Garden lighting

Really depends on how much you want to spend.

I've got inground LED lights which can change into a wide variety of colours, or stay one colour, depending on how you want to set it.

They cost practically nothing to run, however you will need a electrician to wire it for you.

The other option is to go low voltage / 12 volt.

If you want to have some garden lighting as well, invest in a decent sized transformer now, which will give you the ability to add on more lighting down the track. It maans you can run the 12v cable yourself (transformer plugs into normal 240v), you can decide what lights you want, and it give syou the flexibility to add, remove and reposition withouth the need of sparkies and 60cm deep trenches.

Try someone like WaterPros for some advice. I found them very helpful.

Nice idea, you can have red, blue, yellow, white, green, purple, colours

Majority of the garden lighting products out there are DIY, where you simply plug it in to a powerpoint.

I'll check what else I can get that will make use of your junction box.

I'm looking forward to having some great huge trees in our backyard - so will be looking to use spot lights shined up the trunks for dramatic effect.

For the strength - I think we'll need to hardwire - but hey - we haven't finalised the house design yet!

I asked for an external power point. Is that the same?

I didn't worry about the front at the time being. I thought the automatic gate guys will do some wiring for the gate so I could ask them to provide one more!

- devank

Solar lights are a waste of time - if you don't have really sunny days, and your lights aren't out in full sun, they are like having candles down your footpath. I'd strongly recommend looking at 12V aluminium garden lights or even stainless steel ones - you can get transformers from a manufacturer, Telectran which you can bury in the ground. All you need is an electrician to wire up a "GPO" to a light switch or even a sensor somewhere and you're set - you can do the rest yourself. You can get low voltage lights with bulbs as low as 5w or 10w, so they are perfect for mood lighting.



Live wires in your garden at 12 or 24v is of no concern whatsoever. If you cut the wires with a shovel by accident, just solder them back together (there's no real reason why you couldn't simply twist them together to get your lights up and running for a short time and solder later!) The only place you have 240v in a low voltage lighting system is where your transformer plugs into a powerpoint.

LV lights can be moved fairly easily. Just cut off the cable where it comes off the "trunk cable" and re-solder it somewhere else.



Be aware that if you have trees around, the lights will not be likely to shine through the night...


This is a "GPO" as I mentioned above. You simply plug in a transformer into a powerpoint which is wired to an internal switch, or perhaps a motion sensor.

I've put together an instruction sheet on how best to set up a garden lighting system in low voltage, and a guide on How to solder which should be useful to you all.

Both seem to work? I'll double check for you though.