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Landscape Outdoor Lighting Maintenance

Read this article on designing and maintaining your outdoor lighting system.

Summary:

Landscape lighting is an investment in enhancing the amenity and value of their property and a successful outdoor lighting installation adds value and amenity to your property.

On the other hand, outdoor lighting is exposed to the weather so without proper maintenance you can’t expect it to stay perfect.

Without upkeep; an outdoor lighting system can become weathered, unattractive and inefficient and is likely to become a costly burden.

So learn about how to choose an appealing and reliable outdoor lighting system and how to design it for low running and maintenance costs - for example by using low voltage or salar outdoor lights.

Twilight lighting is both a descriptive term use with a certain style of landscape outdoor lights and it is also a brand name.

Generally they are either low voltage lights i.e. they use a step down transformer to derive a low voltage power feed from the mains that is then routed to the lights, or solar powered lights that don’t need a power connection. The light they throw out is generally soft and will not cause light pollution.

Usually, low voltage lighting is easy to install if the ground is soft so the wires can be routed easily. Of course, solar lights don’t need wiring which is a major benefit to offset their sometimes higher purchase cost.

For mains powered lights, you may find its best to mount the transformer indoors although they are weatherproof, because transformers installed outdoors tend to get weather-beaten and bug-infested over time. Also, by installing the transformer indoors, it is easier to reprogram.

Most people program the lights to come on at dusk and remain on for a few hours.  After they turn off, they will turn back on if the motion sensor detects movement.

The motion detector and the separate dawn-to-dusk sensor are connected by dedicated low-current connections and are typically placed as follows:

- motion detector on the front of the house so it senses when people enter the property

- light sensor on the side of the house to avoid headlights from automobiles traveling past your home.

Flagstaff is located in the dry West and it doesn’t have a lot of trees to block the street lights within the city and the air is fairly clean. This means that the distance that light pollution travels is astonishingly far. For example, from the South Rim of the Grand Canyon atr night, you can see the lights of Phoenix, as well as Las Vegas.

As a result, the city has strict lighting ordnances.

Health Impacts of Bright Night Lighting

Scientists are now just starting to understand the impact of nighttime lighting on animals and humans. Bright lights confuse animals and can alter everything. 

Examples: frogs’ mating activities are disturbed, communication among coyotes is afected, baby turtles get confused finding their way to the sea and nocturnally migrating birds become disoriented. 

The effects also extend to human health with new research suggesting that living in a neighborhood that’s too bright at night can interfere with the production of a tumor-suppressing hormone in women, raising the risk of breast cancer.

Bright Doesn’t Mean Safe

Contrary to what most people believe, the key to visibility isn’t intense light, but evenly spread light. Brighter isn’t safer and can even be more dangerous.

If a building has a typically blinding white, security lighting you can’t readily see someone in the shadows between lights. Your eyes can’t deal efectively with the contrast.

So stark white spotlights, or the dazzling white lights used at sportsfields that are visible for miles are not as effective as strategically placed, well-shielded fixtures that blanket the surrounds of a building in a mellow light.

Another example: At Flagstaff’s Thorpe Park shielded fixtures were installed last year and players can actually see the ball better without “light bombs” in their eyes.

This ”mellow lighting” can be provided by energy efficient and/or solar outdoor lights

So turn the brightness down to be safer, save yourself money and help the environment by using energy efficient lighting