Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Pathway Lights

[David Bygott (davidbygott]

At Milagro in Tucson we have much more abundant and intense sunlight than in 
PNW, but after experimenting with solar path lights we concluded, like others 
in this thread, that a 12 VDC lighting circuit, powered by the main 110 VAC 
supply via transformers, was the way to go. With LED lights, power consumption 
is negligible, and we have a lot of PV panels in the community that feed power 
back into the grid, so we are partly running on renewable energy. 
The only problem we have encountered with our installation was that some kinds 
of insulation on our 12V cables proved very attractive to the desert ants, who 
gobbled it up and left stretches of naked wire, which could then short out! 
However, as the cables were only buried a few inches deep, they were easily 
replaced.
David Bygott
Milagro Cohousing, Tucson AZ