provide all the details I can.

I bought lights similar to these ones but from Costco - http://www.homedepot.ca/product/led-dec ... hts/914418

Each box has 8 lights and a transformer. The transformer is rated as 12V 0.5A output. According to the link above, the LED lights are 2x0.07W per fixture.

One one side of the fence i have run in series 36 lights which would be a total of 5.04W.
On the other fence (opposite), I have run 20 lights which would be a total of 2.8W.

My questions:

1. I have run the lights in series. Is that ok?
2. Seeing that the transformers that came with the lights goes up to 6W, can I just use one transformer per run even though they gave one transformer per 8 lights? One run has 36 lights and the other has 20. I still have another 50 lights I want to install.
3. I also bought this transformer from Home Depot - http://www.homedepot.ca/product/12v-600 ... als/914408. It is a 12V 600W transformer. Should I use this instead?
4. If I use the 600W transformer, would the lights just draw the power they need or would they be over powered?

Would appreciate all help to get these set up correctly. The reason I bought the 600W transformer was for future landscape lighting as I need to add lights in flower beds. My fence lights were just the start of the project.

Some pics to show how I have installed these and pics of the transformer and boxes.

 

[Bama Rambler]

1. No, it's not alright to run them in series. They are designed to run off 12 volts so they need to be ran parallel.
2. As long as you don't exceed 6 watts you should be fine.
3. It's really up to you. It will certainly be big enough to handle all the lights.
4. They will only draw what they require.

 

[Shaf77]

1. No, it's not alright to run them in series. They are designed to run off 12 volts so they need to be ran parallel.
2. As long as you don't exceed 6 watts you should be fine.
3. It's really up to you. It will certainly be big enough to handle all the lights.
4. They will only draw what they require.

Wow! Thanks for the prompt response

I think I may have my terminology wrong. I connected the lights one to another as they came from the box, but instead of ending at 8, I continued along the fence until I had 36.

I didn't use the clips that came with them, I cut off the ends, joined the wires and taped them with insulation tape to hide it all.

Is that series or parallel? I think they way I did it was in parallel, but got my terminology mixed up

Also, when connecting one to the other, I guess there is no polarity? The way the connectors were was that you could insert them in any way (see here - http://www.paradisegardenlighting.com/d ... 110711.pdf)

 

[Bama Rambler]

H---a-----a-----a-----a------a--
N---b-----b-----b-----b------b--

H & N is power from the transformer. a & b are the leads from the lights. The dashed lines are the wires. If you hooked them up like that then they are parallel.

It's an AC circuit, so you are correct that there is no polarity.

 

[Shaf77]

Perfect. Thanks! I have connected them in parallel. And didn't bother with polarity.

Of all the 56 lights I put in, about 5 don't work. They worked the first night, then died. Maybe just defective?

Sent from my SGH-I337M using Tapatalk 4

 

[Durk]

Perfect. Thanks! I have connected them in parallel. And didn't bother with polarity.

Of all the 56 lights I put in, about 5 don't work. They worked the first night, then died. Maybe just defective?

Sent from my SGH-I337M using Tapatalk 4

In my experience, 10% dead out of the box/first week is par for the course for Chinese LED's. Take a known good fixture and cycle all the dead LED's through it, and see how many come on. That will tell you if it there may have been a bad fixture or wiring connection. I'm assuming you can swap the LED's, they may be non-replaceable. (Remember/record which LED came out of which fixture.)

The 600w will run at a higher than ideal voltage with that low a load...maybe 14 volts. Use the lowest voltage tap and check the voltage at the lights with a meter. I don't know if the higher voltage will bother your LED's; it's not good for incandescents.

 

[Shaf77]

Perfect. Thanks! I have connected them in parallel. And didn't bother with polarity.

Of all the 56 lights I put in, about 5 don't work. They worked the first night, then died. Maybe just defective?

Sent from my SGH-I337M using Tapatalk 4

In my experience, 10% dead out of the box/first week is par for the course for Chinese LED's. Take a known good fixture and cycle all the dead LED's through it, and see how many come on. That will tell you if it there may have been a bad fixture or wiring connection. I'm assuming you can swap the LED's, they may be non-replaceable. (Remember/record which LED came out of which fixture.)

The 600w will run at a higher than ideal voltage with that low a load...maybe 14 volts. Use the lowest voltage tap and check the voltage at the lights with a meter. I don't know if the higher voltage will bother your LED's; it's not good for incandescents.

The 600W transformer has a tap for 12V. I measured and at the end of 36 lights run, it drops to 10V. At the end of the 20 light run, it drops to 11.3.

I also just spoke to the manufacturer of the lights.

They confirmed that each LED is 0.75W the ones sold at Home Depot or Lowes are 0.14W. They are the manufacturers of both and make these specifically for Costco.

He also confirmed that the way I have wired the lights in parallel are perfect and that the 600W transformer should work just fine. He said that the lights will just draw what power they need.

So for my run of 36 lights, it will use 27W and for the other run of 20 lights it will use 15W.

 

[gwegan]

I really like the fence lights. How do they look at night?

One thing you need to understand before you do flower bed lights is that the current edition of the NEC prohibits low voltage lights within ten feet of a pool.

 

[Stevereno]

One thing you need to understand before you do flower bed lights is that the current edition of the NEC prohibits low voltage lights within ten feet of a pool.

Good to know!

 

[Shaf77]

Night pics as requested.. Not the best quality...