Garden Spotlight

Bring life and lovely warm ambience to your outdoor entertaining area through the clever use of lighting. Image: Thinkstock

Once garden lighting consisted of a simple string of coloured lights festooned along the verandah eaves, a floodlight above the barbie and, for special occasions, a fluoro fitting wired up by Uncle Fred hanging from the clothes line. Things have come a long way since then. You no longer have to sit outside under the harsh glare of a floodlight or scuttle inside the moment the sun sets. True DIY landscape lighting has become easy to find and even easier to install. You can transform your garden from night-time gloom to evening wonderland in just a couple of hours. We show you how.

Which type of light?

The first step to lighting up your garden is understanding bulb basics. Here’s the lowdown on your options.

• A halogen globe is a type of compact incandescent globe that has been used in indoor and outdoor areas for many years.

• Halogen lights have a high light output but they also generate a lot of heat; they can be very hot to touch.

• A halogen globe still has a superior level of light output compared with a commercially available LED (light emitting diode).

• It’s only recently that LED lamps have become suitably powerful and cheap enough to use in outdoor settings.

• LEDs are massively more energy efficient than halogens.

• LEDs can last for 15 years plus – that’s up to 100 times longer than other types of globes.

• LEDs do not generate high levels of heat.

• As LED fittings draw less power, they can be used on much longer cable runs without suffering from a light-level drop-off.

• You can mix LED and halogen fittings on a single transformer line.

• Globe-conversion kits are available to switch a variety of halogen lights to LED. You’ll find them at most hardware stores.

Cable-free choices

Not all garden lighting requires cables and transformers and plugging into power points. There are lots of excellent products that run on regular or rechargeable batteries or charge-up from the sun.

Creative outdoor lighting ideas

• Use low in-ground lights for illuminating flower beds beside pathways and adding under-lighting to low shrubs. Look for a frosted-glass lens which disperses light softly and evenly.

• Features, such as trees, look brilliant when a single ground-staked spotlight is used to draw attention to their form. To add real wow to the scene, conceal an upward-pointing spotlight inside the tree canopy. You can hide the cable by running it up the back of the trunk and holding it in place with Velcro ties.

• Create your own carnival atmosphere by lighting up your entertaining area with a selection of battery- and solar-powered lights.

• Bring an air of romance to the table with these rechargeable candle lights. The light even flickers just like a real tea light!

• Solar path lights are available in a range of colours and styles. The panel on the top of the lamp is the solar-charging panel. Beside the panel is a tiny sensor that detects sunset and switches the lamp on.

• A simple item such as a bench may be a favourite spot to sit during the day but of little use once the sun has set. Don’t waste an opportunity to create a feature. With a bit of clever lighting you can turn your humble bench into a nocturnal masterpiece.

Tradie’s tip

When fixing your lights to a hard surface, be aware that masonry bolts may crack block edges. Position your lamp and mark the wall for the fixing holes and cable hole. With a long masonry bit of at least 5mm diameter, drill through. Cut a length of galvanised wire to make a large U-shape to thread through fixture holes to back of blocks, and join up. Feed the cable through the cable hole, then feed wire through the light’s fixing holes and into the block holes. Join wire ends together at the back of the block and use pliers to twist together, securing light fitting.

Transformer and cable facts

• The hub of your low-voltage lighting system is the transformer. It converts mains 240volts to 12volts.

• Transformer output is expressed as a figure in watts.

• To work out how many lights you can have on one line just add up the wattage of all the lights you wish to add. The total figure shouldn’t exceed the transformer wattage.

• On cable runs longer than 20m, halogen lights will have voltage drop and dim lights. So for longer runs, switch to a heavy-duty cable.

• LCDs do not suffer from voltage drop, so you can have longer runs.

• To check for voltage drop, add the last and first lights. If the output of the last is too low, switch to a heavy-duty cable.

Installing your low voltage lights

• Lighting (pre-packed kit or parts – including transformer, cable and lights)

• Cable clamps or nails, cable ties and Velcro tie if needed

• Cable joiners

• Spade

• Tape measure

• Pair of pliers

• Screwdriver

• Power drill and bits

• Galvanised garden wire

Step 1
First lay out your cable around the desired area from the point where it will connect to the transformer. As low-voltage cable is quite thin it’s easy to mouse it through cracks and crevices to have a concealed run. But when the cables run over exposed areas, you should fix them in place with a cable clamp or with a few cable nails.

Step 2
(a) Where cable has to cross lawn areas you can simply dig it into the lawn. Low voltage cable doesn’t need to be deeply buried in trenches as mains voltage lines do. Lay the cable out along the desired line and using a spade cut a line to spade-blade depth. With each cut lean the blade back to create a slightly V-shaped trench.
(b) Then just push the cable down into the trench and stand on the side of the trench to close it back up again.

Step 3
To attach your lights to the cable, undo the clips on the end of the short cable that is attached to the light. These clips vary in appearance, but they all tap into power in the same way – conductive metal spikes concealed in the clip pierce the cable. Put the cable inside the clip and close it back up. This causes the spikes to bite into the wire and pick up current.

Step 4
(a) Connect the cable to your transformer, ensuring that you follow any directions on the box of transformer.
(b) Plug the transformer into a suitable power-point, in this case a weatherproof exterior point, and turn on. At twilight you can make any adjustments required to positioning and angles.

Step 5
Now conceal the rest of the cable by burying it under mulch or in soil and using cable clips where required. Your new lighting is ready for you to enjoy.