Pond Boss Forums GENERAL QUESTIONS Property Projects & Construction Electricity and Lighting around the Pond

I own and operate an LED lighting company. I would be interested in sending in the requirements needed to be a vender but I am the technical director and not part of the marketing. I will for free help anyone with technical questions and operation of any LED array or system. I will not drop names.


Most important is to ask how long the LED company has been in business. If they are only a few 2-3 years old may want to look for another company. We have been doing this for over 10years now and still learning. Second most important thing is to make sure the LED light sees constant current if low voltage and if not make sure the AC units are surge protectant. Good LED lights are now 135 lumen per watt with a very stable voltage. When the poor old grid system has spikes or dips in voltage most can take it but the 60hz take a quick spike/dip lights are dust.

12 or 24 DC volts is the way to light up these ponds hands down. You can run all the solar you want and DC will travel as far or farther than AC. Low load will keep your amperage down and with low voltage the risk of a shock is much less. Stick to the strength in numbers LED lights. Avoid the lights with large aluminum heat sinks. These lights are not capped and will over clock. Stay away from the LED lights that have 1 watt LEDs. These lights are narrow beam 25-45* and are the most inefficient on the market.

You do not need to break the bank on LED. Trust me on this, good cheap LED can be had. The best to use would be pot lights Par20 or Par30 in LED with a standard pig tail just placed into a 12-18" chunk of black PVC drain pipe. You can adjust the beam width just by moving the bulb in and out of the pipe. You will not get indirect light shooting where you do not want it to be. The LED is like a laser beam and hard to control. The design of a pot light is one of the best light designs to make LED. You have one direction you want the light to go and a nice flat surface to mount your chips. Most efficient LED on the market right now is the 3528.

Just trench in some Cat5 and you will have five different circuits in one wire. Just trench it in like phone wire pull up a loop where you want your lights... patch in at the loops. A 3 or 4 watt par20 or par30 should give you equal light of a 50-60 watt light and give you tones of light.

Cheers Don.