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Should Sidewalk Landscaping front of house Salt Lake City, UT Lights Be Wired in a Series or Parallel?

March 15, 2015

If your sidewalk lights aren’t solar powered, then they likely are low-voltage landscape lights, which means they’re connected to a transformer which steps down 120-volt family electricity to 12 volts. Not all landscape lights are low voltage, but that doesn’t matter if it comes to deciding whether to connect them in parallel or series. You connect them in parallel. Connecting them in series creates difficulties, and you likely won’t also have the choice to do this.

Enrollment in Series and Parallel

When wiring two electrical devices in show, you connect the positive terminal of one to the negative terminal of another, leaving another positive/negative pair for connection to other devices or to electricity. In this configuration, the electric current has just one path to take and stays the same throughout the circuit. When wiring in parallel, then you join the positive terminals of both devices together, then connect the negative terminals together. The present can travel in more than one direction in this type of circuit, and it can vary different parts of the circuit, however, the voltage across each device is identical.

The Christmas-Light Effect

Electricians and producers of electric equipment and devices hardly ever wire lights in show, however, the practice was more prevalent. Strings of Christmas Tree Pruning companies Fort Lauderdale, FL lights sold in the 1960s and 1970s frequently were wired in series, and they all were subject to some frustrating defect. When one bulb in the string burnt out, all the lights would go off, demanding a painstaking search for the faulty bulb in order to reestablish the lights. The burnout opened the circuit and because the present had nowhere else to go, it could not flow.

More Series Wiring Issues

Another issue with wiring lights in series is that the voltage drops as electricity progresses during the circuit, and the most remote lights in the string may shine more visually than the remainder, or perhaps not at all. This is especially likely in a low-voltage lighting string that pulls power from a 12-volt transformer. The voltage-drop effect basically limits the number of lights you can put on a string as well as the length of the string. You can prevent this by eliminating the transformer, however, the lights subsequently consume more electricity, which makes the string harder to function.

Enrollment in Parallel

Wiring lights in parallel avoids the Christmas-light effect as well as voltage-drop troubles, and it is the way contractors wire all of lighting fixtures in a circuit, not just sidewalk lights. In practice, wiring fixtures in parallel is easy; you constantly connect wires of the identical color to every other: black to black, black to white, white, and Landscaping materials Fresno to Landscaping price Long Beach. This is the procedure you use for wiring virtually any household diagnostic device. Most low-voltage lights have straps that allow you to plug it into the circuit, so you seldom have to be concerned about series and parallel wiring anyhow.