Dealing with Budgetary Constraints

17 Apr Dealing with Budgetary Constraints

by Mike Gambino

Usually the first place a property owner will look to decrease the cost of a landscape lighting project to fit within a desired budget is fixture quantity.

Less fixtures than specified by a professional designer will obviously decrease project cost. However not as significantly as one might think. Less fixtures will also change the end result potentially to the detriment of the project.

The most labor intensive cost of a landscape lighting system is the installation of conduit and cable.

Trenches for “home runs” or main power lines still need to be dug to bring power to areas irregardless of how many fixtures those main lines are providing power for.

Load or total lamp wattage will determine the size and qty of cables required. In regards to labor it doesn’t cost more to pull 5 wires than it does to pull 3 when they are installed all at the same time inside the same conduit.

So incrementally speaking the cost of labor to install is not reduced equivalent to the random subtraction of fixtures.

The fixed cost of transformers ( which should be sized to original design in the event the extra fixtures are added later) remains the same.

Also, cost savings of material needed to connect deleted fixtures is not significant. Since low voltage fixtures are always installed within close proximity of the main power cables that feed them there also isn’t much cost savings in auxiliary parts to delete fixtures as most times there is only a few feet of cable and conduit needed to be installed between them.

Decreasing the quality of fixtures is a disaster and not a prudent decision. Labor cost the same whether quality or inferior materials are used. I’m going to say that again in bold because I think it is critical.

“Labor cost the same whether quality or inferior materials are used”.

Therefore when budget is a concern I most always recommend zoning or installing the system complete in stages as budget permits.

Stretching fixtures thin can result in gaps or dark holes in your lighting scene and can be very distracting. It also disrupts the flow and harmony of the design and can result in a very undesirable spotty end product.

See this previous article for more information about fixture quantities.