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Path lighting is habitually one of the most important aspects of landscape lighting, commercial or residential. Yet, it has been reduced very often to buying pre-packaged kits at big-box retail stores, using fixtures with appealing daytime appearances, without thought given to nighttime function.
In fact, most such pathlight kits are lucky to last a year before being declared useless by the property owner and removed. The landscape lighting contractor may have had to endure multiple callbacks in that year, before the owner decides to remove the path fixtures, and not use that contractor again.
Certainly most solar pathlighting kits would fall under this category, since they put out very little light and, once batteries have failed, fixtures are frequently thrown out. The professional installer must point out the value and benefits that can be achieved by the client with well-thought-out fixture choices and fixture locations based on performance and durability, not simply appearance (and lowest price).
?EUR??,,????'???? Path lighting should complement surrounding areas. It should not look like an airport runway. ?EUR??,,????'???? Focus should be on what you are lighting, not on the lighting fixture itself. ?EUR??,,????'???? Performance path lighting should not have dark and bright spots throughout the installation. ?EUR??,,????'???? The light source, whatever it is, should never be seen. ?EUR??,,????'???? Most importantly, path lighting must provide safety, security and durability, along with ?EUR??,,????'??curb appeal.?EUR??,,????'??
In addition to trails and entrance/exit pathways, path lights are used for urban, suburban and exurban driveways, steps and ramps. Path lighting fixtures can also be used to define beautiful property borders, walls and fencing, colorful bushes and flowers. Floodlights are for taller focal points such as trees, high bushes, columns and statuary. Path lights also define landscape corners and curves. Since doctors do the prescribing for their patients, contractors (or professional design specifiers) should do the prescribing of fixture types, lamping, fixture options, lighting layout, quantity of fixtures, and fixture brands, for their ?EUR??,,????'??patients.?EUR??,,????'??
Corrosion is always a factor for pathlights in any climate. There is no question that all fixtures are not created equal, so know your client?EUR??,,????'???s buying habits. You generally get what you pay for. Match pathlighting fixture materials with the environment where fixtures will go.
Aluminum is not a good choice around salt water or water with substantial chemical treatment, but brass would be perfect. In and around such water conditions or where localized pooling of water may occur during and after rainstorms or when ice and snow melting is prevalent, fixtures should be selected that enclose and gasket the lamp, protecting socket and lamp leads from water buildup and corrosion.
Eliminate pedestrian or motorist glare by choosing fixtures that shield and direct the light source. Your eye cannot see light on the ground or on surrounding path or landscape areas if it sees the light source. Most landscape fixtures sold in retail stores are not very functional at night. They light up bright on the outside, but provide little usable light at ground or path levels, so the eye can see. Stare at a flashlight lens for a few seconds. What can you see when a light source blinds you with glare?
Select the proper lamp for path lighting: Most path fixtures use lamps that are 10 to 20 watts. The most common lamps in path lights are 12-volt (low voltage) incandescent, available in either standard incandescent or quartz/tungsten halogen versions. Electricity passing through a filament causes incandescent lamps to glow. However, halogen filaments are filled with halogen gas, which burns brighter, whiter, and longer than standard incandescent lamps. Typically 2,000 hours versus 750 hours.
Dig trenches, lay conduit, run wires, plug in or create hard-wired connections. Not exactly.
There are technical constraints in the design and installation of low-voltage pathlighting systems that present problems to the inexperienced. It is important that the landscape contractor be aware of the characteristics of 12-volt path and landscape lighting. If these technical considerations are not properly addressed by lighting design and installation companies, the resulting system will not perform to an acceptable standard.
The landscape contracting professional needs to understand the effects of distance, lamp wattages, and wire sizes on voltage drop. Multi-tap transformers have been designed to overcome the issues of voltage drop in path and landscape lighting.
Without a doubt, voltage drop is the most important thing to understand when specing and installing low-voltage pathway lighting. Without proper voltage to the lamps, they can be yellow and dim (undervoltage) or too bright (overvoltage). Either condition shortens the life of halogen lamps considerably.
Each circuit run from the transformer must be calculated to make sure that the last fixture in a pathway is receiving at least 10.8 volts and that the first fixture is receiving no more than 12.0 volts.
?EUR??,,????'???? IMPORTANT: Halogen lamp life is adversely affected when run below 10.8 volts.
Recent developments have been made to eliminate the concern of over-voltaging 12-volt lamps. Technology has now made it possible to use very compact, hidden voltage regulators at each pathlighting fixture to convert voltages up to 18, or even 24, volts down to 11.6 volts. This kind of voltage regulator is installed in-line on each path fixture, either by the manufacturer, at a landscape lighting contractor?EUR??,,????'???s job staging area, or right at the project location.
It is recommended that low-voltage pathlighting fixtures be set to receive a steady 11.6 volts, when specifying and installing a 12-volt system. The reason is simple – fixture and lamp selections will operate at 93% of rated light output, just below their normal 100% load. It is nearly impossible to detect, yet lamp life magically doubles.
Given these and other advantages of low-voltage path lighting, especially its inherent operating economy over time, it clearly conserves energy for a client, while preserving the integrity of a path light design; and it yields the lasting performance that both contractor and client expect.
145: The number of ornamental lights installed by the Village of Lombard (Illinois) on a 2.1 mile-long path.
483,784: Dollars, the cost of the improvement project.
200,000: Dollars, the amount of a grant from the Illinois Department of Natural Resources to help fund the project. The village?EUR??,,????'???s Hotel Motel tax paid for the balance of the project.
Source: Village of Lombard
Raleigh, North Carolina
Francisco Uviña, University of New Mexico
Hardscape Oasis in Litchfield Park
Ash Nochian, Ph.D. Landscape Architect
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