Hi,
Years ago we had a sparky install some 240v garden lighting but to one of the points in the garden that we wanted lighting in he only installed a buried SWA cable and terminated it in a jb because at the time we needed some other work doing in that area before lighting could go in. Anyway we've finally got round to wanting to install lighting, and my plan is to use spike lights. The area they are going in is a flowerbed so some digging could feasibly happen in the future. So I thought it would be best to use SELV spike lights, but I couldn't really find any (other than amazon specials) with a gu5.3 base so I was thinking of buying normal gu10 ones from the likes of screwfix and using a gu10 to gu5.3 adapter and running them at 12v. I'd rather not use any integrated led ones as I've heard they are very susceptible to failure and filling up with water, so would rather use ones that where I can just replace the lamp if it goes. Also the top of the range stuff (collingwood etc) is a bit expensive for me for the specs I want. Hope that sounds sensible.
So my questions are;
1) What is the best way to protect the cable from the lights from damage? At most the cable would have to run about 1m in the flowerbed before it gets to a fence it could be clipped along. I'm thinking I could use kopex as some protection and then bury it as deep as the SWA (50cm)? It could of course just go on the surface so anyone digging would see it but that would look unsightly. Are there any better ways of protecting it?
2) This is probably a silly question but am I right in thinking that if I go down the route of converting 240v gu10 lights to selv lights I should NOT connect the cpc?
Thanks for any replies!
Years ago we had a sparky install some 240v garden lighting but to one of the points in the garden that we wanted lighting in he only installed a buried SWA cable and terminated it in a jb because at the time we needed some other work doing in that area before lighting could go in. Anyway we've finally got round to wanting to install lighting, and my plan is to use spike lights. The area they are going in is a flowerbed so some digging could feasibly happen in the future. So I thought it would be best to use SELV spike lights, but I couldn't really find any (other than amazon specials) with a gu5.3 base so I was thinking of buying normal gu10 ones from the likes of screwfix and using a gu10 to gu5.3 adapter and running them at 12v. I'd rather not use any integrated led ones as I've heard they are very susceptible to failure and filling up with water, so would rather use ones that where I can just replace the lamp if it goes. Also the top of the range stuff (collingwood etc) is a bit expensive for me for the specs I want. Hope that sounds sensible.
So my questions are;
1) What is the best way to protect the cable from the lights from damage? At most the cable would have to run about 1m in the flowerbed before it gets to a fence it could be clipped along. I'm thinking I could use kopex as some protection and then bury it as deep as the SWA (50cm)? It could of course just go on the surface so anyone digging would see it but that would look unsightly. Are there any better ways of protecting it?
2) This is probably a silly question but am I right in thinking that if I go down the route of converting 240v gu10 lights to selv lights I should NOT connect the cpc?
Thanks for any replies!