Hot landscape lights!


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Old 10-31-16, 10:43 AM
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Hot landscape lights!

Our landscape lights, 11w tier path lights, the bulbs sometimes get hot to the touch and turn black. But then they still light up? Anyone else having this happen? Bad bulbs? Bad transformer? Poor connections? The set is over 15 yrs old. I worked on them yesterday replacing a couple bulbs and a couple connectors to the power wire and they're all working right now. Just concerned about how hot they get mainly.
 
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Old 10-31-16, 10:51 AM
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Most of those are quartz bulbs and do operate very hot.
Have you considered switching them over to LED replacement bulbs.
 
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Old 10-31-16, 01:17 PM
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Halogen lights like to run hot. They will darken over time but running them at a lower voltage can make them darken sooner. When a halogen bulb operates some of the filament slowly burns off. If its at it's full power the bulb is hot enough for the tungsten to vaporize and get re-deposited on the filament, extending the bulbs life and reducing the darkening of the glass. If you have long wiring runs from the transformer to your lights the resistance of the wires may be causing a voltage drop.
 
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Old 10-31-16, 02:33 PM
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Don't think these are Halogen blubs. They are 12v "Landscape Lighting wedge base" blubs. The 2 pin 20w blubs in the spots are Halogen and I know these run hot by design. This system is old and I bet it is suffering some voltage drop on the main truck wire as suggested. I'll try to poke around on it with my volt meter and see how much under 12v it is particularly the further down the line you go.

I'll look for the LED replacement blubs. Will they flicker in 12v Malibu's? I've been looking at a complete replacement set that uses 3w LED's. Wonder if they will have same light output as the regular blubs?
 
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Old 11-26-16, 02:55 PM
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I found some LED bi pin G4 blubs at Lowes Bros that look like they will fit in my current spots which are running 20w halogens. They have a "20w equivalent" LED that draws 2w but its only 135 lumens vs. 250 lumens for the current blub. Can I safely use the "40w equivalent" in my old spot fixture to get closer to same light output?

These are Feit Electric blubs and they are much shorter than the Philips blubs I got that would not fit in the fixture.
 
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Old 11-26-16, 03:00 PM
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Yes...as long as the physical size is the same you can use them.
 
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Old 11-27-16, 11:29 AM
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Just be aware that G4 bulbs can vary in pin spacing and the thickness of the pins.
Sometimes the bulb will fit but will seem to fail because it's the wrong thickness of pin. If the win is thinner, it doesn't make good contact.
Take a bulb with you to get an exact replacement.
Look at THESE and you'll see how different a G4 can be.
 
 

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