Lights can transform a garden into a wonderful pleasure palace at night.
With the use of a patio heater or chimenea in summer’s evenings, you can make your garden a living extension of your own home.
However, care must also be taken to ensure the wildlife in your garden is not adversely affected. Light pollution can be challenging for many birds, bats and insects, the eco system that keep your garden healthy.
Care must also be taken to make sure you are staying within the building regulations.
However, with the right planning and design, you can create a beautiful, extra living space outside your home, that can be enjoyed most of the year round.
What can I have?
- Uplighting:
If you have objects, statues or trees in your garden some great effects can be produced by cleverly uplighting them. The light is set into the ground and pointed upward to the object at different angles to produce some amazing effects. - Downlighting:
Shining light down through the branches or leaves can also produce some stunning new aspects. - Water lighting:
A pond can appear almost magical if lit from inside the pond or from a hidden place at the water level. - Shadowing and silhouetting:
By placing lights in front of, or behind, larger garden objects like statues and trees, strange and interesting shadows can be created.
Just wandering around with a torch would show the possibilities and the effects that illumination can make. This will give you a good idea where to place lights.
How can it be installed?
Every cable, wire, socket, and appliance used outdoors has to be protected by a residual current device (RCD). This device instantly shuts off the power should anything happen to make power leak to earth, for example, if a cable gets cut or someone gets a shock.
RCDs are essentially safety devices that must be used to protect every socket in the home, including those that would be used to supply electricity outdoors. Most times, they are placed in the indoor consumer unit.
In most cases, to put cables underground either Steel Wired Armoured (SWA) cable is used or a suitable conduit or duct to lay the cable in.
Both must be buried at a depth where they cannot be “damaged by any disturbance of the ground reasonably likely to occur”.
Part P of the building regulations now requires you to notify the Building Control Authorities if you intend to have electrical work done in the garden or it must be done by a Part P qualified electrician. There is no room here for DIY Electrics as it is simply too dangerous.
At Vector Electric, we are Part P qualified and certified to do all aspects of this work.
Why not call us now on 0117 4034 023 to find out we can help with your garden lighting plans.
What types of lighting can I have?
The BSI guidelines specify that all external light fittings must be installed in a way that ensures maximum effectiveness, so to save energy.
This means that each lamp must not exceed a maximum of 150 watts. In addition, the light fittings must be controlled through an external photocell (light sensor) or a time switch that automatically switches the lights off during daylight or when they are not required at night.
LED light bulbs with a warm or very warm colour temperature are great to use. Their lack of heat will discourage insects from flocking to them, and the warm colour will have less of an impact on nocturnal animals.
Outdoor-rated fairy lights wrapped around trees, draped across plants, or strung up along fences can help create an enchanted garden atmosphere and a relaxing ambience to make time spent outdoors more enjoyable.
You must consider how your outdoor lighting will affect your neighbours and wildlife. Overly bright illumination can have a detrimental effect and there are a few things you can do to limit any negative impacts outdoor lighting may have:
- Turn the lights off when they are not in use to save on energy costs and cut down on light pollution.
- Use motion sensors to stop them shining throughout the night.
- Select the right bulbs with a warm correlated colour temperature (CCT) and a good Ingress Protection (IP) rating. You want your bulbs to be weather resistant.
- Select light bulbs that are dimmable or have a low lumen level so they are gentle to the eyes. You don’t want see harsh shadows or negatively the affect the wildlife with bright lights.
- Select fixtures that are properly shielded and point downward so you aren’t wasting light and energy.
We have over 10 years’ experience of installing garden lighting and we can advise you about the lighting, fittings and cabling that will be best for your garden.
Contact us here (hyperlink), email us info@vectorelectric.co.uk or call 0117 4034 023 to see how we can help you create your Garden Wonderland.