Who Installs Landscape Lighting Near Me in Portland?

Why Is Low Voltage Lighting Better Than Line Voltage?

For most gardens, it’s the better fit, because low-voltage systems are safer to work around, easier to change and legal for a licensed landscape contractor to install. Is low voltage lighting better than line voltage? For paths, patios, trees and walls, yes. For a few jobs, though, line voltage still has a place.

Here’s how the two compare:

Also, the legal line matters. Oregon’s electrical license exemption for landscape businesses stops at Class 2 and Class 3 systems up to 30 volts and 750 volt-amperes. Above that the wiring is electrical work with its own license. So if anyone offer to hang 120-volt fixtures in your garden without an electrician, ask more questions.

Meanwhile, permits are a second point. The same state guides says low-voltage lighting may need a permit in many local area, so a good installer checks before digging, not after.

How Long Do LED Landscape Lights Last?

Quality LED modules are rated for tens of thousands of hours, which means well over a decade at a few hours a night. In practice, however, the fixture body, the connections and the wire usually give out before the LED does. The U.S. Department of Energy says LEDs last up to 25 times longer than incandescent bulbs and use up to 90 percent less energy, according to its consumer guide to efficient lighting.

Here’s the math, though. A 25,000-hour rating at four hours a night works out to about 17 years. That’s an example, not a promise, because ratings vary by product and Portland’s wet winters are hard on everything outdoors.

So what fails first? Cheap fixtures corrode and fog. Twist-cap connections let water in. Then buried wire gets nicked by a shovel, and an undersized transformer overheats. Most of the dead systems we replace didn’t fail because of the LEDs. Instead they failed because of everything around them, and that’s why fixture quality matters more than the bulb count on a spec sheet.

What Does Landscape Lighting Installation in Portland Involve?

It involves a site walk, a written design, the install and an after-dark tune-up. For landscape lighting installation Portland homeowners can trust, so those four steps shouldn’t be skipped.

Here’s how our projects run:

• The site walk. First, we look at the property, sometimes during the day and sometimes at dusk, and ask what you want the lighting to do.
• The written proposal. It lists fixture count, wattage, zone layout, materials and price, so there are no verbal numbers.
• The install. The crew sets the transformer, runs the low-voltage wire, places the fixtures and tests every run.
• The tune-up. Finally, on larger projects, we return after sunset and adjust the aim and beam angles until it looks the way it was designed.

Searching for low voltage LED garden lighting Portland? The best systems light layers instead of everything. Planning path deck and uplighting Portland yards need most? Start where people walk, then where they sit, then what’s worth showing off. In practice, that means path lights for safety, step and post lights for decks and patios, and uplights on a feature tree or a stone wall.