GardenLights

Garden Lights

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If you have any unwanted metal flower decorations like these I’m especially interested ?

Thanks.

Metal Flowers & Christmas Lights Requested

Notice that only the pink solar bell flowers on the left normally have bulbs in.

I have converted the ones on the right then varnished them.

The lights will not be seen during the day so a timer switches them on for a few hours at twilight. here are pictures of them during the day and at night. Whilst they look marvelous to my eyes at night my camera doesn’t seem to like an expanse of complete black with pinpoints of intense colour so take my word for it that the actuality is far, far better than these modest photographs..

Recycling Other People’s Waste

Every year thousands of Christmas lights are thrown out because they appear not to be working. These days filament bulbs have been replaced with LEDs. However unless a high voltage or large hammer is applied to LEDs they are almost indestructive - it is the mini power brick, that you plug in the wall, that always dies.

LEDs Are The Way To Go

Presto ! There you have a huge supply of raw materials for your very own Kew light show. If your Christmas lights don’t have the colour that you want you can get every conceivable colour now for a very reasonable price - look for packs of 100 or so. Armed with a soldering iron and a bench in the garden I set to soldering a series resistor inline with each one so that they could be supplied by low voltage 12v dc power.

Acquiring From An Aquarium

The green stems are UV stable indestructable neoprene hose used for aquariums. They are kept rigid by using a thicker gauge of tinned copper wire. Again the leaves are different varieties for use in aquariums.

These are some others that I can make use of.

One Christmas a local garden centre were selling acrylic illuminated birds which hatched an idea in my bird brain. I acquired some brown perspex and cheap 15mm rod and made a bird table with colourful breadcrumbs..

Getting In The Kew

It’s always inspiring to visit Kew Gardens for their wonderful array of flowers, shrubs, trees and the unusual. It was the originality of thought that persuaded me to consider this project that will ‘grow’.

Conducting Yourself Right

The main low voltage 12v wiring is cheap mains flex or loudspeaker cable. I used domestic drainpipe as conduit down 250mm in the garden soil so that it will never be damaged by a spade.

The Right Connections

One thing that you will have trouble sourcing is reasonably priced waterproof connectors. I acquired mine from Angel LED in China. They are part of the Sage Lu Mei group of companies with a good outlet on Ali Express who I use a lot. Scroll down to the waterproof connectors which currently are £2.66 for 5 pairs of pre-wired connectors. The more you buy the cheaper per unit they are. Here is a general link: Sage Lu Mei

Short Fuse

The power comes from a Chinese 10A transformer which has been in the shed for 3 years without any fault. It supplies a 6 channel sequencer. Further on the wires are only thin but if a short-circuit occurred 10A would easily fry them. Therefore each channel has a 1.6A fuse. Sorry but you must do this because water, mice or careless humans will cause a short-circuit at some point. Because I’ve done this it’s never happened to me but I guess that you won’t be able to pull melted wire out of your plastic conduit. An alert sounder goes off if a fuse breaks any circuit. I have used auto-reseting thermal fuses.

Transplanting The Idea

Bloomin Marvelous

Bird Table