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Becoming Enlightened by Connecting Landscape Lights

Connecting landscape lights is easy with new lighting designs. Outdoor lighting used to require a lot of electrical knowledge and specially designed tools, but that’s no longer true. Most landscape lights are sold as expandable kits and come with everything you need to create interesting and useful lighting in your yard or around outside features and structures.

Connecting Landscape Lights

Landscape lights are used in a variety of ways:

Light pathways
Spotlight trees
Light driveways
Illuminate gardens
Decorate decks
Light outbuildings
Decorative lighting

The first step to connecting landscape lights is to make a drawing of light placement. Once you know where the lights will be placed, you can determine the best place for the transformer. The transformer will obviously have to be near an outdoor outlet. All the lights will eventually be connected to this transformer for power.

Using the plan you have drawn for the lights placement, begin installing the lights. Landscape lights can take many different forms. There are electric torch lights, string lights, underground cable lights and spotlights to name a few. Connecting most landscape lights involves attaching the lights to an electric cable and then attaching the cable to the transformer.

Once the lights are attached to the cable, the cable must be buried. This protects the cable from possible damage and also makes the installation more attractive. Because landscape lights are low voltage, the cable doesn’t have to be buried very deep. Most people also connect their yard lights to a timer so they come on automatically at dusk and go off later in the evening.

Connecting landscape lights isn’t difficult but the job goes a lot easier if you do some preplanning. You can save yourself a lot of problems by drawing your landscape lighting plan before you start installation. Too many people make the mistake of connecting the lights and burying cable only to discover they have to be moved or uncovered for one reason or another.

Landscape lighting adds a beautiful touch to any yard, but they don’t just accent the foliage and plantings. They provide a valuable safety feature on walkways and illuminate dark areas. Once you get the lights connected, you can move any that don’t work out as you planned. By learning to connect your own landscape lights, you can create a professional looking outdoor area at half the cost a professional would charge for the same service.