Low Voltage Landscape Lighting suffers from a lack of Industry Building Standards

Low Voltage Landscape Lighting suffers from a lack of Industry Building Standards

By Mike Gambino

Fink-4

Designing and building Low Voltage Landscape Lighting Systems is an interesting and challenging area of construction. There are  estimates claiming that approximately 80 percent of the systems built nationwide fail within the first year — and 80 percent of those fail within the first six months! This might be an arguable number, but I believe it’s close to the truth. I’ve been in this business for over two and a half decades now, and I know from my experience (and my accountant) that 80 percent or more of my business is removing and rebuilding poorly designed, poorly conceived and poorly constructed low voltage landscape lighting systems. I have spoken with many in the industry who have the same record. The failures span a broad range of conditions, from poor performance and high-maintenance to broken ground stakes, poor wire connections that fail. Unprotected direct buried cable that gets severed or unknowingly damaged and slowly oxidizes until lights become dim or do not function at all. Higher than normal electrical use is also a recurring theme.

The Wild Wild West

It is my opinion that many of our industry failures are due to what I call the “wild west” of construction practices, with no official codes or specs that “contractors” must follow. Nationwide,
there are no contractors’ licenses that specifically address the design and construction of low voltage landscape lighting systems. While there are licenses for pool contractors, landscapers, electricians and, in some cases,  in California “low voltage electrical” (but this covers HVAC, home theater, interior wiring installers etc.) an actual official trade test for our industry does not exist.
There are a few guidelines for low voltage landscape lighting construction and some codes that apply to safety concerns like required equipment distances from bodies of water, depth of cable that passes under hardscape surfaces and through walls, finished installed height from  bottom of low voltage transformers to the ground but really nothing else of note. The consumer is not represented by or armed with any set of guidelines that they can use to keep a landscape lighting system builder in line, and most consumers are unaware of the needs of low voltage landscape lighting system maintenance over the long term. While there have been several attempts at starting organizations with the intent of helping to teach and guide landscape lighting system builders across the nation, most of these have struggled at best and slowly failed over time at worst.

The “rules” we use are largely anecdotal and have their roots in interpretation, “this worked for me” syndrome. Others are simply the techniques promoted by various manufacturers over time to help the landscape lighting system builders they are trying to sell to avoid codes and regulations. Few, if any, of these anecdotal guidelines truly address the needs of the system upkeep or the owners responsibilities and rarely take geographical location into consideration. Manufacturers regularly overstate the performance of their products because there is simply no one telling them they can’t.

I have  colleagues who have designed and built low voltage landscape lighting systems in several states around the country and have never come across any inspectors or regulating bodies that are any better-informed than the consumers they would supposedly protect.

I have also seen and heard of several extremely large systems of  several hundred lighting fixtures in different locations across the country that were designed and built by very well-known and respected architectural firms and landscape contractors. These projects failed in several ways, but the most important failures were what I consider poor performance, poor material quality and placement and and little or no ongoing maintenance. In short, they gave a general first impression of “Wow that’s totally unimpressive.”

In my opinion the problem lies with the way the industry is structured. You have manufacturers and distributors doing most of the “teaching” (which is only really a promotion of their product) and there are way too many part-timers and non specialized companies installing systems. Mark Carlson of Avalon lighting estimates that 90-95% of the materials purchased for landscape lighting use are done so by non specialized trades. Those are companies who install lighting as an afterthought or add on to their primary project which is usually landscaping. These companies simply do not have a vested interest in the long term success of the system they install. Most won’t service them or ever come back to work on them because they know there are going to be problems that are going to be very expensive to solve. Leaving another jaded property owner and another black eye for the industry itself. Manufacturers and distributors do not have motivation to solve this problem because they are selling product. In some cases repeat business from the same project. First the initial install and then the replacement of the failed system. Since these part timers are their primary buyers there is little reason to rock the boat to push for regulation that would affect them.

Do I want an outside group of “un-know-it-alls”  ensuring best practices and regulating our industry? Absolutely not! But I would like our industry to clean up its act and start communicating better, be more responsible for the systems they design and install and put the customer first.

Facebook-ice-256This 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 20 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 .

Blog articles may be published with permission on other websites without editing or removing links.

 

 

No Comments

Post A Comment