Glad that helped, and I remember waiting for dark after installing a
string of 15 lamps with 4 watt bulbs along my parents home walkways.
(Gettysburg Pa area)
The problem they had was the bulbs only lasted a month. I placed one
leg of a 20 amp bridge rectifier in series with one of the wires
connected to the lamps from the transformer. The lamps drop to about
1/3 the brightness, but they last a year now. At night they still do a
great job lighting the walkways. The real surprise was the first
snowfall, they looked cute glowing with the snow around and on them.
wiring:
------------- O------------------ |--------|
|transfomrer| --------- | lamps |
------------- O----|O~ +O|----- |--------|
| |
bridge |O- ~O| 20 amps or more
rectifier --------- 25 volta or more
(use any two adjacent terminals)
just an idea, you may or may not like the effect.
-larry
Greg R. wrote:
I measured it out today, it was about 100 feet. The strange thing was,
the first 50 feet were 18 gauge, the last 50 feet are 16 gauge (spliced
together). I've since bought 100 feet of 12 gauge and rewired the whole
set. Everything looks MUCH better 9all the lights appear the same
brightness (and are now even brighter than before). Waiting for it to get
dark to be sure!! thanks for suggestions...
On Fri, 20 May 2005 03:25:24 +0000, larry wrote:
You didn't mention wire length, but that's probably what's causing the
voltage drop (=brightness). Use a 15V AC voltmeter and read the
voltage at the lamp closest to the transformer, and at the lamp farthest.
Could be several volts difference (drop) if it's 100 feet apart.
Since some lights are ok, and others are dim, the transformer is doing
fine. Check the bulbs by putting a dim bulb in a socket that had a
bright bulb, if it stays dim, its the bulb, if it gets bright, its a
wire problem.
solutions: put the transformer near the middle of the string, use larger
gauge wire, put every other light from the old wire on a new wire that
also goes back to the trasformer.
-larry
Greg R. wrote:
I recently bought a house that has low-voltage outdoor Malibu lighting
(by Intermatic). Currently it has a 200w power supply to power 10 tier
lights and 5 20w flood lights. The setup is as follows, power supply -
3 spot lights - 10 tier lights - 2 spot lights. The strange thing is the
first 3 spot lights in the circuit are much brighter than the last two
spotlights (in relation to the the power supply). All the tier lights
seem the same brightness. My question is, why are the last two spotlights
so dim? I would assume that if the power supply was not strong enough,
all the lights would be dim. Do halogen bulbs dim as they are burning
out? Could they be different bulbs that the brighter flood lights (the
fixtures appear identical). Any suggestions?
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