Remember when your landscape lighting looked all shiny and new, lighting up your trees and driveway to rave reviews? Except now it’s a different story. Many lights are out, things are looking a bit shabby.
So when should you repair your landscape lighting, and when should you replace it?
Here are three main components of your landscape lighting, and how to tell if they need to be just repaired or replaced.
FIXTURES
What are your fixtures made of? If they’re quality components like brass and copper, they can be repaired. They probably need some cleaning. If a wire was cut, it can be repaired.
But if your fixtures are low-quality plastic, composite or aluminum and aging, they’re probably not worth repairing and should be replaced. Cheap fixtures have limited lifespans and provide minimal protection for the socket, light bulb, or LED lamp.
Water seeps into low-quality fixtures and rots the sockets, causing wire corrosion. Insects nest there if they’re not properly sealed — and can completely block light output.
CONNECTIONS
Poor connections are the number one problem we see when we show up to repair landscape lighting.
How are your fixtures connected to the wiring that runs to the power source?
Wire nuts and pierce connectors aren’t designed to go underground, but many landscape lighting systems use them anyway. Pierce point connections to the main line tend to loosen and will have corrosion at the pierce point.
If your system includes these types of connections, chances are they corroded, and that’s why your lights aren’t working.
These connections cannot be repaired and should be replaced with watertight, heat-shrink connectors.
TRANSFORMER
The transformer is the power center that powers your entire landscape lighting system.
If your lights aren’t working right, you may have a loose connection inside the transformer. As your lights are turned on and off, the electrical connections get loose. With a screwdriver, we can tighten up the terminal block screw. It’s an easy repair.
Sometimes these loose connections can cause “arcing,” when electricity jumps across a loose connection, creating heat. This heat can melt connections, causing shorts or even fire. There’s often no fixing this and the transformer will need to be replaced.
Repairing Landscape Lighting Costs
Sometimes the cost to repair landscape lighting will be enough to get you thinking about replacing the system instead.
Repairing fixtures and replacing lots of poor connections can add up very quickly.
Rather than putting band-aid after band-aid on a failing system, you should consider purchasing or converting to a LED landscape lighting system. All of our LED products have a 5-year full replacement warranty and a rated lifespan of between 25,000 – 50,000 hours (10-15 years of life at average usage). They save over 75% in energy compared to halogen lighting.
Our Annual Preventative Maintenance Plan includes:
- A 1-year warranty on all Halogen light sources
- LED 5-year replacement warranty
- Trimming of plant growth or repositioning of fixtures within 2 feet
- Cleaning of all fixtures and lenses
- Timer Resets
- Reburial of any exposed cabling due to erosion
- Voltage Amperage and transformer testing to ensure longevity
Let Us Take A Look
We’re happy to stop over and take a look at your troubled system to figure out what’s wrong. Give us a call at ( 561)204-3000, or fill out our contact form.
