Landscape Lighting Repair

Why half your lights go out at once

This is the call we take most often, and it almost always surprises people: a dozen fixtures stop working and the owner assumes a dozen things broke. Nearly always it is one thing.

Low-voltage fixtures share a cable. Everything downstream of a fault goes dark with it, so a single cut, a corroded connection or a failed transformer takes out an entire side of a property. Finding the one fault is the whole job, and it is why a repair visit is diagnostic work rather than parts-swapping.

What actually fails

• Cable damage. By a wide margin the leading cause. A landscaper's spade, a fence post, an aerator, a contractor digging for something unrelated.
• Water in a connection. Anything below grade that was not sealed properly will eventually find moisture, and this region gives it plenty of chances.
• Transformer failure. Either the unit itself or, more often, the timer or photocell that decides when it comes on.
• Lamp end-of-life. Normal. Lamps we supplied carry a five-year warranty and we replace them at no charge inside it.
• Corroded fixtures. Usually the point at which a big-box fixture has told you what it was worth.
• Growth. Not a fault at all. A shrub has grown into the beam, or a tree has moved a downlight ten degrees off where it was aimed.

If another company put it in

Call the office and ask. We will tell you honestly whether it is something we can take on, and we would rather say no on the phone than take your money and disappoint you. Where we do take it, a technician traces the runs, locates the transformers, tests the voltage at each point and works out what is actually in the ground, which is often not what the owner was told when it went in.

Then you get a straight answer in one of three shapes. Either it is a repair worth making, or it is a system that can be brought back but needs several components replaced, or it has reached the end of its life and further money spent on it is money wasted. We would rather say the third thing out loud than keep coming back every spring to revive fixtures that were never built to last.

The equipment question

The fixtures and equipment we install are not sold at a local hardware store or a big-box retailer. They are made available only to professional lighting companies, and the manufacturers stand behind them with warranties that we service ourselves.

That matters because it is the difference between a repair that holds and one you pay for again next spring. Where equipment has simply reached the end of its life we will say so plainly rather than keep charging to revive it.

How a service call runs

Call the office at (270) 685-7070 and describe what is happening. Which fixtures, when it started, whether anyone has done work on the property recently. That last question solves a surprising number of cases before anyone gets in a truck.

A technician comes out, diagnoses on site and carries the common failure parts. Most repairs are finished in the same visit. If a part has to be ordered, we tell you what it is and what it costs before ordering it.

When the repair is done we will usually suggest a maintenance plan, because most of what we are called out for is something a scheduled visit would have caught first.