ECN Forum Forums General Topics of the Trade General Discussion Area Landscape lighting Prices (I still have trouble with this one)

I had a guy I worked with. He quit to full time his buisness of outdoor and indoor fiber-optic lighting ( acrylic fiber). You want to talk about top dollar installs. Just the supplys to do this average on minninumof about $3000. He usually gets big jobs where price isnt the concern. He usually gets install that satart around $15000 on the outdoor stuff. I believe somewhat less, but not necessarily, on the indoor installs. I put some of this in at my house, and with a 40% discount from the manufacturer, I still didnt have enough $ to finish the way I wanted.

Electric Eagle, you can go to www.lowvolt.org/ and go to their forum. They have pretty extensive coverage on different aspects of the design etc... There are others, but this forum seems to come from the professionals that do it all the time for a living. You can "punch" in low voltage lighting on a search engine and find others.. Hope this helps.. Steve

[This message has been edited by sparkync (edited 04-09-2005).]

The solar accent lights are nice and easy, but might or might not be what the homeowner is looking for. We have a set of the small LED ones, and one flourescent spotlight; none put off a lot of light, but it's still nice for accent. Not to mention no cabling required! Of course, not much profit, either. The ones I've seen have all been powered by nicad batteries, which die pretty quickly, but were easily replaceable.

I tell you what, though- our set of little solar accent lights were a real lightsaver after Hurricane Isabel knocked out power for 8 days- these things are nothing, just a AA nicad and an amber LED, but we'd set all 10 out all day to soak up the sun, and set them around the house at night so we could see- a couple down the hallways, a few in the kitchen and 3 in the bathroom. They were about as bright as candles, but without the risk of fire Re: the life, all our lights are all still working, and it's been about 2 years since they were installed.

[This message has been edited by SteveFehr (edited 04-11-2005).]