No matter how big or sophisticated your garden is, outdoor lights are an integral part of modern landscape design. Professionally planned and installed, garden lightning will not just make your backyard and driveway safer but it can help to outline the virtues and conceal possible flaws of your property.
The possibilities to instantly enhance your outside with garden lighting are almost limitless. However, there are some ground rules to observe. They will help you benefit the most from your investment in outside lighting and not overdo it, turning your backyard into a nighttime mini golf field.
That is why it is important to address a professional once you decide to install garden lighting. With their rich experience and knowledge, MySparkyAus professionals will help you to choose the best outdoor lighting scheme for your property. They will execute the project fast and according to the highest safety standards.
Now let`s take a look at the most popular types of outside lighting and their functions.
Why install garden lighting?
Outside lighting has four main functions and every household, no matter how big, remote or old it is, will instantly benefit from thought-through and professionally installed garden lights.• Aesthetics – when you are proud of your house and garden, you want people to have a chance to see and admire it 24/7. By the way, outside lighting is seen from the inside of your house, significantly enhancing the view at night.• Security – statistically, well-lit properties hardly become victims of burglaries or any other unauthorized trespassing.• Accessibility – once you invite someone in, you want your friend feel safe and welcome while approaching your house.• Versatility – garden lighting may turn your backyard into an extension of your house. You may spend time outside with your friends and family, hold parties or enjoy warm summer nights.
Garden lighting effects and how they work
Once you start to learn about outdoor lighting schemes and their role in the landscape design, it is pretty easy to get overwhelmed with the endless flow of information, technical characteristics and specific terms.
Here is an easy-to-follow guide to modern outdoor lighting effects that will help you understand which ones are the most suitable for your property.
Up-Lighting
Installed mostly on buildings or constructions like gazebo, arbor or a sculpture, Up-Lighting emphasizes the attention on a specific object in the garden, making it the focal point of the landscape design.
However, they work great with trees also. Install up-lighting on an Oak or any other mature tree to emphasize its beauty and spreading canopy.
Downlighting
Also called Moonlighting, these garden lights kill two birds with one stone. On the one hand, they create a breathtaking mysterious atmosphere of a full-moon night in your garden, build perspective and may visually extend the space. But at the same time, downlighting has a strong safety feature, illuminating not only certain objects in the garden but spreading light around them.
The lights and lamps are usually established way above the eyesight, which allows getting the most illumination effect. You may choose between various garden lights – from stand-lamps to those hanging on tree branches.
Spotlighting
As you may understand from the very name, spotlight puts a strong emphasis on one particular object in the garden. This effect is perfect for statues, flagpoles, address signs, etc.
With a strong narrow-focused beam of light, spotlight garden illumination makes it impossible to ignore or miss that one object in your garden you are particularly proud of.
Path Lighting
By placing lighting fixes along a path in your garden, you highlight the way and create a perspective. Path lights are low fixes that also have shields on top that prevent the light flare.
You may also use them for stars or any other parts of the garden where you would like to provide safe passage during the night. Another perfect use of path lighting is to put it around flowerbeds to underline its beauty and prevent accidental stepping on your precious flowers at night.
Backlighting
Not that much of lighting, backlights help to create an aura or a glowing effect around a certain object. Most of the direct light will be blocked by the thing you want to emphasize building a mysterious and extremely attractive atmosphere in your garden.
Backlights are perfect for vases, geometric statues, poles or any other monumental or architect design elements.
Those are the most common types of Garden Lighting that can instantly enhance your outdoor space. However, here at MySparkyAus, we treat every project individually, offering original and unconventional outdoor lighting solutions for our customers all over Sydney.
Home automation allows you to control various devices in your home all from a mobile device and from anywhere in the world. Home automation is a term that is used to describe homes where almost everything is hooked up to a network that can be remotely controlled. These such devices include lights, appliances, electrical outlets, heating systems, and cooling systems. Home automation is becoming more and more popular as many homes are relying on it to allow functioning devices to be controlled remotely. It offers both convenience and cost-effectiveness.
Home automation devices also exist on the security side of things. This includes alarm systems that are linked to your doors, windows, locks, smoke detectors, surveillance cameras, and anything else. With security and safety being important for all homeowners or renters, being able to monitor and control your alarm systems from anywhere offers a sense of reliability and comfort.
Automation
Automation is the ability to schedule and program your devices on a network. This can both include time-related and non-scheduled events. An example of a time-related event is having your lights turn on or off at a set time each day. Non-scheduled events include turning on all the lights in your house including when your security system gets triggered.
There are a number of useful and creative actions you can take to make your life better the more you learn and understand all the possibilities of home automation. For example, if you have a window that is letting in too much light, you can install motorized blinds into a smart outlet and allow for it to be programmed to close at the time of day of your choosing.
Remote Control
Remote monitoring and access is another characteristic of home automation. One-way remote monitoring has been possible for quite some time now but it was not until the rise of smartphones and tablets that the ability to connect to home networks while away has become about. As long as you have the right home automation system, you can use any device that connects to the internet and control the system and any devices that are attached to it.
There are many monitoring apps out there that can provide a great deal of information about the overall health of your home. This includes the current status of what is going on and even a detailed history of everything that has happened up until this point. These monitoring apps allow you to check the status of security systems, whether your lights are on or not, whether your doors are locked, what the current temperature in your home is, and so much more.
Energy Efficiency
One major advantage of home automation is the great potential for saving energy and overall cost. Your thermostat is already a smart device in a sense since it uses temperature thresholds to control the heating and cooling system in your home. Take that a step further and by allowing thermostats to be programmed with different target temperatures you are able to keep energy usage minimal during the times you least need it.
Home automation also uses scheduled programs for your lighting. This allows you to program the lighting device to only be used with your daily schedule allowing for energy savings when you do not need it. There are some home automation systems that allow even more flexibility. Some electrical outlets or individual devices can be programmed to automatically power down during daily hours they are not needed. For isolated devices such as sprinkler systems and thermostats, the schedule can be further programmed to distinguish between weekends and seasons.
Benefits of Home Automation
There are many benefits to home automation that are far greater than the cons. In fact, home automation is beneficial for your home overall. The convenience of such a source of technology makes life better for the majority of people. This is especially true with the continual rise in technology and the discoveries that come with it. In addition to energy efficiency, here are some more benefits of home automation.
Types of Home Automation Devices
As previously mentioned, there is a wide range of devices out there that have been made to be smart. No matter where you go, it seems as though you will always run into something that is labeled smart. Here are some examples of what devices can be used in smart home automation.
Conclusion
For people that are generally busy or like the options of convenience and flexibility, home automation can make things easier for you. Not only can home automation save you time and money, but there are so many options and devices out there to choose from. Different devices can control a wide variety of things so it is best to figure out what you are needing in your home the most. Home automation continues to be an ever-growing part of technology that will allow for great discoveries in what you can control in your home.
Are you considering buying an electric vehicle? Do not forget about a home charger to go with your vehicle. There are a lot of factors to consider when it comes to a home vehicle charger. You cannot just pick out an electric vehicle charger like you would a phone charger. You need to think about the type of charger, amperage, cord length, and the type of installation among other things. When it comes to installation, this is definitely not something you want to try yourself. A professional electrician will need to help. Electrical vehicle charging stations may be the next big thing for electricians over the next five to ten years.
What Does a Home Charging Station Do?
An electric vehicle home charging system technically does not charge your car. There is an on-board charger in your electric vehicle that takes household alternating current and converts it to the direct current. This is stored in the batteries.
Pick the Right Charger
Electric vehicle chargers and plug-ins use the same standard plus. However, EV chargers are not all created equally even though they work the same way. You must consider what you are looking for in a charger that is suitable for your electric vehicle. Chargers can range from a price of just under $500 and upward to more than $1,000 so you also want to consider your budget. Amperage and cord length are the two biggest differentiators. Expect to pay more if you want more out of your charger.
Make and Model of Plug-in
The make and model of the plug-in are important in letting you know the capacity of the vehicle’s on-board charger. It also helps to determine the size of the battery pack. A charger powerful enough to recharge fully between trips will be needed. You will also need the charging station outlet installed close to the parking space that can offer a capacity that is enough to service the rate of charging.
Speed of Charge
Certain situations will call for a faster charger than others. For example, you do not need a very fast charger if you only need to charge your electric vehicle overnight. You also do not need a fast charger if you will not be driving far distances between each charge or you have a plug-in with a limited range of electricity. Most plug-ins have a limited range of electricity. This allows a full charge to happen in less than 5 hours with the provided charger in a standard outlet.
Type of Install
An electric vehicle charging unit is meant to be a permanent install. It should be securely mounted to the wall on a bracket. However, it may seem confusing as some chargers are classified as being “permanently installed, but removable.” This uses a standard plug so you can remove the charger and take it with you if you move out of your home. Consider how you want your electric vehicle charger installed so that it is very secure but will not be too difficult or cause damage upon removing it when the time comes.
Amperage
A level 2 EV charger comes in two different amp sizes, 16 or 30. A 16-amp charger works just fine for certain plug-ins like the Chevrolet Volt where it does not use more current than that. This can often also be installed with your existing wiring. However, 30-amps should be your main choice. It gives maximum speed in charging and is useful if you end up buying a second electric vehicle in the future.
Length of Cord
Where your electric vehicle charger is installed in your garage will ultimately depend on how far you need to reach the charging port. A typical recommendation is to have the charging port installed in a spot closest to the garage door. This allows you to charge your vehicle when you are parked in the driveway. A 16- or 18-foot cord is just fine but you should consider going longer if you can afford it. If you end up leaving yourself short, these units cannot be retrofitted.
Conclusion
Electric vehicles are becoming more and more popular as they become made more often and provided to the public for sale. This is something that will change the future of vehicles drastically. It is the next big thing in the vehicle industry and will continue to grow as more research becomes involved with designing and building electric vehicles. As you would with any other important electrical element in your home, a professional electrician will be needed to help install your home electric vehicle charging port. This will allow for a safe, convenient, install that you can comfortably use to charge your electric vehicle.
Australian customers for home EV charging facilities often have off-street parking, such as a lockup garage, a carport, or a driveway spot where they want to be able to charge their EV or hybrid vehicle.
But there are also other ‘home-based’ users - such as EV motorists who live in apartment buildings with underground parking. In these situations, your building’s strata company will likely need to be approached to give permission before an EV car charger can be installed in your underground parking bay.
What is an EV car charger?
There are three main types of car chargers available to Sydneysiders.
According to one provider of domestic charging solutions, home-based EV chargers, or wall boxes, can be almost ten times more powerful than regular wall outlets, resulting in a much faster and anxiety reducing charge.
Whatever recharging facility you choose for your EV at home or work, a licensed electrician will be required to perform the safe and effective installation.
How long does it take to charge an EV?
According to Nissan Australia, there are three levels of charging times for the new Nissan LEAF (2020).
According to information on Australian motoring website Car Advice, the time it takes for most EV’s to reach full charge is dependent on the type of charger you’re using, i.e. this is how long it can take to charge an EV from empty to full charge:
Charging an EV in Australia
The EV car charging ecosystem in Australia is still in formation - but there are encouraging signs of more and more public charging stations coming online.
Currently, however, charging an EV in Australia can be met with mixed results. For example, some users have reported the following problems with using public charging stations:
These are just a few of the kinds of problems you can encounter when trying to charge your EV.
Little wonder that EV owners want the security of knowing they can reliably charge their EV fully at home and thereby avoid ‘range anxiety’.
How to find out more about EV car chargers
Sydney EV owners can find out more about EV car chargers here:
Audi: https://audi.com.au
Nissan: https://nissan.com.au
Tesla: https://tesla.com
Hyundai: https://hyundai.com.au
EV car charger - Electrician installs
If you would like more information about arranging to have an EV car charger installed, e.g., power point, wall box, etc., contact MySparkyAus.
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Guest author: #contentifyom, October 2020
I will progressively add more content over time.
If you have a question about electrical services and installations, etc., please feel free to phone or email me.
Brian Geraghty
Owner/Proprietor, MySparkyAus.com.au
mysparkyaus@gmail.com