Lighting Up Outside

I think exterior lighting is always a plus with any. Good lighting will welcome you and your guests on a rainy night, provide some measure of security for your family, and illuminate address numbers, door locks, and staircases. Before you decide to install fixtures as powerful as Batman’s searchlight, consider the following:

• Know the size of the fixture and its scale compared to your house.
• Think about the location and aim of the lights and their effect on your neighbors. (A little light goes a long way at night.)Caulk the top seam between the fixture and the section of the house where it’s attached to ensure that water stays out. Leave the bottom uncaulked so that, if moisture does get in, it has a place to exit.
• Think twice before installing solid-brass fixtures. They won’t rust, but eventually most will tarnish and need polishing.

Installing outside lighting, like many tasks, can be done the easy way or the hard way. The easy way means mounting all the fixtures on the walls of your house (and porch ceilings), which means you can pull your wires from inside the house. The hard way means digging ditches and running wires and conduit underground, although this will give your yard a much more dramatic presentation. As a final consideration, think about what your outdoor lighting will look like from inside the house. You can enjoy your yard even in the winter if you set up lighting that accents it well.

Aim the Lighting High, Low, and Wide

Light from a lamp is aimed somewhere, whether it’s the top of your desk or your workbench. Even general ambient lighting gets directed somewhere. Recessed ceiling lights and adjustable spotlights can provide as broad or as focused a beam of light as you desire. Some lights are installed as wall washers, meaning they shine down a wall either to highlight artwork or other collections or simply to draw your attention to the perimeter of the room, conveying a greater sense of size than might truly exist. The advantages of recessed ceiling lights are their versatility and unobtrusiveness. Let’s face it, a chandelier automatically draws attention to itself—especially if one of your party guests is swinging on it. A recessed fixture is far more subtle and almost hides in the background.
Some fixtures can serve more than one purpose. A wall sconce, for example, can serve general, task, and accent lighting needs. This versatility is a huge advantage over ceiling lights when you’re remodeling because it’s far easier to wire and install a wall fixture than to install most ceiling fixtures.

Know Your Lighting

Lighting is defined by its use in our homes and places of work. Designers and architects break it down into several categories:

➤ Accent lighting emphasizes or highlights a specific area or object and directs our attention to it.
➤ Ambient lighting is general illumination.
➤ Task lighting is for illuminating work and tasks.

It’s never a bad idea to install plenty of ambient lighting, even if you later decide it’s more than you immediately need. At some point in the future, you might move things around and decide you need more lighting. I wouldn’t recommend tearing up the walls just to install fixtures, but if you have an open ceiling or already are doing some installations, consider a few extra light fixtures if the circuit permits. If you walk into a lighting store or the lighting section of a home-improvement center, you’ll see dozens and dozens of fixtures to choose from. Where do you start?

Distinguishing a Lumen from Illuminance

Light output is measured in lumens. According to The American Heritage Dictionary of Science, a lumen is a unit of luminous flux equal to the amount of light from a source of one candela radiating equally in all directions. A candela is a unit of luminous intensity equal to 1/60 of the radiating power of one square centimeter of a black body at 1,772°C. You can draw two conclusions from this information:

• The higher the lumen measurement, the more light you’ll have to work with from a fixture.
• Authors can easily get carried away when they have too many reference books at their disposal.

Illuminance, which is measured in foot-candles, is the amount of light hitting a point on a surface. A foot-candle is (easily enough) defined as the amount of light produced by one candle on a surface one foot away. We can’t see illuminance, but we do see luminance or brightness, although this is somewhat subjective. (What appears to be dim light to me might be plenty bright to you.) Architects and lighting consultants take all these measurements into consideration when they calculate the lighting needs of buildings.
Comfortable lighting selections and light levels are determined by the tasks that require the lighting, the distance between the light and the task, and the degree of glare. One definition of glare is excessive contrast between the intensity of light on a particular object or surface and the surrounding area or background; indirect glare is the glare produced from a reflective surface. Too much contrast between them causes glare. (Computer screens are a common example.) You can reduce this glare by …

• Installing fixtures that keep the light level appropriate for the task at hand.
• Using a louver or a lens to block or redirect the light.
• Carefully considering the placement and spacing of light fixtures.

Another measurement of lighting quality is how well it enables you to see colors accurately. The better the color rendering, the more pleasing the living space. Color-rendering capability is based, naturally enough, on the color-rendering index (CRI), which measures from 1 to 100. (Natural daylight measures at 100.) The higher the rating on the CRI, the more lifelike and accurate the object being viewed.

Measuring Your Lighting Needs

The NEC calls for a minimum calculation for general lighting and receptacle loads of three watts per square foot of living space. This comes out to approximately one circuit every 575 square feet. That doesn’t amount to a lot, but remember, electrical codes only establish minimum standards. In reality, you’ll want lighting everywhere.
Consider the different areas of your house and their individual needs:

• Kitchen. Overhead lighting, natural light from windows and sliding doors, work light over counters, a light over the stove.
• Bathrooms. Primarily lights over the sink(s) and lights over the bathtub and toilet, depending on the size of the room.
• Dining room. A hanging light over the table, recessed ceiling lights, or possibly wall sconces. This room often has a dimmer switch to tone down the light.
• Bedrooms. Children’s rooms often get ceiling lights. Master bedrooms might depend more on reading lamps and switch-controlled receptacles, although large rooms can use recessed ceiling lighting as well.
• Hallway. You might want a long track light to highlight artwork on the walls.
• Garage. At least one light per bay over the hood of the cars. It’s even better to add one or two at the other end so the trunks are illuminated.
• Basement. Depends on whether the space is finished or unfinished. In either case, you want at least enough ceiling light to cover the entire area thoroughly, leaving no dark spots.
• Closets, storage rooms. At least one ceiling light.
• Outdoors. At a minimum, one light over each entry door and over the garage doors. It’s even better to consider lights to line walkways and illuminate gardens or security lighting for back and side yards.

Your use of a room obviously will determine your choice of lighting fixtures, their locations, and their number. A single fluorescent ceiling light will fulfill all the working requirements of most closets because the requirements are pretty basic: to shed enough light for you to identify and choose your clothes. A kitchen, on the other hand, requires all kinds of light for a modern homeowner. You need lights over counters for close work so you can chop, dice, and mince vegetables instead of your fingers. Overhead lights enable you to read the newspaper and get a better look at what’s hiding in the back of your pantry. A dimmer-controlled hanging light over the eating area lets you tone things down for a late-night meal. Anywhere you’ve got a wall, ceiling, or floor, you can install a light. It’s simply a matter of extending a circuit or running a new one and choosing your fixtures. The science of lighting is a little more complicated.

How Illuminating my home is.......

We are way beyond the point when lighting was simply functional, allowing us to work and not stumble around after the sun went down. If function was all it meant to us, every room in our house would have one huge, efficient, fluorescent light fixture on the ceiling and maybe a night-light or two for after dark. Instead, lighting does much more such as …

• Create a mood or atmosphere.
• Define a space.
• Provide security and safety.
• Highlight artwork or a section of your home.

Your lighting needs will be defined by these factors and others. Before you install a particular type of lighting, ask yourself the following questions:

• Who will be using this area and for what purpose?
• Do I want a traditional or modern look?
• How often will anyone be in this room?
• How much am I willing to spend?
• Is energy conservation important to me?

At a minimum, the code calls for one switch-controlled light per habitable room. Hallways, stairways, and garages also must meet this code requirement. This can be accomplished with permanent fixtures, such as ceiling lights, or through a switch-controlled receptacle into which a lamp can be plugged. Bathrooms and kitchens, however, must have an installed fixture. Your first step is to establish your minimum lighting needs and then choose the style of fixture you want to meet them.

Grounding an Old Receptacle

A properly grounded system ties each device, appliance, and fixture back to the service panel with a separate grounding conductor (the bare copper or green insulated copper wire). It’s unrealistic to attempt this with an old electrical system unless you’re replacing it (in which case, the grounding would be part of replacing the system). You also could install a GFCI in place of an existing, two-wire receptacle. The National Electrical Code allows an ungrounded, two-wire receptacle to be replaced with a GFCI. A GFCI can even protect any receptacles downstream (away from the panel or power source). A GFCI used in this manner will only protect you from ground faults; it will not act as a ground for any equipment plugged into the receptacle(s). As a rule, it’s best for GFCIs to protect only a single box, not multiple receptacles. If you try to use one GFCI to cover multiple receptacles, you might experience nuisance tripping due to the greater sensitivity to current fluctuations. A GFCI installed to replace a twowire receptacle should be marked “No Equipment Ground.” A GFCI must be wired according to stamped terminals on the back of the receptacle. They will be marked “Load” and “Line” as well as “Hot” and “White.” The hot wire (which runs from the panel or fuse box) is the line conductor; anything going off to another load or receptacle is the load conductor. How do you know which is which? You’ll need your voltage tester.
With the power off and the old receptacle removed, separate all the wires in the box so they’re not in contact with each other (or with the box if it’s metal). Turn the power back on, and put one end of your probe on one hot wire and one on the neutral that is paired with the hot you are testing. If the bulb doesn’t light up, try the other black wire and neutral. The one that lights up the tester’s bulb is the line conductor. It’s the one receiving power from the current you switched back on at the service panel or fuse box. Connect this to the “Line,” “Hot” side of the GFCI. It is very important that the line side hot and neutral conductors or wires be connected to the “Line” side of the GFCI; otherwise, the GFCI will trip or will not work at all. If the line and loads are reversed, the GFCI will still have power if it is tripped, producing a hazardous situation.
As an alternative to installing a GFCI to replace an ungrounded receptacle, it is permissible to install a grounding conductor to an ungrounded circuit by using an individual No.12 insulated green copper conductor to connect each receptacle being grounded to the closest cold-water pipe. The grounding conductor will then have to be secured to the pipe using an approved clamping device. It also can be run directly back to the panel and installed in the grounding/ neutral bar.