Back for the Winter? Check Your Lights Before You Unpack the Patio Cushions
Every year somewhere around the middle of October my phone starts ringing with people who just got back from Minnesota or Washington or wherever they spend the summer, and the call usually starts with "so we got back last week and half the yard is dark." Sometimes all of it is. Once in a while it's the opposite and the lights have been running all day every day since May because the timer reset itself, which is its own kind of surprise when the power bill shows up.
So if you're a snowbird and you just got in, this one's for you. Most of it you can check yourself in about twenty minutes after the sun goes down.
What a summer here does to a system nobody's watching
Your lights sat through five months of 110 degree afternoons, a full monsoon season and probably a couple of dust storms, all without anybody walking the yard. I wrote about what monsoon season does to outdoor lighting back in June, and pretty much everything in that post happened to your yard too, except nobody was home to notice when it did.
And the landscaper was probably still coming every couple weeks the whole time, with a string trimmer.
Start with the transformer
Go find the gray or black box on the wall, usually on the side of the house or out by the garage. If the timer has a little screen, make sure it actually shows the right time. A lot of the older mechanical timers lose their place after a power blip, and summer storms here knock the power out for a second or two more often than people think, so a timer that was set perfectly in April might now think it's three in the morning at dinnertime.
If the transformer has a breaker or a reset button on it, check whether it tripped. If it has tripped and it trips again as soon as you reset it, leave it off and call somebody, because something on the line is shorted and resetting it over and over isn't going to fix that.
Walk it after dark
Wait until it’s fully dark and go walk the whole yard with a flashlight. Mostly you’re hunting for fixtures that are out or gone dim, though it’s worth checking the aim while you’re at it, since wind and landscapers knock uplights sideways constantly and the one that used to graze your palo verde may be pointed at the neighbor’s bedroom window by now.
One dead light by itself is usually just the lamp or a corroded connection at that fixture, but if four or five in a row went dark together the problem is somewhere back up the wire and you’ll want somebody to trace it.
I’d wipe the lenses off while you’re out there too. Summer leaves a film of dust on them you can’t really see in daylight, and I’ve had customers swear we put in brighter lamps when all I did was clean the glass.
The plants grew and you didn't
Okay, you probably didn't either, but your yard definitely did. Monsoon rain makes everything shoot up, so by October there are bushes that have swallowed path lights whole and a lantana that's sitting right on top of an uplight. Trim those back. A fixture buried in foliage cooks itself faster in the heat, and you're paying to light the inside of a shrub.
Check the critters too
Pack rats are the other thing I’d look for. They’ll chew low voltage wire, mostly right where it comes up out of the ground at a fixture, and a house that’s been quiet since May is about as good as it gets for them. If you find chewed insulation or a pile of sticks and junk wedged in behind the transformer, get it looked at before you turn everything back on and head north again in April.
If you're leaving again in April
A lot of my snowbird customers end up just having us out once in the fall, right after they get back, to go through the whole system and fix whatever summer broke. It's not glamorous work and it's honestly cheaper than letting a small problem sit there for another year.
The other thing I'd suggest is switching to a timer you can see from your phone. Then you can check from Minneapolis in July whether the lights are coming on at dusk, and if they stop, you hear about it in July instead of in October. That's the kind of thing I wrote about in the post on what people actually use their lighting app for, and for somebody who's gone half the year it's probably the most useful part of the whole app.
Welcome back, by the way. You picked a good time, October through April is the whole reason any of us live here.
— Sam
Desert Outdoor Lighting has served the Phoenix Valley since 2004. We're licensed and bonded (ROC# 340142) and install landscape lighting and Gemstone permanent trim lighting in Gilbert, Mesa, Chandler, Scottsdale, Tempe, Queen Creek and across the Valley. Call (480) 809-7800 or request a free after-dark design visit.