Landscape lighting

[wesley1]

Recently installed first LED 12 volt landscape lights. Installed total of 16 1.9 watt 12 volt lights and 100w xformer. 8 were on 1 end of residence and other 8 on opposite end. Worked fine for 1 week then 8 on closest to xformer end burned up. I have no experience with LED lighting but wonder why all 8 went bad. 2 of them will blink but other 6 are smoked and smeel burnt. I have double checked for shorts and polarity and everything is fine. The transformer was tripping internal breaker until disconnected the 6 completely burned up lights. I have installed reg incandescent low voltage lights for years and when a bulb or wire shorts its no big deal. If any one has any info or experience i would love to hear it before we replace these expensive fixtures as i do not know what caused problem. Thanks!

 

[LarryFine]

Guess #1: over-voltage.

 

[wesley1]

Larry, I think you nailed it. We havent been able to get inside residence until today. Found plug in surge protector for tv equipment almost had caught house on fire and burn marks on wall by switches. Definetly surge or lightning. I wonder why the 8 lights on 1 end were the only led's affected.

 

[cadpoint]

Did you get any more work out of it?

Was this TV circuit sharing this other circuit in some way, or was it physically located close in the panel?

Sounds like the surge protector worked once it was found.

Up-Sell and get them on a whole house!

I've stated this before, a lighting strike hit my neighbor?s tree in back of their property ran underground picked-up the galv. pipe from garage to house and blow apart the transformer for the door bell, where the galv. pipe ended in a shared box that was under the house.

My main house valve, the stem cap bolt became loose that day and started dripping, visualize this is the about the farthest diagonal line you could creat between rectangular lots but no greater than 160'+-.

 

[wesley1]

just left house and already sold whole house surge protector we will put in Fri. The lightning as it turns out did hit a gazebo on that side of the house. I was not aware of the lightning strike until today so now it all makes since. This makes the 2nd surge strip i've seen burnt like this. I wonder if the danger of burning down house is as important as saving TV.

 

[Dnkldorf]

As far as I can remember, a surge protector is useless on lightning.

You need a lightning protector, which is seperate from a surge protector, and can be upsold together for more home protection.


If memory serves me right.