Shine a Little Light

I don’t know what got into us, but Jose and I were EXTREMELY productive this weekend.  One of the projects we took on was sprucing up the front of our house with some low-voltage outdoor lighting!  I’ve got to give Jose all the credit for this one — it was his idea, and the perfect use for our last remaining Home Depot wedding gift card.  The process was really easy, once we figured out where to install the transformer.  We have 4 power outlets on the outside of the house:  one by the front door, one by the back door, and one on each front corner soffit.  We weren’t in love with the idea of the big bulky transformer sitting right next to, and kind of in the way of, our front door, so we went with the soffit outlet.  It’s controlled by a lightswitch right inside the front door.

(Side note:  we debated low voltage versus solar lighting for quite a while, standing there in the aisle of the strangely poorly air-conditioned Home Depot.  You can’t beat the ease of the solar powered lighting — just stick the light in the ground and voila, you’re done.  But the problem is that they’re really, really low power and thus very dim.  Some of our neighbors have them, and they barely cast any light, which makes me question the point.  So low voltage it was, even though they are more work to install.)

We headed out on Saturday evening to get things started.  Installing the transformer was actually the hardest part for one reason:  we had to figure out how to drill into masonry.  I was not about to mess up the outside of our awesome house without knowing what I was doing, so I spent a while googling for information.  Turns out the drill we already had was sufficient, we just needed a special masonry bit.  And you have to drill SLOOOW to lessen the risk of the masonry crumbling.  We actually chose to drill into the mortar instead of directly into the brick.  So the hardest part?  Not even that hard.

With the transformer installed, we carefully laid out the cable and placed the light where we wanted them to go.   The lights connect to the cable with a double-sided plastic clip with two sharp metal prongs on each side.  When you squeeze the two halves together, the metal prongs pierce the plastic sheathing on the cable and make contact with the copper wiring inside.  So we clipped on the first light, eager to see it illuminate, and….NOTHING.  What a letdown!

We spent the next hour troubleshooting everything.  We pressed harder on the clip.  We cut away at the plastic sheathing to ensure that the metal was indeed touching the copper wire inside.  We tested the electrical outlet.  And no luck.  Nothing lit up.  What was supposed to be an easy project was just not working!  Frustrated, I dumped everything back into the box and we marched back to Home Depot yesterday.  One of the guys from the electrical department looked at everything and quickly declared that the transformer was bad.  We were willing to give it another shot, so we exchanged the first set for another and headed back home.  Last night we once again went out into the yard, but I was skeptical.

But it worked!  I guess the transformer really was bad, because this time the lights popped on without complaint — no cable stripping necessary, since it turns out the plastic clips do function just as promised when there’s actually power running through the cord.  It only took about 10 minutes to snake the cable around the edge of our flowerbed, hiding it underneath the rocks along the edge.

Don’t they look nice?  I like them even more than I thought I would!  Now if only we could get our plants looking healthier to match the lovely outdoor lights.

We also have two spotlights for our trees, but those will involve a bit more work to install since we’ll need to dig a small trench across the yard to bury the cable.  It was getting dark when we finished the lighting, so we’ll do the spotlights sometime soon.