14 Sep Poor Landscape Lighting Installations Offer Possibilities……………for Design Build Specialists
By Mike Gambino
When landscape lighting system builders screw up, two things happen: the industry gets a bad name and other designer/builders like myself get more work. Or sadly a property owner has to live with the problem every day knowing the money they spent was a total loss and is not worth the cost of electricity to operate it every evening.
We get calls like this all too often from the lady of the home about a poorly performing landscape lighting system. Clearly frustrated. The system was installed less than a year before. I ask her why she didn’t call the contractor who installed the lighting. She says she did, but that she’d like a second opinion. Basically, what she’s saying is that she no longer trusts that contractor.
Here is what happens. Like many homeowners hiring a new landscape installation or remodel the same contractor is hired to design and install the landscape lighting. The motivation may be for convenience or to save money. The thought is after all they are already digging in the garden, installing the irrigation and drainage systems and they offer landscape lighting with all of their landscape installs so what can go wrong?
Plenty !
Using non specialized trades to design and install landscape lighting can work out satisfactorily if you have the company owner or a key employee on the job every day who has a vision for how the project will look at night even during the day and who has successfully completed multiple landscape lighting projects over a long period of time to make sure things turn out as desired.
If you don’t have some level of landscape lighting expertise on the job site everyday to ensure certain standards from a responsible individual whose name goes on the project more times than not things are not going to turn out as planned.
The problem is very few stand alone non specialized landscape lighting design build firms possess this individual on staff or have these unique daytime visions of how the landscape lighting will look at night.
Here is a typical situation we encounter when we walk these sites where landscape lighting was not the specialty of the designer/installer.
Up to Code
So we go out to one of the transformers where the client complains the lighting has intermittently worked and find it improperly connected to the homes power source. The power cord is plugged into a GFI outlet that has no bubble cover that protects the outlet from moisture. There’s a right way to safely hardwire a transformer so a GFI outlet doesn’t have to be used saving the homeowner the hassle of nuisance trips. Good companies do it, schlock outfits don’t. The transformer had a rats nest of wires of random length stuffed into the enclosure such that you had to hold the cable bunch and push it back in the box and close the door with the other.
I ask her: Why didn’t you call him back?
It turns out she did call the contractor and he had come out to the house several times and reset the GFI and plug in timer that stopped working each time the power went off from the tripped GFI which was often in the first few months. That was until he stopped returning her calls.
This was only a small part of the troubles this system had. As I walked around the yard I saw several fixtures lying on their sides, the plastic stakes had broken. Red colored Wire nuts that should only ever be used on 120 volt wire connections inside enclosed and weatherproof boxes were popping above the soil in several places. Cables directly buried in the soil without the protection of electrical conduit pipe could also be seen in several areas of the yard heaving out of the soil.
LED lamps were blown out and there was evidence of water in several of the fixtures. Lights that were installed along a path were not close to being plumb and level in fact each had its own degree of weird angle protruding from the ground none of them by original design or intent .
If this was something out of the ordinary, it would be worth describing in greater detail. But it isn’t. Not long ago we replaced a lighting system that had been on the property for just a month. The original not only didn’t use conduit pipe to protect his cable but he also didn’t bother to bury the wire either and just laid it upon top of the ground totally exposed to damage and trip hazard.
The homeowner wants to know: How do we fix it? She calls the original installing contractor who won’t even enter into a conversation about it. They then call a landscape lighting specialist who doesn’t want to touch it and inherit the previous installers nightmare and preexisting conditions. In the end, the homeowner hires us to tear out the system and start over.
Installation Errors
When we are called out by property owners to advise on problems like these what we’re going to do is give them a report and tell them the truth. That doesn’t mean throwing the installing contractor under the bus. But if the failures are due to installation errors then we are going to report that too.
I don’t want to be the contractor who goes around complaining about other contractors. But the truth is, most of the landscape lighting we’re called on to replace is less than a couple of years old. And 80% of the time the problems are due to installation errors. Improper or poor quality inferior materials usually go hand and hand with such installs making the system unsalvageable. Either the system was improperly installed or it’s missing key components such as cable inside conduit pipe, non weatherproof cable connections, or heavy duty ground stakes.
Every landscape lighting manufacturer claims that its product is superior to those of its competitors, and the industry as a whole is divided on many issues but on one thing they’re all in harmony: Landscape Lighting products need to be installed correctly and consistently in order for systems to perform and operate properly. As long as contractors ignore that, there will be plenty of work for companies like ours.
This landscape lighting blog is published by Mike Gambino of Gambino landscape lighting inc. all 
rights reserved. Mike is a professional landscape lighting system designer/ builder and has been designing, installing and maintaining landscape lighting systems for more than 28 years. Mike resides in the Los Angeles area with his wife and 2 sons. To visit his website go to www.Gambinolighting.com . To inquire about hiring Mike please click here .
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