This is my light plan so far. I have 5 hubs, 10 spots and 9 hats, all from Costco. I have a 150 watt transformer. I added a pdf file so it can be seen in higher res, if needed. Distances are rough, but close. Questions: I don't know what hub to connect the arborvitae light to the one in the middle of the backyard or to the right of the backyard. I would like to not have a hub by the transformer area of the patio and move that closer to the arborvitaes under the yew trees on the right hand side of the backyard. I guess I would have to figure out how to daisy chain the patio lights? Or buy another hub? I'm going to try the Costco lights for the flag pole initially, but I may have to purchase other lights direct from Volt to make that really work. Anyone ever made this work with spots? We are going to have a foot of mulch around the flagpole to put the hub and lights. I'm thinking of putting a hub by the unknown tree in case I ever want to expand. It is going to be a pain to string a wire over there anyhow and I might want to expand that tree? We did a dry run on a rainy evening and put the lights up over the ground to try to figure out placement. I'm uploading those pics. I didn't have everything lit because I didn't have all of the lights then so we did it with one kit before we ordered another kit and just moved the lights around. I'd like to get this nailed down, of course, before we start digging in the yard. We were planning to put mulch down around the patio anyhow so we have trenches for that. This semi circle is about 8 to 10 feet above a lower level, all on granite. This is the yew/apple grouping in the daylight. And this is roughly the same angle at night. This is the right side yew/firewood are day. And this is at night. I kind of have two pictures of the maple and the unknown tree in the day and one at night. Our backyard and patio is a mess. We moved stuff to make the trenches and mount the transformer so things are MESSY. Also, have umbrellas, etc., and I can't take good pics for the life of me. Soooo... any help appreciated before I have my husband go digging!
Hey there KLP, Hubs are ideal for areas where there is a cluster of fixtures within a 25ft range of a central spot (25ft is the hub ready lead wire size we sell). Anything beyond 25ft away from the HUB could potentially lead to voltage loss. And, as I mentioned in the other post, we never recommend going HUB to HUB due to risk of voltage loss as well. Daisy chaining would be the go-to method for wiring lights in a linear fashion on runs that you couldn't ideally or easily use a hub for. Daisy chaining or the hub method are really both viable options for the lights around the patio - it comes down to preference and budget mainly. The (2) spots I'd likely say you wouldn't need a hub are for the Unknown tree and the arborvitaes. Being single fixtures, these could be likely be direct runs from the transformer. Our no lead wire fixtures are ideal for these types of spots we can you run the exact length of wire needed to the fixture spot and have a non visible splice using the gas tight wire connectors on the bottom of the lights. Of course, if you wanted a hub at the Unknown spot, that is really personal preference if you do see yourself wanting more lights there in the future. The yews in the back could likely use the same HUB as the flag pole fixtures. For our Costco lights, these spotlights are really design for simple ground installation only. They wouldn't be compatible with a flag pole mount which is typically ideal for illuminating flag poles. We'd probably recommend purchasing a separate up light for this particular application.
