Outdoor Lights - Pondering

Why not just use ordinary mains powered LED lights? Will anyone notice?

When burying things, there is nothing better than a duct. You never know what you might want to pull through it later.

One disadvantage is that there can be high voltage drops in the low voltage wiring.

Do yer Ohm's Law s*it before forking out money to lay inadequate cabling

Pretty ideal if its a well isolated PSU and the cables are thick enough

LED lighting has made it a lot easier as the current demands are only

F****ng big ones.

Even for just a couple of 5W LEDs

Not at 12V or less

Me I like fake traditional fittings, so Victorian lampposts...:-)

Actually looking at suitable bulbs...

My earlier warnings were on account of experience with 12V halogens

Ok,. I wrote this and did the research simultaneously...

TLDR summary:- ========== Use 24V supply or thereabouts USE LED LV bulbs Use whatever lamp style you fancy Use as thick cable as you can get away with. Personally I'd use 2.5mm three core armoured buried at least 600mm if I was young and fit...Its not earth shatteringly expensive and is the de luxe choice Earth not needed at 24V, but can be added for extra safety

For direct burial, SWA is the only real option without some other form of protection. Double insulated cables like HiTuff can be run on the ground and exposed to sunlight etc, but is not designed to be buried without additional protection like conduit or a duct.

If running a SELV[1] then it does not have or require an earth (the of the "transformer" is floating with respect to earth)

Bollard lights might do:

Many moons ago I dealt with a mains-powered pond pump problem with a couple of back-to-back transformers. The pump was rated at around 30W, and was about 30 feet from the mains plug.

I had a pair of identical toroidal transformers with several taps on the secondary. So I connected one of the secondary taps to the cable which ran down the garden, then connected the far end of the cable to the other toroidal tranny in reverse, and with the pump connected up and working, measured the voltage across the pump. When it was near to 230V, I made the connection permanent. I seem to remember that the voltage was about 30V at the first secondary, and I used the 20V (or maybe 24V?) connection at the other end, so the voltage drop along the cable became unimportant.

It worked without problem 24/7 for at least 5 years.

Built your own 'garden grid' Neat!

Bur with LEDs you dont need to go back up to 240V...

All I had to was to be particularly careful to remember that was that there was no RCD-type protection available at the pump's terminals - especially as the pump was of the submerged type and soaking wet!

True, and the total current is unlikely to exceed an amp or two.

How did I manage to garble that??!! It should read:

All I had to do was to be particularly careful to remember that there was no RCD-type protection available at the pump's terminals - especially as the pump was of the submerged type and soaking wet!

how about MICC? or that old fashioned. I did learn how to use it in 1960!

I wouldn't trust mineral insulation

With an isolated 24V supply there is no extra safety with an earth, but if it is connected to a house PME supply there is actually a small extra danger.

While it's being dug up, run ducts for:

- Lighting

- Fibre broadband (even if you already have that, perhaps another operator will turn up - eg Virgin + Openreach or Openreach + Cityfibre)

- EV charging point(s)

(some of those can be the same duct)

And perhaps a bit more excessively:

- new water main (in case your old one is lead / knackered)

- three phase electricity (in case your current supply isn't adequate for additional loads like EV charging or heat pump)

Check ebay and Facebook Marketplace, often bits of duct left over from building sites are available for cheap.

Theo

Thanks John and Theo

What would you suggest for duct material/size?

Phil

Thanks Roger

Thanks John

I reckon the bollard lights will be suitable here.

By the way, I'm the same guy that you and Adam helped out with the cooker circuit and local East Yorkshire building inspector fiasco in

Phil

Thanks Jeff

But that sounds way too electrical techy for me!!

Phil

Thanks NP

I like the TLDR Summary although not sure on that acronym.

Any recommendations on a suitable transformer please?

The low voltage cable runs will be around 12m to each light from the (garage located) transformer.

Phil

What I did was buy a 30m offcut of the black stuff - black = LV electricity (ie 240V). Then I spray painted it for the service it was carrying - saves having to buy multiple rolls of different colours which gets annoying if you only need a few metres.

There's also somebody on ebay selling colours by the metre but they're in Devon and that's too far to collect.

Before installation, I used the included (thin) drawcord to pull through some 6mm polypropylene rope as my pull cord.

(although I actually fed the two cables of SWA through before installing the duct, as it's quite heavy)

Theo

Too Long Didnt Read

Well I source that sort of stuff from China, which isn't a favourite place if you have to ask, so I'll let someone else answer that

That sounds OK. As long as you have LV leds in there the drop doesnt matter that much

Thanks again Theo - your input is appreciated

Phil