Hi, I've got a house with some trees and landscaping that I'd like to light. It is a 1 acre lot and I'm planning for around 50 lights. I've been researching wiring designs and I wanted to get your opinion on what I came up with. The basic idea is that I'd have a 10 gauge ring around the house with 12 gauge branches coming off of it to feed the various lights. I found a spreadsheet from FX Luminaire that calculates voltage drop and that's how I came up with needing 10 gauge for this configuration. Also, the wires have to go through the driveway in specific spots where I've got sleeves so that's why it does that. I want to do a single transformer on that side of the house so it can be controlled by my Hayward pool controller. I was thinking of splitting it into two main feeds coming off of the transformer where each goes around the house in opposite directions with half the lights on either side. But the way it works out is that it isn't much extra wire to just connect the branches and make a ring. What do you think? Thanks, Sal
Hey Sal, For one of our 12V LED systems, we recommend 8-10 fixtures or about 80W per run (whichever threshold you reach first essentially). Cable wise, we'd typically recommend 12-gauge for uses up to 150ft and 10-gauge for uses up to 200ft. With your setup, it certainly looks like multiple runs would be needed, and likely most convenient. Using one of our VOLT multi-tap transformers, if this were my project, I'd likely try to divide into 3 home runs from the transformer (marked red, green and blue). This would balance the fixture numbers (and likely wattage) quite evenly. A Pro Junction Hub could also likely be very handy in some spots - like for the large cluster of fixtures in the lower left portion for example. This hub allows you to easily/quickly connect up to 7 fixtures at one convenient spot using simple clamp type wire connectors. With 50 fixtures, depending on the combined wattage, you'd likely need at least a 300W transformer. If the combined wattage exceeds the recommended 80% usage (240W), 2 150W transformers may be more ideal - cheaper than a 600W or larger transformer and would also simplify installation having 2 points to power runs from.
The other benefit to two transformers is giving you more control flexibility. You may want certain lights on dusk til dawn and some from dusk til 10 p.m. for example. The vast majority of transformers don't offer this, so having 2 is a plus. I'm in the design phase of my own and hope to install soon.
