I'm curious how long people generally leave their landscape lighting on for. Do you leave them on from dusk till dawn, or have them turn off after 6 hrs, or say around 2am every day? I understand as well there are different "layers" of lighting for people as well with line voltage and low voltage lighting.. We live on a not very well lit street on a 1/2 acre lot, so there's some street lighting, but very little. For our side door I have a wall fixture with a 60w equivalent bulb stay on from dusk till dawn, and we have two pillars with post lights on top (about 4' high) that run off line voltage that I have lit till ~2am (using an astronomical timer) which are located at the entrance of our driveway. I'm starting to plan the low voltage lighting and was just thinking about what's "normal" in terms of how long to let it run for after dusk. It kind of seems like a "waste" to leave it on all night, but from a security standpoint it does make sense. I guess I'm also just being cheap..? Do people have different "zones" for their landscape lighting? I guess ideally I'd have one "zone" for path lights around the house that might stay on all night for security purposes (or most of the night) and another that would be uplighting for the house/trees and accent lighting? I'd be curious to hear people's thoughts on this. As always, once I start planning things it's much more complicated than just throwing some lights up haphazardly. Thanks for anyone's input.
By the way, you may all be interested in a new timer/photocell invented by our development team. It is the easiest-to-set of all timers. You can turn the dial to dusk-to-dawn or set the dial to a time interval after dusk. See it here! Note: this timer is also available as a removable module in our new Slim Line LED Transformer.
The problem is that if you like a fixed time for the lights to go off, say 11pm, then the 4, or 6, hours run time changes as the days get shorter or longer. I like 5 hours in winter, 3 in summer, but the cost of running the lights all night, dusk to dawn, with LEDs is pretty minimal, however, so let 'em go all night. Here's the math I use: Push a 300w transformer to its rated max - about 240w - and you'll burn 1 kw every four hours; I pay about $ 0.11 per kwh, 10 hours a night year round, that's $ 0.27 a night, or about $ 100 a year, or $ 50 more than timing them off at midnight. The security factor alone is worth $ 50.
Thx for that explanation and logic Lumiscape. I haven't paid close attention to my electric bill but I know electricity is cheap here in VA so I bet it's no more than .11/kwh on average. At an extra cost of only ~$50/yr you're right, that's peanuts in the grand scheme of things. Although LED bulb costs aren't free, they're hardly very expensive either and a drop in the bucket as well. I guess I'll just leave things lit up all night.
That timer looks neat. Me personally, I'm a big fan of the astronomical timers because they aren't as susceptible to having the lights turn on prematurely (like during a storm, or solar eclipse ). I realize, a properly placed light sensor probably won't have that problem, but sometimes getting a light sensor placed "properly" is difficult to do.
I'm new here, but would like to adjust the light sesor so that the lights come on closer to dark and go off at first light. Any suggestions?
Hi Junebug, If you use a dusk to dawn setting, then the system goes on when the ambient light decreases appreciably - not quite fully dark - probably just around sunset - depending on where the photocell sensor is located. If you want the timer to go on at, for example, an hour after sunset, sorry, but our new timer (and our astronomical timer) are unable to be set that way.
love the astro timers, just set one to come on at dusk off at 11;30pm then back on at 4 am and off at dawn, customer takes dogs for walks before work and loves the path lights..... very dark these today
I go dusk to dawn. With LEDs (as long as you don't shine them into the windows) there's really no reason not to. The cost difference is minimal. Use a photocell and you're good to go.
