I purchased one of the Costco 9 light kits and discovered during the planning phase that from the skinny side of my house I'm able to do both my front and back yard, but would ultimately have to run it from the same gfci outlet. 2 questions/scenarios: With two hubs in the backyard am I able to expand a 3rd hub/line out to the front yard with 4-6 lights off one transformer? Is that too much? If I were to go back and grab a 2nd Costco kit, could I then just run two transformers off the same gfci and split that 2nd system into the front yard?
Hey Joseph, If you are talking about adding a hub to expand from an existing hub, we never recommend doing this as hub-to-hub wiring can lead to voltage loss issues. If wishing to have 3 hubs on a single transformer, this is possible; the important factor is staying within the transformers recommended load range (80% of listed capacity; so for 150W this would be 120W). And, the other important factor is staying within about 80W or 8-10 fixtures per individual run from the transformer. So, you wouldn't want a single run with (2) fully loaded hubs on it (regardless if the hubs weren't wired hub to hub). You can indeed in theory plug (2) transformers into a single GFCI outlet, we'd just recommend checking the amperage rating for that particular circuit. Max amperage for our transformers is listed on the interior label (varies per unit/size of transformer). We also sell transformers and all the accessories you might need directly through our own factory direct website with same-day shipping - we'd recommend checking it out and giving one our experts a call if you wanted any direct assistance. www.voltlighting.com
@josephc84 , I have 5 hubs on my Costco kit, with 10 spotlights (5 watts per light), 9 hats (patio lights, 4 watts per light), that will go into the 150 watt transformer. With this setup, the 10 spotlights at 5 watts per are 50 watts, and the 9 hats are 36 watts so still less than the 120 watts that the transformer can take. I'm planning on adding a few more lights on the other hubs at a future time. I also have another 100 watt hub that I got from Costco from one of the add on kits that I can pull out and use with additional lights. My brother got me the 150 watt transformer kit from Costco last Xmas and we just pulled it out a few weeks ago and are going to town, and I already added on to that with additional Costco kits. At first I thought I could go hub to hub back to the transformer, but @Evan K set me straight. I was able to put two hubs on one channel at the transformer and it is working fine. (Make SURE you put the wires together the right way though! Each half of the wire from each hub has to be paired with the correct half. In other words, if the wire has writing on one side, that side of the wire has to be joined with the writing side of the other hub. We had an electrician install the outside outlet for the hub and he walked us through it. You may already know this, but I didn't!) Make sure you find the "Mistakes I Made" post in the Share forum (go back to the forum home and find it, why they don't have navigation from this forum to that Share forum as an option.... I don't know, but they don't.) It was VERY helpful when we were installing! (Edit, I'm putting in a direct link: https://forum.voltlighting.com/threads/mistakes-i-made.604/) I'm probably going to purchase a specialty flag light from Volt and maybe some others. I'm updating my plan based on what we have actually done and I took pictures of the trenches so I can put it all together in one packet if I ever sell the house or have to tell someone what I did. I'll post it here when I'm done a little later on so you can see what I did.
