Outdoor lighting systems need to be inspected and serviced at least twice a year to remain in good condition. We offer maintenance agreements that provide bi annual 16 point service and inspection of your entire system. Included in this service is a pest preventive application for all your fixtures and components which we highly recommend. Pests can infiltrate your lights and wreak havoc on your electrical system which can be costly
Every once in awhile we are asked to service jobs that were originally installed by homeowners or landscapers that didn't really know what they were doing. In this specific case the previous installer ran out of wire so he thought the right thing to do was to create a j-box to house the wire nuts and the junction between two runs of wire. If this
In our last post, we told you that LED lamps are available in all colors of the rainbow. We are so excited about this new system by FX that utilizes RGBW LED technology. Color temperatures can be adjusted for holidays and special events, offering unique landscape looks throughout the year. In the pictures below, one is lit for the Christmas holiday with red and green, the other
LED lamps come in a rainbow of colors but most of our clients want a white light. There are many different temperatures of white light with the most common being a warm white light vs a cool white light. Both of these white lights play an important part of a lighting design. Cool white light is a great when used as down lighting in a
Here at the Landscape Lighting Guru we see a lot of trash. Most of it is in the form of cardboard that new fixtures and spools of wire come in. But a lot of it is in the form of old fixtures and old wiring that has been removed to make room for new projects. There is really no reason wiring should ever go bad,
Have your exterior lights stopped working and you can't figure out why? As part of your troubleshooting, you should check your GFCI outlets. A tripped outlet is often the cause of lighting issues and it is a simple fix. To reset a GFCI outlet, you just press the red reset button on your outlet. Here is the tricky part of the troubleshooting...you should check ALL of
Well another poor tree that has grown over a ballast box due to lack of maintenance. If you have ballast boxes then please understand that they need attention at a minimum once a year. They need to be backed off the trees to prevent a rot spot from growing on the tree. Once rot happens this becomes a conduit for pest to get into the
We recently designed custom lanterns for a client using fish baskets. The baskets were retrofitted to run 120 degree warm Low Voltage LED lamps for all weather safety. The lanterns hang in this beautiful oak tree casting the most amazing shadow's on the ground and on the tree as they sway in the breeze. Do you have a custom lamp idea? Get with the Landscape Lighting Guru to
Time is up - don't use interior timer for outdoor systems! This timer was found at a recent maintenance service call. The reason it is all rusted and full of pests is because the previous lighting installation company used an interior timer (probably because they are less expensive). Wet rated timers are a little more expensive, but its the only safe thing to
With the recent rain events, we have had a few customers calling us to tell us that some of their down lights from their trees are not working. We have found two main culprits for this issue. One has been fire ants (see recent blog post) and the other has been internal damage to the micro processors from surges caused during cloud to cloud lightning strikes.
