white lab coats

[sitelights]

There may be engineers in the employ of low voltage equipment manufacturers that have personally installed the fruits of their labors on an actual job site but I doubt it. As an example: why would anyone spec a unit that had both slotted and phillips-head screws and why would anyone spec a slotted screw anyway? I'm using a transformer that has all p-h screws except for the clamps for the secondary cable connections. The slotted screws are recessed in a hole exactly the width of the screw head which forced me to buy a new long-shank hefty slotted screwdriver and then grind off the "wings" near the tip so it would fit into the hole deeply enough to really torque the screws down tight. And how about those items that take three hands to assemble such as the base on Hadco's UWL516 underwater fixture; this little concrete hockey puck relies on a friction fit to adjust the angle of the fixture body and when you get the lock washers in place and snug it down the plastic flange breaks off under not enough pressure to fix the angle in place. Hadco's DRL2 downlight has a gimbal mount that requires complete disassembly while you are clinging to a ladder juggling tiny lock washers and thumb screws. The unit cannot be mounted with the gimbal attached because you cannot work around the body of the fixture to reach the fastening holes with anything but a right-angle ratchet screwdriver (and who wants one of those in their tool kit?). I think every designer and engineer that develops a new product should be required to unpack, assemble, lamp and mount the unit in a special test chamber under conditions of 100 degree heat, 100% humidity, cluttered with branches and thorns and filled with 100 gnats per cubic foot...and then let the rain begin.

[Jim Wyatt]

Are the realities of installation really this gruesome? Has anyone from this or similiar forums raised an objection to the manufacturers before now? If so, what was the response?

[sitelights]

Relative to the use of the term "gruesome" in your post, read the post under "safety" for a more complete description. As far as manufacturers' responses to constructive criticism, I must first admit that I am the curmudgeon (Webster's III 2. A crusty, ill-tempered or difficult and often elderly person) of low voltage lighting. My polite, inquiring letters are met with stony silence. I have received only one response (and that from a distributor): "If you don't like the product, don't buy it." About 10 years ago I wrote to ACME (use the search function) about the razor sharp edges of their wiring compartment (no response) and about a year later noticed that 6 T-79105s had their sharp edges eased with a grinder. Later purchases had the same sharp edges. I made a personal trip to HADCO years ago to meet with the head of the landscape lighting division (he agreed to meet with me only after I assured him that I wanted to discuss technical matters and not the topic of order fulfillment, etc). We had brief and civil meeting concerning lamp sockets (the bane of my professional existance) and the need for a small, wide-angle flood among other topics which continued over lunch in a modest sandwich shop. As I was leaving his office, he ran out to give me a HADCO polo shirt. Thanks, Lew. One of the myriad purposes of this web site is to attempt to establish a voice for the ignored installer (see "about"). Individual complaints, no matter how well-meant, carry no weight with the manufacturers since they have a separate agenda; they sell a product and we sell service. In what has become a highly competitive business, most manufacturers see only the price point hence they clone eachothers products with an eye to selling based on price rather than quality. The market gets flooded with gimmicks (poplights, moonstones, ad infinitum) rather than step-by-step improvement of basic equipment. In my experience only one manufacturer has ever addressed the issue of lamp sockets and their impact on service (use search function) and that is a small specialty company. The big boys are still using the same failure-prone crap with the excuse that these sockets are the "only items available". The disconnect between the user and the supplier continues. The manufacturers do not get any feedback other than the RGAs (Returned Goods Authorizations) and, like Ford and their Pinto gas tanks, they see this as just another expense. It is time for this business to grow up but as long as the engineers are satisfied with their Alpha and Beta testing and do not consider the long term effects of quality on maintenance there will be no real improvements. Now that the advent of truly professional designer/installers is here the manufacturers should back up their main purchasers instead of still treating the business as a do-it-yourself market.

[landscape liter]

cheap sockets, timers, stakes and lamps are prevalant deficiencies in many major manufacturer product lines available today. Intense competition along with contractors looking for the cheapest/highest profit margin product to install has lowered the quality bar . Much of the junk is coming from offshore. Then you've got manufacturers making path lights with "pretty" glaring glass tulips and bells (that are bound to be broken by gardeners) or with frogs or other cattail flowery ornamentation. This junk is clearly marked for the do it yourselfer. Manufacturers and their distributors have controlled this industry since day 1. It is a numbers game to them. They call all the shots with very little input from design installers. Distributors are too busy swaying contractors over to their higher profit lines to care which one is of better quality. . Manufacturers use under the table Kick backs, free trips, financial rebates and other incentives in exchange for prominant "shelf space". It's a very dirty business .

[Jim Wyatt]

In light of what I'm reading here, it seems that an effort to manufacture a QUALITY product to the specifications of the seasoned installer would have a market. Or is that incorrect?

[sitelights]

All of my complaints about landscape lighting equipment could be solved by merely applying the same quality to every current-carrying component. There are six points of connection between the lamp and the transformer: the main cable to the lugs on the output, the splice or connector from the main cable to the luminaire leads, the butt splice or crimp connector from the leads to the socket wires, the internal weld of the socket wires, the socket "jaws" to the lamp pins and the internal bridge within the bulb envelope i.e. lamp filament. The failure of any one of these connections results in an outage. The installer has control over the first three of these connections and the integrity of the join is as mechnically applied pressure: the connections are screwed or crimped down tight. It is the second three of the points of connection where installers are at the mercy of the manufacturers. In order of least to most important we have the internal weld in the socket and I attribute this rather rare failure (less than 5%) to poor quality control in the manufacturing process. The second most important is, deceptively, the lamp filament. I say "deceptively" because one expects the lamp to fail eventually and so that should be the weakest link in the chain. The surprise is that 80% of the time it is not a filament failure but a socket-to-pin failure. These estimated failure rates are based on 18 years in the field and 15 years of interior low voltage experience. What I am saying here is that the single most failure-prone point is the socket-to-lamp pin connection. That is the only connection that relies on an interference fit i.e. pressure applied through spring-loading or a close tolerance between the parts joined. Improve the socket with a mechanical connection to the lamp pins and you have eliminated 80% of the nuisance service calls. The luminaire manufacturers use either type of the interference fit. Cheap sockets are not spring-loaded but the spring-load sockets (which are also cheap) don't do the job either.

The problem is easily solved by adding set screws to make a mechanical connection to the lamp pins. The unsolvable problem is that no one at the supply end cares because they supply the unknowledgable with something that works for a year or two and the sale has been made. The only people that know and care about this problem are completely off their screens since their individual voices are not heard. No one yet makes a truly quality luminaire and they have no reason to approach the socket manufacturers for a failure-proof socket. It is easy to blame the lamp since we all expect them to fail and so the socket problem is never addressed.

There are very many semi-quality luminaires on the market but until someone sees a marketing advantage in providing one that performs as well as it looks they are all junk to me.

[sitelights]

After almost a year I am amending my post to acknowledge that for a real torque-down a deeply slotted bolt head is better than a phillips-head because the p-h allows "cam out" while the deep slot and a well fitted screwdriver will not. My apologies to all the slot-head fans out there.

[landscapelight]

I agree completely, there is too many manufacturers who do not see their impact they make on decisions like spending 1.00 more for a better socket, or how easy it is to change the lamp while the contractor is 30 feet in the air on a ladder.