After we moved to this hilltop five years ago, one of the things we felt the property lacked was outdoor lighting. I have always felt that good outdoor lighting does wonders to improve the look and feel of a nice property. A dark shapeless house is just that unless it is well lighted. I actually think a so-so house can be made to look like a spectacular house from sunset until midnight (assuming that’s as long as you keep the lighting on) if you do this right. And, of course, a good house can be made to look great. Outdoor lighting is sort of a luxury unless you think it reduces the incidence of burglary or other skullduggery, but that is probably better handled by motion-sensing lights like I have at various spots around the dark corners of the property. I went about hiring a good outdoor lighting company and worked with them to create a program within a budget I could handle, focusing entirely on the front part of the property, which I felt was the only part that warranted such treatment. I already had good timed lighting at the front gate at the bottom of the driveway and timed lights at the front door (I’ve since replaced the sconces, but the timed lighting aspect remains). I found the best German outdoor lighting fixtures made by Kichler, which are mostly made of brass, and planned them for the walkway from the driveway to the patio. I did those all in a mix of Asian and Frank Lloyd Wright designed lamps, including two wired and lighted stone lanterns at either end. With Handy Brad’s help I was able to do that on my own. That left the much more involved landscape lighting to the pros to recommend.
The first proposal I got from them was one clearly inspired by their clientele in Rancho Santa Fe and Del Mar. In other words, it was outrageously high and far more than I had planned to spend. Once again, I don’t know if its our property or the vibe I tend to give off, but there is pattern where home improvement vendors just assume that I have no sensitivity to cost and will just pay top dollar without blinking. Instead, what I did was start by cutting the proposal in half by saying that I only wanted the front lighted and would hold off on the back hillside at that time. That was a reasonable approach anyway since at the time I was rebuilding the deck and that is the main stage for whatever lighting would be visible on the back hillside. The second thing I did was go through the proposal and hacked and cut back the line items that seemed particularly pricey. I finally got it down to a somewhat less astronomical number, but still more than I had hoped to spend. When I went through and priced the fixtures and then added a fair labor rate and time estimate for installation, I could see the excessive profit margin imbedded in the proposal, but I also figured there was some value in buying the expertise that I did not have at that time. So, my plan was to approve the revised bid and watch and learn attentively.
What I learned was that low-voltage outdoor lighting is very easy to grasp and self-install. There are a few tricks, but nothing I couldn’t learn by watching and asking a few well-placed questions. When the project was completed, I felt I had enough knowledge to plan out and wire the back hillside. I did just that and buried hundreds of feet of low-voltage cable running from one over-powered transformer under my new deck. There was some elementary serial/parallel circuit and connector trial & error to all this, but nothing too far afield. I bought all top-quality Kichler brass fixtures, which are LED and sealed units which last a lifetime without bulb replacement. In the past four years, none of these components have failed. I did once lose one distant spotlight unit on the back hillside, but quickly found that it was due to some digging done near then that cut the wires. The beauty of this low-voltage system is that nothing is too hard to fix. However, with the passage of time and with all the various growth and ongoing maintenance in the garden, there are lights that have become covered and/or moved around so that they are not ideally situated any more. These fixtures also get a bit grungy and need cleaning to have them work optimally.
The company that did the initial installation came around about two years ago and did some minor tweaking and cleaning, but have otherwise been fairly quiet. They do seem to have a tickler system in their CRM because I recently got an outta each from them suggesting that it might be time for another maintenance visit. I considered the issue carefully because I find that while routine maintenance is important with some systems, I am less convinced of that need for low-voltage outdoor lighting. Basically, everything is working just fine and other than a few lights that can use some adjustment, there doesn’t seem like too much to do. Nonetheless, i returned their call and set up a “free” inspection appointment.
The technician came by yesterday at dusk. He was not familiar with the property so I explained the lay of the land, which consists of three transformer zones in the front and one large on for the back. As we walked around, it was clear that his job was to generate more business for his team by both finding things that needed fixing and things that would benefit from upgrades. In fact, there are a few new garden elements like my new olive tree that I think would be good to highlight and a few spots where I had originally cut back for budgetary reasons that I now feel might benefit from added illumination. He did point out a place on the patio that really did need some down-lighting on two steps that always worry Kim when we have guests for nighttime events. A safety recommendation is always worth consideration. When I showed him the back hillside with its five illuminated distant features and its deck area wash lights, he could see that there was much to potentially add, but he was smart enough to take it easy on that since he knew that this way the DIY part of the lighting schematic on this property.
He will now putt a proposal together for what he felt would be a day to a day and a half of work for his team to accomplish all his ideas. I reminded him of how I expect to work this. I will look at his proposal (I have a number in my head to use as a benchmark or warning track) and then squeeze the suggestions down into a number that I can live with. The tricky part will be less with the strategic improvements (since those should be discretely priced and easy to cut back separately) and more about the general maintenance estimate for the whole front and back. Like all of these sorts of maintenance proposals, the differentiation between the necessary and excessive will be the hardest part to figure out.
I know its their job to maximize revenue from existing clients like me, but it should also be their job to only do what is really needed. I will help define that and if it makes me a less valuable client for them, so be it. These home improvement initiatives are always about finding the balance, and in this case, seeing the light.
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