I would like to put in lights in my flower bed and along my side walk, looking at 4-5 lights is all. My main challenge is locating a transformer. I have power at my front door, but no real way to get the low voltage cable to the yard as my front porch is bricked. I do have power outlets in my eaves, but I can not find a transformer with a long enough power cable to mount the transformer out of sight. Any ideas others have done?
Hi, Randall. If you upload a couple photos of your property (so others can see the scenario you're describing), it would be very helpful.
Attached is a picture of my house. The two red areas marked are where we have power located. The one is near the front door and the other is in the eave about 12 feet about the ground. The bush will also be removed at the corner, we are having all of our landscaping replaced.
Thanks. You do have a challenging situation. Based on what I can make out from your photo, and assuming there's no way for you to install an outlet closer to the ground, I might try to mount a very low profile transformer near the eaves outlet and try to hide the wire as best as possible along the gutter and along or through a downspout. Unfortunately I can't make out enough detail or perspective in your photo to offer more meaningful suggestions. Perhaps someone else here may have more helpful ideas.
One other possible approach I think would be to route wiring from a transformer at your entryway up through that downspout on the left. That way, you only have a few feet of wire that you need to creatively hide (maybe with some kind of low profile wire molding painted to blend into the wall and concrete). Just another thought.
Other than what Mesodude has recommended, some other options you could consider would be installing the transformer in the garage (mounted to the wall but, not hard-wired) - it would be out of sight and located in the front of the house but, you would likely lose photocell capabilities if there wasn't a window in there you could fasten it to. Or, you could consider installing a transformer more towards the middle/back of the house. LED is flexible and with your property size and using the correct gauge of cable you'd likely see no voltage issues upfront. The wire could easily run along the base of the house up the front and this would also possibly allow for you to add some lights to the back yard/patio if you wanted with the transformer being 50/50 between back and front.
Thank you all for the replies, you have given me some good ideas. I am only looking at 5-6 lights, couple up lights next to the house, and a few path lights. If I use a 8 or 10 gauge low voltage wire, what kind of wire length can I expect to get.
12-gauge is most common for residential properties - rated for uses up to 150'. 10-gauge is rated for used up to 250' and is the larges gauge our clamp-connect style transformers specifically will accept (just for reference if this is the model you have).
