Outdoor lighting / sound

chabsey

I would like to add lighting to my garden, maybe three or four spotlights only as the garden is quite small. There's no outside socket and I was thinking of fitting one myself as I see Aldi have them onsale tomorrow. Thing is, how do you connect these up to power? Do outside sockets simply end in a plug that you feed in through a hole in the wall, into the house and plug in? Or are they connected directly into the power wiring of the house?

Also, I wouldn't mind hooking up a couple of small speakers for outdoor music, ideally would have them outside permanently but don't know if this is feasible with our weather. Any tips or pointers in this regard would also be welcome.

Thanks!

cherrieB

chabsey... good idea to put sopme lights in the garden... can i reccomend however that you try to use energy saving MR16 lamps from Philips.... you can use a 35w which will give you a 50w output and will last 3 times longer.... its not a crappy CFL ( those funny lights that give out a yellow glow!! ) but it certainly will help with the |Global warmiong issue...
can recommend a good guy to help with wiring if you need...
enjoy and lets hope the sun comes out !!

Stoner

chabsey

www.cpc.co.uk

Do a decent range of outdoor speakers, although your available range would be increased if the speakers could be mounted in a canopy, keep your choice of speaker to low voltage and is will be safe to use

I don’t think much of the outdoor socket in Aldi TBH, at €29 you could get a brand name. What they are aiming for here is that it will be possible for someone to have a socket on the inside of a house or shed that a "back to back" arrangement can be arrived at. That is, someone could power down the socket in the house, take to cover off it and carefully drill a hole to the outside, then they could feed a cable through the hole and connect the new socket fix it to the wall etc, then tap off the inside socket and power back up.
If the socket in the house is protected by an MCB and RCD then it should be ok to do this, if you don’t know what these are then you would need an electrician to do it. I'd get an MK socket something like this would be far better

http://www.mkelectric.co.uk/products/item.asp?itemid=6293&rangeid=1031

Regarding outside lighting I agree with CherrieB here, it is good to keep the wattage down. However I think that there is decent enough light from a CFL lamp. LEDs however do not provide great light, but they are available in 220Vac and 12Vac so a low voltage option fed from a transformer is a safer option depending on where you are going to put them. Finally if you want your lights to act as security lights, anything that can't switch quickly (CFL) won't work very well.

eoghan.geraghty

As stoner says except you can also come through the house beside a socket, put a plug top on the lead to outside. You can do this yourself if you're unsure about wiring into the socket itself.
You can get an outdoor socket for about 15 euro in T O'Reillys, but I would go for the MK in Kellihers/Eastern Electric/EWL. It's about 25 euro and much better.
I recently did some outdoor lighting for a customer, he bought the fittings in B&Q, good quality for very good prices.

chabsey

eoghan.geraghty wrote:

As stoner says except you can also come through the house beside a socket, put a plug top on the lead to outside. You can do this yourself if you're unsure about wiring into the socket itself.
You can get an outdoor socket for about 15 euro in T O'Reillys, but I would go for the MK in Kellihers/Eastern Electric/EWL. It's about 25 euro and much better.
I recently did some outdoor lighting for a customer, he bought the fittings in B&Q, good quality for very good prices.

Thanks for all the info guys. The B&Q fittings, do you mean he bought the outdoor lights there? I was looking in Woodies and I it's about 40 - 50 quid for 3 spots, although I'm not 100% sure about this. I would like to seamlessly integrate the wiring rather than having a plug, however, I'd have to do a lot of reading up beforehand. Our house has an ELCB so I'd obviously power off the relevant sockets, it would be nice to have just a simple switch on the wall rather than a plug plugged in.

eoghan.geraghty

A switch or number of switches is doable (is that a real word?), but is getting more complicated. It is what I'd do but I'm a sparks. The plug top is ideal for a diyer, and the switch on the socket can be used as the switch.
If you're a good handyman and are willing to give it a go I'll post instructions, sorry too late now to get into it.
Is your wall with the socket you want to use skimmed plaster on block or can you fish behimd the plasterboard? The latter makes it much easier, otherwise its surface or else chasing walls.
Oh yeah, he bought the lights in B&Q, they did the job fine and quite cheap.

chabsey

eoghan.geraghty wrote:

A switch or number of switches is doable (is that a real word?), but is getting more complicated. It is what I'd do but I'm a sparks. The plug top is ideal for a diyer, and the switch on the socket can be used as the switch.
If you're a good handyman and are willing to give it a go I'll post instructions, sorry too late now to get into it.
Is your wall with the socket you want to use skimmed plaster on block or can you fish behimd the plasterboard? The latter makes it much easier, otherwise its surface or else chasing walls.
Oh yeah, he bought the lights in B&Q, they did the job fine and quite cheap.

Cheers for info. The wall isn't plasterboard, it's solid poured concrete with a plaster skim We just recently got it rewired and I had to plaster over all the channels so I know what's involved. I think you're right, a plug is the best solution, I just think a switch would look much more professional, but maybe once I start I'll just opt for the easier solution.

We're getting the windows redone in the next couple of weeks and the wall near the socket is going to be knocked out so I might use that opportunity to fit a wire out to the garden. To be honest it was more curiosity than anything else that made me want to try to do the whole switch thing instead of just a plug. Just to see if I could do it.