

The second number is the number of strands of wire in the cable. For example, 12 gauge wire is thicker than 14 gauge wire. A lower number or “gauge” means a thicker wire. When looking at low voltage wire or landscape lighting cable on Amazon, you’ll see everything listed with two numbers. 3 Transformers (two 45 watt transformers and one 120 watt transformer).
12 VOLT LANDSCAPE LIGHTING CONNECTORS INSTALL
Here is everything we used to install our landscape lighting:

So after weighing our options, we ultimately decided to purchase our equipment from Amazon, and we’ve been very happy with that decision. While it was helpful to see all of the different lighting options in person to get a better idea of what we needed, the Portfolio brand didn’t seem like it was a higher quality than other brands we had looked at, and the prices were definitely higher than what I was seeing on Amazon. Then Abby and I took a trip to Lowe’s and looked at their “Portfolio” brand of landscape lighting. There are just so many choices I didn’t know where to start. The first thing I did was take a look at low voltage lighting options on Amazon. I’ll walk you through our equipment decisions. There are just so many choices and options that it can be confusing at first. Purchasing all of the necessary equipment for this project was the most overwhelming part. Choosing Low Voltage Landscape Lighting Equipment And the lights in zone three would plug into a transformer on the right side of our house. The lights in zone two would plug into a transformer by the front door. The light in zone one would plug into a transformer on the left side of our house. In our case, we had one electrical outlet just to the left of our front door and one outlet on each side of the house that we could potentially use. Once we figured out where we wanted the lights, we also had to make a note of where we had available outdoor electrical outlets to be able to plug in our transformer(s). Ultimately, we decided to use seven lights for the size and layout of our house. It was helpful to look at pictures online to get a better feel for how closely spaced or spread out the lights should be. Down the road we may add lights to the side and backyards, but it wasn’t a priority right now.Ībby then mapped out approximately where she would like lights and how many. Abby and I decided to only install the landscape lighting in the front of the house.

The first step when installing low voltage landscape lighting is deciding on your layout.

Does not require wires to be buried in conduit.Safe for pets, kids, and anyone that digs up the wires.Safer to install than high voltage lighting options.What are the advantages of low voltage landscape lighting?įor the average home installer, low voltage landscape lighting has some huge advantages: The most common low voltage landscape lighting transformers reduce the voltage to 12 volts, which is what we used. For landscape lighting, this is typically 24 or 12 volts. Low voltage lighting uses a transformer to reduce normal 120 volt lines to a lower voltage. For more information, see my disclosures here.
12 VOLT LANDSCAPE LIGHTING CONNECTORS HOW TO
How to Install Low Voltage Landscape Lighting It turns out that installing low voltage landscape lighting is easier and cheaper than I thought, and it makes a huge impact on the look of our home after the sun goes down. I love the finished and classy look of landscape lighting, but I assumed it was a difficult and expensive project. A few months ago Abby came to me with the idea of installing landscape lighting in the front of our house.
