sitelights
07-15-2003, 08:38 PM
This book is the replacement for the 1984 Ortho book "How to Design & Install Outdoor Lighting" now out of print but available used, cheap. The new book is titled "Indoor & Outdoor Lighting Solutions" (no author, probably written by a committee or a computer) published by Ortho Books, an imprint of Meredith Books, Des Moines, Iowa. I am going to send them a copy of this review; perhaps they would care to reply. The book is copyright (all the company names above are copyright by their respective companies) by The Scotts Company (sound familiar?) 2003 and it is IBSN listed as 0-89721-475-7. After a 20 year gestation period a turkey is born and it costs about $12.00
This softcover, coated stock, glued binding book has 102 pages of text, 2 pages of glossary and 2 pages of index. The emphasis is on indoor lighting design and installation. In the index "low voltage" has 7 page citings but only 2 of these are about low voltage outdoor lighting. Of the 102 pages of text, only pages 74 to 85 are concerned with outdoor lighting; that is about 10% or $1.20 worth of what you want to know about low voltage outdoor lighting.
How comprehensive can you be in 102 pages of text when at least half of each page is taken by diagrams, illustrations and photographs. I couldn't bring myself to do a word count (Whoa!) but I'd guess an average of less than 250 words per page. This book, while being in a sense up-to-date, is actually inferior to the 1984 book in its treatment of outdoor low voltage lighting in having less design and technical information and fewer photographs. The outdoor section contains a very lonely single image of an installed system although the cover shows a night lighted house where the only actual landscape light is a three-tiered pagoda pathlight which is a horrible, but ubiquitous luminaire. The illustrations are feeble and ho-hum. There is a sidebar table about the "Cable Constant" formula for estimating voltage drop; I am certain that no one ever quantified the formula in an actual system under actual conditions so it remains mere theory (incorrect, I believe).
Other technical information is so skimpy as to border on the nonexistent: the design pages are almost ludicrous. One could get more info from a manufacturer's back-of the-catalog tips on low voltage design and installation. There is no mention of lamp photometrics and if you don't know about lamps you don't know anything about lighting. Simplistic illustrations show a variety of lamp types (in fact ALL lamps are really indoor lamps; no 12v lamp is made exclusively for outdoor use) not drawn to scale but there is no detail about (or mention of) photometrics. The DIY enthusiasts must have been considered too stupid to absorb any real information.
I was so disappointed by this book that I dragged out my 1984 edition; it is so superior to its replacement that I am going to review it soon. [Posted 07.20.03] Meanwhile my original review of the 1984 book is on amazon.com; you can still buy the 1984 edition for under $10.00 but it will probably be a used book.
This softcover, coated stock, glued binding book has 102 pages of text, 2 pages of glossary and 2 pages of index. The emphasis is on indoor lighting design and installation. In the index "low voltage" has 7 page citings but only 2 of these are about low voltage outdoor lighting. Of the 102 pages of text, only pages 74 to 85 are concerned with outdoor lighting; that is about 10% or $1.20 worth of what you want to know about low voltage outdoor lighting.
How comprehensive can you be in 102 pages of text when at least half of each page is taken by diagrams, illustrations and photographs. I couldn't bring myself to do a word count (Whoa!) but I'd guess an average of less than 250 words per page. This book, while being in a sense up-to-date, is actually inferior to the 1984 book in its treatment of outdoor low voltage lighting in having less design and technical information and fewer photographs. The outdoor section contains a very lonely single image of an installed system although the cover shows a night lighted house where the only actual landscape light is a three-tiered pagoda pathlight which is a horrible, but ubiquitous luminaire. The illustrations are feeble and ho-hum. There is a sidebar table about the "Cable Constant" formula for estimating voltage drop; I am certain that no one ever quantified the formula in an actual system under actual conditions so it remains mere theory (incorrect, I believe).
Other technical information is so skimpy as to border on the nonexistent: the design pages are almost ludicrous. One could get more info from a manufacturer's back-of the-catalog tips on low voltage design and installation. There is no mention of lamp photometrics and if you don't know about lamps you don't know anything about lighting. Simplistic illustrations show a variety of lamp types (in fact ALL lamps are really indoor lamps; no 12v lamp is made exclusively for outdoor use) not drawn to scale but there is no detail about (or mention of) photometrics. The DIY enthusiasts must have been considered too stupid to absorb any real information.
I was so disappointed by this book that I dragged out my 1984 edition; it is so superior to its replacement that I am going to review it soon. [Posted 07.20.03] Meanwhile my original review of the 1984 book is on amazon.com; you can still buy the 1984 edition for under $10.00 but it will probably be a used book.