Ep 090 Outdoor Lighting with Jan Moyer

Episode Transcript
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(00:02):
Welcome to Luxury Outdoor LivingPodcast with Mike and Trey
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(00:24):
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(01:17):
good afternoon everybody.
This is Mike Farley of Farley PoolDesigns with the Luxury Outdoor Living
Podcast, and we're gonna shed some lighton some tremendous information today.
So, Pardon the pun.
We have talked about in the pastthat outdoor lighting is probably
one of the things that's notspent enough time and thought on.
And so we're gonna try tohelp rectify that today.

(01:39):
And we have Janet Moyerhere with us today.
And why don't you go aheadand introduce yourself.
Hi, I'm Jan Lennox Moyer andI've now been doing landscape
lighting for nearly 50 years.
I started out taking an interiordesign course where we had to
study lighting and I just loved it.
And as things go, one thing led to anotherand I ended up a lighting designer.

(02:03):
And I started out in a large commercialarchitecture firm in Detroit, Michigan.
Called at that time the Smith Group.
then I moved to California and workedfor Lumina with Fran Kellogg Smith.
And she taught me how todo landscape lighting.
I started doing landscape lighting,it was all I wanted to do.
I just love plants and the thing aboutlandscape lighting is when the sun

(02:27):
goes away and, that happens every day.
Yep.
Um, Our landscapes disappear ifwe don't have light out there.
So adding light into the landscapenot only expands your space,
but gives you whole new spacesto do whatever you wanna do.
And you can have friends over, youcan drink wine, you can play if you
do your landscape lighting, right?

(02:49):
it adds magic to your space.
So it took me a long time to really learnhow to do it because back when I was
starting in the 1970s there were veryfew people doing landscape lighting and
there were no books on landscape lighting.
So I started doing just mockupsafter mockups in my yard, and my
neighbors were gracious enoughto let me do it in their yards.

(03:10):
And by the time it got tobe around the late 1980s.
I had this little voice in theback of my head that said, you
need to share this information.
And I never wanted to write a book.
So I told this little voice,okay, I'll put a proposal together
and if any publisher wantsit, then I'll write the book.
And of course I give it to two publishers.
They both wanted it.

(03:31):
So the little voice one.
So that book is the landscape liningbook, and it's a technical book.
I've written it in such a way thateveryone can learn from it, but it
is really meant for professionals.
Then about two years ago, I wrotewhat I consider a companion book.
It's the Art of Landscape lighting andit's just a book full of beautiful images

(03:54):
of landscape lighting so people can lookat it, lighting designers can look at
it and show clients ideas, and everyonecan look at it and see what can be done.
The great thing about landscapelighting is you can keep
adding to it over the years.
So you can start with a little bit ifyou start with your power distribution,
which is the most important thing.

(04:15):
And the way I like people to think aboutit is if you have a limited budget, think
about what is most important to you.
Is it looking out your kitchen window?
Is it looking out your living room window?
Is it being in the backyard?
Is it the street appearancefor your neighbors?
Once you've decided that, then workon that first and then you can grow

(04:38):
that as money becomes more availablefor you over the years or as your
inclination to add more happens.
One of the things about landscape lightingis the landscape is continually changing,
so the landscape lighting needs to beflexible enough to respond to that change.
So for example plants bloom, and thenthe leaves turn color in the fall

(05:01):
some plants go dormant in the winter.
And then some places it actually snows.
So all of these things are,one of the kinds of change
that we have to be aware of.
Another kind of change is thatthere's all kinds of activity going
on in the garden all the time.
So animals will be out there andgardeners will be out there and
you'll be out there and maybe you'llmake changes in your garden, right?

(05:24):
There's one project that I worked on foralmost 10 years and then the client called
me back and they had me come regularly.
They called me back and I thought,I'm just going back to do, a regular
checkup and make a little change.
And I was stunned when I looked atthe place, it was completely different
and I had to ask them to let mehave some time to think about it.
We had to really do some seriouschange because of the changes

(05:47):
that they made in the garden.
So by changes, I mean you can adda path, you can add a sculpture,
you can add a water feature,you can add a whole new garden.
a tree might die and youhave to add a new tree.
If it's a brand new garden and a landscapearchitect is doing the design you never
know what you're getting until they'veplanted everything in the ground.
Right?
There have been times when we thought wewere getting one tree and it was another.

(06:09):
We thought we were getting onetree and it was three trees.
We thought we were getting 10trees and it was four trees.
All kinds of changes.
So we have to be aware of that, andthat's one of the reasons that it's
really important to have someone thatunderstands plant material first, and
they need to understand lighting second.
And.
Interior lighting and landscapelighting are almost two
completely different fields.

(06:30):
So it's not okay to just find agood interior lighting designer.
you need to find someone that knowsplants and knows landscape lighting.
And there are more of us than when Istarted this back in the seventies,
but there's a whole lot of peoplethat don't know what they're doing.
So when you're looking for someone, youwant to quiz them about their knowledge

(06:50):
of plant material because as you know,even a lot of landscapers don't know
much or know enough about plant material.
And one of the things of the changesthat we experience in landscape
lighting is that plants grow.
A tree can expand its canopy fromthree or four feet if it's a young
tree to 50 feet, as it becomes mature.

(07:13):
And it obviously dependson how fast it grows.
And so we need to know that too.
So we need to be planning lighting for,to work now and when that tree is mature
at 50 feet and what that means in termsof change is we may need to change
the aiming of the fixture over time.
We might need to change thelamping of the fixtures.

(07:35):
So the wattage and beamspread may need to change.
And we may need to addmore fixtures over time.
So our power system needs to beprepared for all those kinds of changes.
So we need to be using wiring that's largeenough transformers that are large enough
control system devices that are largeenough to accept more capacity over time.

(07:57):
So what happens?
If you don't do that and peopletry to add onto the system
what are they gonna run into?
Well, Let me start by sayingI consider landscape lighting
a much like an a helicopter.
Minute you get in a helicopter andturn it on, it's trying to fall apart.
And that's the same thingwith landscape lighting.

(08:20):
It just keeps changing, trees,drop leaves and they drop flowers.
Branches sometimes
Branches, sometimes, yeah.
Sometimes the whole tree falls over.
So we need to preparefor all these changes.
then we need to think aboutfrom the beginning what kind of
system that we wanna plan for.
So that as you need to add fixtures, youdon't have to dig up the garden again.

(08:45):
That's the main issue when you spend alot of money on your landscape lighting,
excuse me, on your landscape design.
And you don't wanna have to keep rippingit up every time you wanna add something.
So you want power distributionthroughout the garden.
Now as you're starting, even ifyou're not gonna put something out
in, the back 40 for five or 10 years.

(09:06):
So you would go out andhardwire transformers in
different locations to the yard.
So you could work off those.
No, you
don't even need to do that.
You just need to get power distribution.
So you need to get electricityout to those areas.
Okay.
Um,
So you wanna bring either 120 volt cablesout to a junction box, or if you wanna

(09:28):
bring out the transformers, then you canadd transformers so that you're prepared.
You've gotta havetransformers to begin with.
So what I normally suggest is gettingtransformers or the possibility of
transformers throughout the propertyand oversize them so that when you
need to add, so start with say a360 watt transformer and only put.

(09:49):
150 watts on it so that you'vegot a significant amount of
capacity to add in the future.
Okay.
Okay.
So that makes sense.
So you set your transformers up,but you don't max them out, but then
you can add things on later overas you phase the garden over time.
Yep.
Okay.
I'm wondering just 'cause when youwere talking, I was thinking in my

(10:11):
head, 'cause I never thought aboutthis before, but when you have a
light mounted in a tree, right?
And you have the power going upto it, and if that tree's growing
over, say 15 years or so, and it'sgrown a tremendous amount, does.
the light, does it likejust fall out of the tree?
Does it like rip out of the system?
Does it become like No.
Okay.
No it
doesn't.
Okay.
So the way trees growis they expand outward

(10:34):
on the edges.
There's some growth from the verytip of the growing point that
continues up, but your fixturewill never change its location.
It will always be in the same location.
So you do need to prepare or providespare cable, but it's for the width.
So you need enough that itdoesn't pull your connection

(10:55):
apart as it expands outward.
Okay.
But it was a great questionbecause very few people really
understand the way trees grow.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay, cool.
Oh,
when we were talking to thetree house master, I know.
Yeah.
He said the same thing.
Yeah, that's ring the bell's.
We were worried about.
Pete Nelson, I don't knowif you know him or not.
I don't okay.
Thank you for that clarification.

(11:15):
Jan, did you ever have a lightingmoment, like a client or a personal
story where the outdoor lightingchanged everything of the job?
Pretty much every job.
Oh,
perfect.
But I've got a really good example thatI mentioned earlier to you before we
started, I worked on a project in SanFrancisco, and of course it was on a hill.
And the architect said, there's all thisspace outside going down the hillside.

(11:39):
We should really make that justnot weeds so that it looks good.
And the client said, we never goout there, we'll never go out there.
But somehow he convincedthe owner to do this.
And when we finish the landscapelighting, they go out there every
night and they like the backyardbetter than they like the front yard.
And they're very happy that they did it.

(12:00):
I have another one that's a great one.
did an LA for someone in Villanova,Pennsylvania, this beautiful old LA
that was couple hundred years oldand his office was in the upper level
right in the front of the property.
And so I said to him.
The first time it snows, run up toyour office and even if it's midnight,

(12:20):
call me and tell me what you think.
And so he did, and it was midnight andhe said, oh my God, this is so beautiful.
There's really nothing more beautifulthan landscape lighting in snow.
it's magic.
But all of landscape lighting is magic.
It gives you a whole new space to livein and enjoy and to look out your windows

(12:42):
to see it expands your interior space.
So I've had clients, many clientsthat call me and say, I am so glad I
get to come home at night because mylandscape is so much more beautiful
at night than it is during the day.
And remember, they havebeautiful landscapes.
It's not that we've changedanything about their landscape.
landscape lighting gives you awhole new appearance of the space.

(13:06):
Yeah, it focuses your eye on, reallydoes the things that are very important.
And the cool thing also is it makesthings that aren't disappear, you know?
so yeah,
you can withhold light from an areaand so you can hide things that
you don't like about your yard.
And you have to be careful when you'redoing that because you don't wanna

(13:26):
have blotches, you don't want it tobe real bright here and then dark
and real bright here and then dark.
So you have to have what I callvisual cohesion across the space.
But it doesn't need to beall the same brightness.
There can be varying changinglevels of brightness in the space.
So are you working primarilyin Arizona now or are you
consulting all over the place?

(13:47):
I wish I was working only in Arizona now.
Okay.
So
I know, and first of all, I loveArizona and I love the landscapes here.
But you can imagine, I've had togo through Newark Airport several
times in the last few weeks.
And one time I had a nine hour wait.
I'm still doing work on theeast coast and in the south.

(14:10):
I've stopped working overseas entirely,but I'm winding down so that I really
would prefer just to work in Arizona.
But there are just projectsthat keep coming up.
Someone showed me something, Ican't even remember what it was,
just the other day and it's like,Ooh, I'd really like to do that.
Yeah, that's interesting.
Did you ever get any inspiration withthe, like the lighting in general from

(14:30):
overseas and seeing different, likeprojects and how they do stuff over there?
Wait till you hear this.
Okay.
When I was 16, I was anexchange student in Greece.
Oh wow.
And our group got to go to theParthenon during the day and it
was, back in the sixties so youcould go anywhere on the Parthenon.
We touched everything.
Oh wow.
And that night there was alight show that was done by

(14:54):
some famous lighting designers.
I don't know who they were 'cause Iwas too young to even think about it.
And it just mesmerized me.
But my experience with landscapelighting in other parts of the world,
beyond the borders of the UnitedStates is that we're way ahead.
They can do some beautifulthings, but if you get near that

(15:14):
space, there'll be so much glare.
And we do our work in the United States sothat you can be on the property or outside
the property and not have any glare.
And that's one of the reasons youhave to be careful about who you hire
because the irrigation, people thatlearn their, you know, we could make
more money if we do landscape lighting.
Oh, sorry about that.
They don't know anything.

(15:35):
How to do this properly.
And so they're really the problem.
All of the bad landscape lightingthat you see now is because a
lighting designer that was trainedwas not the lighting designer.
And I think the best lighting designersare trained by ili, the international
Landscape Lighting Institute,which I happen to have founded and

(15:56):
is now still running without me.
So one of the questions you wannaask is, do you know about ili?
Have you been trained by ili?
Anybody that's been trained byili, they understand everything
that we need to be careful about inpreparing a beautiful, usable non
glaring landscape planning system.

(16:18):
So that organization does it have.
A, way that you can search differentparts of the country with, people
that are certified in their program.
I got,
I believe that they do.
Yeah.
And we have trained people all overthe country and all over the world.
So there are a lot of ili, ILItrained people throughout the world.

(16:39):
And how do you spell that?
So I don't get it wrong later on.
Okay.
It's just ILLI, internationalLandscape Lighting Institute.
Okay.
I would've got it wrong.
I've also done a 20 session course that'san online course called Learn Nightlight.
And that's available to anyone, andit is to help everyone and anyone

(17:01):
understand the concerns are and howto go about it and how to plan for a
beautiful landscape lighting system.
It's available throughthe IES education website.
The IES is the IlluminingEngineering Society, and I
sent you an email about that.
Okay.
Which I hope you got.
Awesome.
So you said it's a 20 session course.

(17:22):
20 lessons.
Yes.
Okay.
And you can,
you can sign up for the first 10or the last 10, or you can sign
up for one at a time, or youcan sign up for the whole thing.
And is it done only at certain timesor is this something that Nope, it's
always available.
Always available.
That's awesome.
Yeah.
you have to search through the I Yes.

(17:42):
Education website to find it.
But it's there.
All good things aresometimes hard to find.
Yes, true.
So, I know that you have done work withthe swimming pool industry, in fact.
Mm-hmm.
Long, Long ago I wrote for watershapes and I had a column called book
notes, and I reviewed your book and
I remember that.

(18:03):
Yeah.
And then you spoke at the InternationalPool Show several years after that.
But that's been a while.
But your name came up last yearwhen we had Kirk Bianchi on.
And, Kurt was talking about,that you guys had collaborated on
several projects there and he's agreat designer and uh, he's a great
designer and I'm working on fourprojects with him right now.

(18:24):
Okay.
and we, we we did a mockup a coupleyears ago that you'd be interested in.
You know how you were saying thatyou think landscape lighting is
better when the pool is turned off?
Oh, a hundred percent.
And I absolutely agreed with you.
But Kirk never did.
Kirk always wanted to be ableto see the pool because he
designed such beautiful pools.
A manufacturer came outwith a very deep blue.

(18:46):
And so we went over to an existingclient's house and did a mock-up,
turning off their lights andputting in the deep blue and then
turning the landscape lighting on.
You can have the pool on and havethe landscape lighting on, and you
still see the beautiful reflections.
Oh, it's,
isn't that
cool?
Yeah.
to me, a dark pool that is not litat night becomes like a mirror.

(19:10):
It does.
And so then it accentuates allthe architectural features and the
landscape features and there's a lotof times people are like, wow, I really
like that picture when it's funnyis they don't understand that the.
When they're looking at it, whatthey're actually seeing because of
the reflection, a lot of times theystill think the pool's lit. And I'm
like, no, the pool lights are off.
Nope.
Yeah.
Completely off.

(19:30):
And Kirk
and I are doing our first real projectwith the deep blue, although I did
it in my pool after we did this.
My pool's an interior pool,so I don't get any reflections
of my landscape lining in it.
But I loved the idea somuch that I did that.
And our first project willbe done sometime this year.
And there'll be photographs that showhow you can still have the pool lights

(19:51):
on and it'll show the reflectionjust as well, or almost as well.
It may not be quite the same.
We are gonna take a break here for asecond and get into outdoor living.
So with outdoor living, we like togo to barbecue bits here we're gonna
share some information of everythingthat you may want to consider in
your outdoor living space as far asfeatures, especially for the kitchen.

(20:15):
Hope you enjoy this.
So the three things that everybodywants in an outdoor kitchen, the number
one thing is they want to cook, right?
The number two thing is I usuallytalk to people about is trash, but the
third is I want a refrigerator, right?
And what they're thinking is,I had a dorm for refrigerator.
Uh, you know, that type setup.

(20:37):
Does that work?
So talk me through refrigerators,pros, cons, different types.
Uh, what we, what we'recooling, that type thing.
So in Texas and in your Sunbelt states,a lot of people will come into our
stores and they'll say, listen, Iwould love an outdoor refrigerator,
but I heard they just don't work.
The dorm refrigerators, likeyou said, they will not work.
What's the difference betweenan outdoor and an indoor?

(21:00):
It has to do with that robustcompressor, number one.
But there's a lot more DNA in anoutdoor refrigerator than what you
think that makes it UL listed outdoor.
That's gonna be a recovery fanthat re appropriates the air.
It's gonna be the front vent on theparticular unit so we can breathe.
But one other thing that a lot ofpeople don't know, you can put plated
food in here, but the interior ofthe fridge has to be stainless steel.

(21:25):
That's what, that's one reasonwhy it's designed or designated.
UL listed for outdoor use is what it is.
Okay,
so.
Uh, is there different lifespansof those in indoor and outdoor
in an outside environment?
There is.
They struggle.
So we have, we'll have a hundreddegree day today and you're in
Phoenix, you're probably 1 0 7.
And if you do a standard 24, uh, the20 inch fridge, um, it's probably

(21:49):
gonna get down to 44 a daylock today.
This will hold, uh, right at 33,34, even if it's a glass front, it's
bronze and it's at it's sleeved.
It has an airspace in here.
Um, and it can take any of theelement that we give to it.
So,
okay.
Is there a reason you do a glassfronted one versus not glass?

(22:11):
A lot of times our customers,the, the most popular is the
glass because you have, uh, truehas what's called true lumina.
You can do different colorsfrom red, green, blue, purple.
Um, you can match your existing equipment.
So if you had a back lit amber, Ican set back lit Amber, uh, you have
to be a little organized with this.

(22:31):
One thing about their refrigerationis we can put a wine bottle cradle
down here below for white wines.
It's for a quick party, youknow, for a quick, quick party
soup for a wine solution.
They offer that.
And then on our last, uh, specspecified job we did, you can now
have these in different colors.
I think we blacked one out.
It's called stealth black.

(22:52):
Uh, you can, you can have the color match.
The actual equipment's pretty cool.
There's a lot of custom options.
Yeah.
So you mentioned wine.
Are there different unitsspecifically for wine?
If you wanted, you know, uh, onewith wine and one with soft drinks,
do people do that type thing?
There?
There is.
Um, but the wine captains come ina two zone or a single zone, so

(23:16):
that would be white and sparkling.
I'm not a wine connoisseur.
Most of my customers will buy asingle zone wine and bigger is better.
They'll do a 24 wide.
This company also makeswhat we call a slide top.
So if you have a lot of kids and you'relooking at an outdoor ice cooler, we
can show you a version that would holdlike 108 cans and it's kind of a volume

(23:39):
reservoir that you, a refrigerator.
So
Awesome.
Yeah.
Thanks for that information.
Yep, you bet.
So I hope you enjoyed the barbecuebits that we just featured today, and
we'll have more coming up next week.
If there's something in particular thatyou're interested for, let us know and
we'll get back into the episode now.

(23:59):
if you're gonna talk with a homeowner,you talked about power source being
one of the most important thingsthat you wanna look at, so that
way you can phase things over time.
What would be the firstthing that you would say?
I. If you're gonna sit down with alighting designer what should you think
about and thoughts, going into it?
You wanna think about how you thinkyou might use your landscape lighting.

(24:23):
As I've said, you can see outwindows, and I think that's a really
important part, especially here inArizona where we have huge windows,
but in most parts of the world.
It's great to have views out, soyou need to decide which things do
you wanna see through which windows.
And then you want to think about howyou're gonna use that space at night, even

(24:43):
If it hasn't been built yet the landscapedesigner will ask you how you wanna use
it as well, and they'll plan seatingareas and eating areas and play areas.
And so once you think about thoseareas, then we can know how to give you
the proper lighting for those areas.
And you want to think about howyou're gonna use the lighting.

(25:05):
A lot of people leave their lightingon from dusk until dawn, and I don't
think that's a good idea becausea lot of that time we're sleeping
and so you are not getting thebenefit of it, so why pay for it?
It's not that it's a lot ofmoney, but it's just, I think
it's more than you need.
So I don't even turn mylights on every night.

(25:25):
You can have a system that willturn your lights on automatically at
dusk and that you want that to be anastronomic timer so that it's following
when the time changes it will changeevery night, what time the light comes
on based on when the sun goes down.
And with that kind of a system,you can set the off time.

(25:46):
And so here in Arizona, everybody goesto bed early 'cause we all get up early.
So people here normally turn theirlights off by 10 o'clock at night.
Some people may wanna leave 'emuntil midnight or two o'clock.
And you can override yoursystems if you're having a party.
So you can have 'em until two in themorning or whenever your guests leave.
Okay.
So it's called an astronomic

(26:07):
Timer.
Interesting.
Yep.
And you can get one thatjust fits in a single outlet.
You just take your switch out and putthe timer in or you can get a whole house
control system depending on how big yourhouse is and how complicated your existing
lighting or your interior lighting is.
There's just so many great controlsystems available now, and so you

(26:29):
wanna make sure your landscapelighting knows about controls as well.
Oh yeah.
What's something, a customer ifa customer's gonna get something
wrong, it typically happensoften with this kind of customer.
What is that they're gettingwrong about outdoor lighting?
There's several things.
The first one is they thinkthey can light any tree with
one fixture, and you just can't.
You just can't.
of my guidelines is to use morefixtures and less wattage so that

(26:52):
we don't overwhelm the night.
We don't need a lot of light.
Your eyes are so good, they adapt todark, so you don't need much light.
a typical small tree that youmay be planting that's brand
new, I would say look at leastat two fixtures and maybe three.
But as the tree grows, you needto be able to add fixtures.

(27:13):
And if your tree's gonnagrow to be 50 feet across.
You're probably gonna need to addquite a few more fixtures, eight
or 10 more fixtures over time.
And what that does, having multiplefixtures, shows you the beauty of the
branching structure and the extentof the canopy so that you could know
where the end of that can canopy is.

(27:35):
And the reason you're adding more andmore fixtures is 'cause you're trying to
remove the shadows from the tree so it can
No, just for growth.
Okay.
Yeah.
Just for growth.
One of the things that is goodis to have shadows in the tree.
Okay.
Because trees have so many leaves.
If you light everything,it'll be too much.
there's different ways of lighting trees.

(27:56):
And it is often based on the kind of treeand the way you want to see it, but it may
also be based on the size of your garden.
I've got a big ironwood treein my driveway, and it happens
to be on the cover of the Artof Landscape Lighting book.
So you can look at that if you'd like to.
It's got a huge canopy and its canopywas too big and the driveway was too big.

(28:19):
So I only had lighting in the islandwhere the trunk of the tree was,
and I didn't light all the wayto the edges of the canopy, but I
lit it enough that you can see theshaping of the branching structure.
So the tree looks natural.
So there's up lightingand there's down lighting.
Yep.
When you're lighting a tree, do youhave a preference over one or the other?

(28:42):
No, I usually use both.
Oh, both, okay.
And the way I think about approachingthe lighting of a tree is I look for
what I call the line of the tree,and that is where on the trunk.
You can go furthest up the treewithout the influence of a branch.
So that shows you the height of the tree.
And then I look at the rest of thecanopy and I still haven't said up or

(29:06):
down because the line can be either anuplight or a downlight depending on what
makes sense for that particular tree.
But in my thinking, I alwaysstart with down lighting.
And there's a couple of reasons for that.
Down lighting is natural to us.
We're used to the way shadowsappear on plant material and other
objects in the garden from the sun.

(29:27):
So it feels natural to us.
And you can cover a whole lot moreterritory with a fixture that's
mounted in a tree than you canwith a path light, for example.
So I try to light as much of pathsas I can without any path lights
using either trees or structures.
It could be a the overhang of your roof.

(29:49):
It can be a structure that's out inthe garden, a trellis or something.
And so you can't do all lighting withdown lighting because if you just have
down lighting the tree, it looks weird.
There are very few times that just downlighting works, and the reason for that is
you're missing the whole top of the tree.
So once I've placed in my mind the.

(30:13):
Fixtures that will be in the tree.
Then I start putting lights aroundthe tree that will be shining up
into it, and they can be on a stake.
That's so they'readjustable and can be aimed.
They can be on a stake that isadjustable up and down if you've got
them in a hedge that will be growing.
Or if you have them in a plantingbed where some of the plants will be

(30:34):
growing throughout the growing season.
Some of them may godormant and still be there.
Some of them may disappear.
So that's why I use an adjustableone so that you can put it back
down to the ground if the plantsdisappear for the dormant season.
And you can also use below grade fixturesand they're the least noticeable.

(30:55):
So when you've got lawn, you have touse a below grade fixture because the
lawnmower always wins in the fight betweenthe lawnmower and the light fixture.
Not a good fight.
No, not a good fight forthe lighting fixture.
So here we've got a lot ofsand, so it's good with sand.
It can also be good in groundcover if the ground cover doesn't
get too tall or grow too much.

(31:15):
But typically once you get into bedswith plants including ground cover,
then you need to use an above gradefixture, so a stake mount fixture either
at ground level or with some heightto it, or with the adjustable height.
And so you can see the decisions thatyou have to make get complicated.
One of the things that people justdon't understand is how complicated

(31:38):
landscape lighting is to makeit look so pretty in the end.
And that's another reason why you reallyneed to have someone that understands
how to do this so that you get abeautiful system that you just love.
I can't tell you how many peoplecontinue to call me up and tell me
how much they love their lighting.

(31:58):
Years later, 20 years later,I'll get a call from someone.
I just want you to know how muchwe love our landscape lighting.
It's something that providesenjoyment every night.
It does.
And it's, yeah, itcreates such a peaceful.
Place a lot of times what I calla tranquil setting, and a lot of
people need those spaces today to get
away from the hubbub of our lives.

(32:19):
Yeah.
Just to relax.
Yeah.
And just to enjoy.
Is there particular materials that youprefer for the fixtures, or is there d is
there pros and cons of different types?
The thing that you wanna look foris a fixture that can hold up to the
eight kinds of corrosion that we haveto deal with in landscape lighting.
Just the eight, there's just the eight.

(32:42):
And the impact of being out in nature.
one example that, that I like to use is, Idid this really distant view for a client
across a river in Colorado of a beautifulstand of trees and, what are they called?
Big deer go through there.
Elk.
Elk go through there.

(33:02):
Yeah.
So you can imagine if an elk's goingthrough, they're not paying attention
to the light fixtures so the fixturescan get knocked out of adjustment.
So you've gotta be prepared for that.
I'm sure the weather can do that as well.
Wind and rain and all that kind of thing.
Wind and rain and trees gettingknocked over because of wind and
rain, trees getting buried in water.

(33:23):
So the materials need to be able to holdup to animals and abuse and weather.
I don't wanna say that onematerial is better than another.
'cause it really depends on where you are.
But you need to have a materialthat can hold up and the
construction of fixture can hold up.
So if you go and buy a set ofeight fixtures from Home Depot

(33:44):
for $20, they're not gonna last.
I can just tell youthey're not gonna last.
Typically what happens with afixture like that is they have an
inferior light source in them, soit won't last and they'll break at
the least amount of stress on them.
So I typically use fixtures that areeither aluminum that are carefully

(34:05):
processed so they hold up to corrosionbecause aluminum it's a corrosive
material, so it's gotta be finishedwell, but it's a strong material so
you can really hold your aim, which isreally important in landscape lighting.
You can use copper, but copper'snot a strong material, so
it's gonna get banged around.
So I tend to only use those forpath lights or decorative fixtures.

(34:27):
You can use brass and I've even used gold.
We had to paint them so no one knew.
Wow.
But it's too expensive now, Ithink, to either use brass or gold.
There are some I hate to use theword plastic, but there are some
materials that are made today thatare not metals that can hold up.
And that's really good because one ofthe things that a non-metallic fixture

(34:52):
gives you is protection from lightning.
And if you've got lighting fixtures inyour yard and you have lighting, you can
have problems with lighting uh, lightning.
It happens a lot in Florida.
It happens here in Arizona.
It even happened on myproperty in New York.
Oh,
wow.
So the biggest thing that you wannathink about as a homeowner is not only
do you need to know the person doingthis understands and can design it.

(35:16):
But you need to have someone thatunderstands low voltage lighting and
outside lighting because the weakestpart of a lighting system, a landscape
lighting system, is the connections.
So you want to make sure you havesomeone that's working on this that will
provide you a really solid connection.
And the best way to do that is withcrimping and heat shrinking or soldering.

(35:39):
So those are the two ways that you wannacheck the person that wants to do the
installation for you will provide that.
And if they don't, you justwant to find someone else.
And ILI can help you with findinginstallers as well, especially
an ILI lighting designer, Ken.
Awesome.
With outdoor living design a bigthing is focal points, creating

(35:59):
flow in the job, layers of light.
Can you go through that?
'cause there's customers out there thatthey have their backyard and they're not
sure exactly how they're gonna create thisflow with the outdoor lighting at night.
And what should be a focal point?
What shouldn't be, and husband and wivesmight argue about focal points too.
Sure.
Yep.

(36:19):
Although they tend not to argueabout those things, they tend to
argue more about whether to do itor not and how long it should be on.
Yeah.
But if you've got one fabuloustree out your dining room window,
that's probably the focal point.
And then everything should step downand light level from that focal point,
you can have multiple focal points sothat it's more of an overall experience.

(36:42):
My garden is like that now 'cause it'stwo acres and you walk through it and
you just can't say there's one focalpoint if you're doing more than one focal
point and you want a, solid composition.
That's a one view composition.
You can use one or three or five,but it always needs to be an
odd number, not an even number.
and a triangle, which would be three isthe strongest because that allows you

(37:05):
to move through it and your eye to rest.
So you don't wanna bejerking your eye around.
So when you have a project likemine with multiple, you have to have
very careful balance between thebrightnesses of one thing and another.
So if you have one thing that's mostimportant, it should be the brightest,
and then the next level should step downin a two to one minimum of two to one

(37:29):
ratio, maximum of a five to one ratio.
And then beyond that the next leveldown would be even lower than that.
So you again need someone thatunderstands that and can help you plan
that because it's not just a matter of.
We're putting two foot candles hereand a half a foot candle there because

(37:50):
we don't see foot candles we seereflected light off a surface foot.
Candles measures the amount oflight hitting a surface foot.
Lamberts measures the amount of lightreflected back to your eye, and it
is affected by the reflectance ofthe object that the light is hitting.
So if you've got a white wall,it's gonna reflect more than

(38:11):
grass, which is dark green.
And the grass has more texture.
So both color and texture can lessenthe amount of light that is reflected.
So you have to really understand that.
And people that take illy andgo through that understand it.
People that haven't been trainedin some way don't even know

(38:32):
what you're talking about.
So one of the things todaythat's also happening is.
They're trying to mergeindoor and outdoor spaces.
So there seems like a real flowfrom the inside to the outside.
And when you do that the question thatI've got is are you trying to stay?

(38:53):
What temperature lightsare we trying to use?
So that's a good flowfrom one space to another.
And how would you do that transition fromlike a covered porch out to a structure
out into the garden type situation?
So I'm gonna answer two questionsinstead of just that one.
We're gonna start with color temperature.
Thank you.
So, As we all know, we arenow dealing with LED Yeah.

(39:17):
Whether we look it or not.
And so you can get LED as low as 2,500.
That's really too low.
You wanna be in the range between twentyseven hundred and thirty five hundred.
You can get LED in 5,000, 4,000,5,000, 6,000 up to 15,000.
That's way too coldfor landscape lighting.

(39:38):
And I think for the most partit's way too cold for interiors.
Most interiors are alsobetween 27 and 3,500.
When you're at 3,500, it'sa little bit more even.
And on the colder side, whenyou're at 27, it's warm.
So if you're using 2,700 inside,you can still use 3,500 outside.

(39:59):
I would suggest that, as a matterof fact, I typically use 3,500
all the time and it just shows thecolor of plant material better.
Plant material has color, andit also shows the color of
architectural materials better.
If you've got a path light and you'vegot a warm stone, then you could use
2,700 because the 3,500 make it look toomuch of a contrast out in the landscape.

(40:24):
So this is again, why you need tohave someone that understands that, so
they can help you think through that.
But the other thing I want you tothink about is the view from inside to
outside or from outside to inside, and.
Landscape lighting is usually atlighting levels significantly lower
than interior lighting levels.
The IES recommends whatare the standard levels.

(40:46):
which is the IlluminatingEngineering Society.
They provide the, for the world,the standard lighting levels.
And for residential it'sbetween 10 to 20 foot candles.
And again, you've gotta deal with,reflects for landscape lighting, it's
between a quarter to one foot candle.
Wow.
So now if you're at 20 footcandles, that's too much range

(41:09):
for a quarter to one foot candle.
So what that means is either youneed to be able to bring the outside
lighting levels up higher than younormally would to be comfortable
when you're inside looking out.
Or you need to be able to dimyour interior lighting to be
able to look out the windows.
And I prefer that we'd be ableto dim our interior lighting

(41:31):
because we wanna do that anyway.
When we're in our interior spacesand controls cost a lot of money.
So if you're spending money on dim yourinterior lighting and your landscape
lighting, you've spent a lot of money.
And if you don't have to dim yourlandscape lighting, you can spend the
difference on your landscape lighting.

(41:51):
we can spend more money on the landscapelighting if we don't have to dim it.
Correct.
Did that all make sense?
Yes.
Yeah.
No, that's great insight.
I didn't think about thedimming in the inside.
It's really important.
Yeah, no, that's a great tip.
One thing that I was talking to mydad on the way here was, we see a
bunch of different style homes and wetypically work with the architecture

(42:12):
style, with the job itself.
I never thought about it with lightingin general with different styles, and
he brought up chandeliers and a lot ofdifferent fixtures and stuff like that.
Could we talk about just differentstyles of lighting, because there's
obviously a range of it, but withthe new stuff that's popping now how
does that translate into landscaping?
Or does it, is it still traditional?

(42:34):
I don't know.
It doesn't much, but, okay.
There are certain things that you do haveto think about any decorative fixtures.
So if you're gonna have adecorative, and I consider path
lights, decorative fixtures.
So you're gonna have a path light.
You want the shape and size and style andcoloring of that to work with your home.
Okay.
The same thing with sconces andhanging fixtures that are outside.

(42:56):
and you need to think about materials.
And the most important thing I thinkabout with decorative fixtures is
that you don't see the light source.
I want the fixtures to be completelyshielded so that you don't see
that lamp inside the fixture.
And you can do that with the shapingand the way the fixture is designed.
Or you can do it by using instead ofa clear glass, using a frosted glass.

(43:19):
you have to be careful and thenyou have to dim those because
that frosted glass will become thebrightest thing in your field of view.
And your focal point may have to takea back seat to the light fixture,
which I think is not, in all cases,I think the light fixture is not as
important as your magnificent tree.
Yeah.
Is there any typical fixturesthat you just can't stand and

(43:39):
you don't wanna work with at all?
Or are they all free game?
You mean a type of fixture?
Yeah,
I don't think so.
I think we need to be open we need somany different kinds of fixtures to create
all the different effects that we mightthink about in one or another project.
So, It's really important to keepbeing aware of what's available.
Things keep changing so much right now.

(44:00):
My two favorite manufacturers have beenpurchased over the last five years,
and you know what sometimes happenswhen plant companies are purchased?
they're not what they used to be.
So one of the things in outdoor living,and especially when we're dealing
with a pool, is the trend right nowis what I call strip lighting halo.

(44:23):
Yeah.
Where they come in and they light.
Rope, lighting or whatever, thelighting up a whole staircase
in this type of situation.
So I'd like your perspective fromsomeone that's been doing this
for, 40 years in the industry,what do you think about this?
You can tell what I think.
Okay.
For those that are on YouTube,you can see her facial expressions

(44:43):
for you that aren't on YouTube.
You'll have to listen,get this in the audio.
Yeah.
She's shaking her head.
I'm, I'm shaking my head no.
And the reason I do that is becausetypically these strip lights are down low.
They're under an overhang of a wall orunder a toe kick at a bar, for example.
And I firmly believe that their ankleson a human are not our best feature.

(45:08):
So
never thought about that, but,
but if that's not the mainreason, it's the light level.
If you're gonna have a strip light, you'vegotta be able to dim it down so much
that it doesn't overwhelm everything.
And if you're putting it in a handrail,going up a set of stairs, you've gotta
be able to recess it deep into thathandrail so you don't get glare from that.
Yeah, strip it.

(45:29):
They're just too brightand they're too glaring.
And I have used them, but Idon't use them very often.
So what is your recommendationfor lighting a staircase?
My preference is to downlight itfrom a tree or from a building.
Okay.
First.
And I never light the staircase itself.

(45:49):
I like the edges.
I like the planting alongthe edges, one or both sides.
And let some of the lightsspill over onto the stair.
It doesn't take much.
And if you don't have a downlightlocation, my next standby approach
is to put light fixtures in the wall.
You can't see my hand.
Where's my hand?
There it is.

(46:09):
Okay.
Here's my hand.
So this is the wall.
Yes.
And the stairs are here going down.
So put it in the wall.
Yeah.
And I like to do it right at theintersection of the tread in the riser.
And you don't have to do every single one.
And it depends on how highabove the treads you can be,
how many treads it will cover.
And then if you can't do that And youhave to put it in the tread right in front

(46:33):
of you, which I really don't want you todo because that means you're looking at
a light fixture walking up the stairs.
Do you really wanna be looking at alight fixture taking away from the beauty
of the marble or the stone or whateverit is that staircase is made from.
But if you do have to, it has tobe shielded so you're not seeing
the glare of the light source.
Right.
I'm curious, when you worked withthe strip lighting you said that

(46:55):
you've done it a couple of times.
You had to do you remember whatmanufacturer it was what it was actually?
'cause there's so many different companiesthat are producing it now and some
might not be able to even get to theright level that you're talking about.
The dibbing capability.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Landscape planning has become waymore complicated because of LEDs.
So we used to just make surethat a light source would be

(47:16):
compatible with the dimmer.
Now it's whether the driver is compatiblewith the dimmer and often they're not.
with less expensive fixtures,typically they're not.
that's not only whether you candim at all, but whether you can
dim down low enough the higher thequality, the driver, the better

(47:36):
dimming capability you will have.
Yeah.
So again, you need someone thatunderstands that, and often the controls
person will understand that and often themanufacturer understands it if they're
a good lighting fixture manufacturer.
But if they're not they won't either.
And certainly if you're not a well-trainedlighting designer, you don't know either.
Perfect.
So my wife.

(47:56):
She's gonna kill me.
'cause I'm gonna put her, she loves solar.
Oh yeah.
Oh no.
Okay.
So that was the way you've answeredmy question probably is she goes
out and buys these solar lights allthe time and she puts in and how
long do they last?
Oh gosh.
Maybe, three, four months.
Yeah.
Anyway, there really isn'tsomething out there in the market.

(48:19):
I'm like maybe she's justbuying the wrong stuff.
But,
I have not seen anything that Ithink functions properly, you know,
and the problem is you've gottabe able to hold enough energy from
the sun to be able to turn on.
So that means you've either gottahave a remote solar collector
that you're connected to.
And so if you're connected to that,you might as well just have wiring.

(48:40):
And if you're not connected to aremote solar collector, then the
fixture has to get bigger and bigger.
And the quality of themis just substandard.
Yeah.
At best that I know of.
Hopefully that will change, butI've been hoping that for about,
yeah,
20 years, maybe 30 years now.
Yeah, I understand.
And I was thinking maybe there's somethingout there that has arrived, but I

(49:03):
just, I'm not aware of it yet, so Okay.
I'm not
either.
Also depending on the time of season,like the amount of energy it can
collect will change, and then thelight itself will be a higher or
lower brightness depending on that.
So it can be all looky.
And if
you live in a place thatis overcast all the time.
Oh yeah.
It's just not gonna work at all.

(49:25):
It doesn't work in Arizona, And wehave a lot of sun here in Arizona.
We're just about to be in the seasonwhere we think we have too much sun.
You get a fair amount there.
Okay.
No, I'm not even gonna ask that question.
I had a, you
can ask me what you thinkis a stupid question.
I have a
stupid question for you.
On the way here, I love to lay downand look up at the sky at night.
And that's me and my dad.

(49:47):
We went backpacking all the time as Iwas a kid and still do all the time now.
But I don't get to see thestars like I do in Colorado and
Texas in the middle of, the DFW.
So for the people that lay down and likethe look at the sky, a great thing is
probably uplighting, I'd imagine, tolook at the trees and stuff like that.
Is there anything like that?
Strategically, so like you said,good lighting, you're able to

(50:10):
go and play, enjoy the yard.
Is there anything strategicallybesides Uplighting?
I don't know.
That could,
If you've got a place in the yardwhere you wanna go out and look up
at the sky with your kids and, teach'em about the stars, then you need to
be careful about shielding that areafrom the brightness of any fixture.
I want you to shield the brightnessof any fixture anywhere you are in
the yard, but in a yard like minewhere you can go all the way through

(50:32):
it in all different directions.
You can't shield for all viewing points.
So that would be an area where youjust have to be really careful to
not be able to see the brightnessof the inside of any fixture.
And even if you're gonna uplight thetrees around that area, that's not
gonna stop you from seeing the stars.
What's gonna stop you fromseeing the stars is DFW

(50:55):
Yeah.
Itself and the parking lots aroundit and the street lighting around it.
And ad nauseum, what we doin landscape lighting just
doesn't affect the night sky.
Okay.
It was a stupid question.
No, it wasn't a stupid question.
It was a very good question.
Thank you.
What do you got?
So one of the things we talked aboutthat we have a segment called True Crime

(51:16):
we've touched on some things alreadythat probably could fall into that.
is there anything that, you know.
A homeowner should be aware of 'causeof some past story that you can tell
us to not do, or something that theyshould have done and that they didn't do.
Can you enlighten us on a few of those?
Yeah.
My
mind is just filling up with examples.

(51:38):
I'm gonna go back to a treethat only has one light fixture.
If it's only got one light fixture itreally can't bring out the beauty of the
three dimensional textures of that tree.
And so it, that's a crime tojust put one fixture on a tree.
But a bigger crime is to put a reallyhigh wattage fixture on that one tree and

(51:58):
just try and, blow the socks off the tree.
It doesn't take much.
So use lower, lower, lower levelsof light with multiple fixtures.
Okay.
You've gotta be careful when you'redoing landscape lighting, as we've
talked about from the beginning,to have the right kind of power.
One of the issues in landscape lighting,even still today with LED is voltage drop.

(52:21):
So if you put too much wattage on toolong a cable you can end up adding
one more fixture and you get nothing.
So all of the lightingjust goes down to nothing.
So you really need to make sure thatthe person that you're working with,
both the designer and the installerunderstand voltage drop and understand
power distribution so that you don'thave that problem 10 years from now

(52:45):
when you're adding more fixtures.
And then another problem with addingfixtures is if you have a situation where
your tree's getting bigger and you needto add more fixtures and you haven't
done good power distribution, then you'regonna need to rip up the landscape.
And that could mean damagingthe roots on the tree.

(53:06):
And you really don't wanna do that.
You wanna be very respectful ofthe roots on the tree and you want
your installer to be knowledgeableenough to understand that as well.
I'm trying to think, so when you run a,cable up to a tree to go up the trunk
of the tree, is it better to look atit like the roots radius out and so

(53:27):
you want to come in at a perpendicularangle too, is that Yes, exactly.
Okay.
Exactly.
The roots go out like this,
right?
So
you wanna be getting in between them.
You wanna come in here.
You don't wanna cross across thembecause that will damage them.
Okay.
So if you're bringing a wire up to thebase of the tree to go up into the tree.

(53:48):
Yes.
You wanna have a connection there, abelow grade connection and change to a
smaller size wire so that you can bringthe most amount of power to that point.
And then use a smaller wire to go up inthe tree so that it's less noticeable.
Okay.
So the voltage drop, can you minimizevoltage drop by the size of the wire?

(54:09):
Absolutely.
Okay.
Yep.
So the
size of the wire and thedistance are the and how much
power you're drawing at the end.
So it's better to bring bigger wiresand, you know, we used to think,
oh my gosh, we used to use standardnumber 12 wire for low voltage.
And so we might have to bringa number 10 or a number eight.
Today you're using number 14 or number16, maybe even smaller than that.

(54:29):
So you might be using a number 12 wireto bring your starting power to wherever
you're starting your light fixtures.
Okay?
But you've got to have enough sizein the cable and be careful about
the distance, which is why I saidearlier, you wanna bring 120 volts out.
If you've got a big propertyyou wanna bring it out as far

(54:50):
as you think you may ever go.
Or maybe even further in caseyou've decided to go there later.
In a normal size yard, you mightwanna bring one out the backside
of the property, of the backsideof the house, and one at the back
fence and have one in the front.
Just at the beginning at the house.
That might be enough, but you really needto look at it based on your situation.

(55:12):
Okay?
So any other true crimes you canthink of other than the single
light or the blasting of the tree?
Oh, I've
got one.
Yeah.
Okay.
I worked with an electricalcontractor years ago that I didn't
know and I was doing the focusingone night on the site without him.
And I can't remember what hehad done, but he had done the
wiring at the transformer wrong.

(55:32):
And I'm starting to see smokecoming out of the transformer and
so we're about to have a fire.
You don't wanna do that.
You wanna avoid fires and
Yeah.
And it doesn't take much.
It really doesn't take much.
You just need someone that understandshow you go from 120 volts to 12 volts.
Yeah.
Fire and transformers areprobably not recommended?

(55:55):
No, definitely not.
Not a good thing.
A lot of how do you incorporateoutdoor lighting with other lighting
sources like fire pit or, otherfeatures that might incorporate light?
Most other features will havelighting from us, so if it's a
water feature or even the poolor a seating area or something.

(56:18):
But a fire pit is separatebecause it's the fire.
So you've got to be aware of that lightthere and then think about what other
kind of light you need around that area sothat someone feels safe and comfortable.
I think of landscapeplanning as a team effort.
We need to all be talkingto each other all the time.
And as much as I think it's notmy responsibility for a lot of the

(56:42):
others to keep me informed, they'reprobably not gonna keep me informed.
I learned early on in mycareer, I've gotta babysit.
So I've gotta stay in touch withthe landscape architect to find
out what changes they are making.
And I've gotta make, if they're addinga fire pit, I need to know how they're
doing it and where they're doing it.
And if they're taking a fire pitout, I need to know that too.

(57:03):
Just never ends.
I'd imagine like around a fire pit area,you still want to have a good lighting
source because they're not gonna beusing the fire pit 24 7 obviously.
No, they're not gonna use it all the time.
So you want to have enough lightaround it for whatever is around it,
including the stairs and the walkwayand the plantings so that it's not
a dark hole in your scene at night.

(57:24):
So
when the system's done.
It has to be fine tuned.
I'm sure that's right.
And the only way to do this is at night.
I am,
that's correct.
I'm sure I can
tell you today there are still somelighting designers that say that they do
not go out at night and aim their lights.
And I can tell you, you're losingthe nuances that make the magic

(57:45):
if you don't go out at night.
I just got back from working on a projectin east Hampton where we had four lighting
designers and about eight installersworking on doing the aiming, and it
took us three nights to get it done.
It was a big place.
It's not a small place, but you'vegotta think about not only the team

(58:05):
that you need, you, the lightingdesigner needs to think about the team.
You need to think about food.
You need to think about is itgonna be pouring rain, which
it was when we were there.
Is it going to snow?
Is it cold?
Is it warm?
You have to have snacks.
You've gotta be prepared, andyou've gotta decide whether the
owner's gonna be there or not.
And if the owner's gonna be there.

(58:25):
I want them to be so that theycan be responding, but they have
to understand that we're workingreally hard to get this right.
So they can't be talkingto us all the time.
We need a quiet scenewhere we can be working.
And then when we can stop, whenwe have one area done enough,
we can say, what do you think?
And if they want this change orthat changed, we can do it then

(58:46):
before we move on to another area.
okay, so you brought up something there.
You had four lighting designers
On one project.
Yeah.
It was a big project.
It was a big project, big site.
But you need to have more than one personbecause you need to have at least two.
You need someone that is updatingthe record documents, because
we make all kinds of changes.
We change fixture location, wechange wattage and beam spread.

(59:09):
We add lenses and louvers andall kinds of things change.
And sometimes we take fixtures outand sometimes we add more fixtures.
You really don't know what you'redoing until the landscape is done.
And we don't get to thinkabout it until it's really done.
We can plan, but.
Like I was saying earlier, it maychange from one tree to threes.

(59:30):
The one tree might getmoved 20 feet that way.
In this project that we just finished,there was gonna be this big play area
when we got there, there's no playarea, so we had to deal with that.
There are always changesthat you have to respond to.
So someone needs to be doing therecord documents and then if it's a
big project like that one person sayme, I can guide the installers that

(59:54):
are doing the actual aiming for me.
I can do two to three at a time, butif we've got eight guys there, we
need at least two or three people tobe aiming to be directing the aiming.
Makes sense.
I'm wondering this is a little off topic,but do you have any like favorite plants
trees, flowers, or anything that's likeI. Just brought to light even more.

(01:00:15):
You just appreciate even more atnighttime when it has the proper lighting.
Almost every plant some aremore difficult than others.
Let me give you an example.
I'm gonna tell you about the problem.
Trees Magnolia grande flora.
Oh yeah.
So thick
magnolia grande, which is the southern,
Southern magnolia.
Yeah,
southern magnolia.
Its leaf has if this is the leaf, andthis is the bottom of the leaf, the

(01:00:39):
bottom of that leaf has what's calledmentum, which is a fuzzy brown surface.
So if you uplight from underneath amagnolia grande flora, it will look dead.
So you don't wanna do that.
You can light it from outside thecanopy and light the top of the
leaves, the front face of the leaves.
But you can't light it from underneath.
You can still downlight from it to lightthe plantings on the ground around it.

(01:01:02):
If you have a tree likea, what is the name of it?
Some maple trees getreally dense leaf overlap.
So leaves are sitting on top of eachother going all the way up the canopy.
Even if the leaves are very diaphanous,which means they're light and they're
light skin, so light can go through them.
If you've got dense leaf overlap,then you've got to do pruning in order

(01:01:26):
to get light up through the canopy.
there are some trees thatneed more pruning than others.
and I like trees that have horizontalbranches they're called scaffold branches
and they look the various layers just lookbeautiful, especially with snow on them.
Is
there any plants that are, you mightnot think that look really great during
the day, but look amazing at night?

(01:01:48):
You can take a tree that, that is notnice at all during the day and use it as
just fill between one area and another.
Yeah.
And it can be look beautiful.
I learned that one day working ona project in northern California on
a big estate and they had all thesedifferent driveways and at the end
of each driveway they had a big tree.

(01:02:09):
One of the trees looked pathetic.
But we needed to light it to makethe statement that this is an entry.
And so I made it look beautiful.
You can do that and with pruning youcan make a pathetic looking tree look
good now and look better over time.
So one of the really important thingsabout landscape lighting is someone that

(01:02:29):
can help you with the pruning to keepthe trees looking good and healthy and
help them grow in a way that they'regoing to look their best over time.
If you were working on an existinglandscape lighting, you would want
the pruning done before you arrived.
Yep.
Although I can tell you oftentimeswe wait until we do the lighting, we

(01:02:50):
do the aiming and we do the pruning.
Then if it's not major pruning, if it'sjust a little snip here and a little snip
there to not have too much brightness,but if there are big, major branches
that are dead or too much overlap, thenthat pruning should be done beforehand.
Yes.
Is there a certain time of the season?
I'm pretty sure there is.
But that you would wantto do this calibration.

(01:03:11):
It depends on where you live.
Oh, you want the trees to be dormantand you don't want them to be just
going dormant because they're takingtheir sugars back into the ground, and
we need to go through that process.
So they have them available nextyear, and you don't want it to be in
the spring when they're starting tomove their sugars up into the canna

(01:03:31):
because you'll lose all that sugar.
they really need to be dormant anda good pruning guy who is called a
arborist.
Sometimes
an arborist, a good arborist knows that,but not all arborists understand the
relationship between pruning and lighting.
your lighting designer may need to workwith them to help them understand that.
So sounds like certain seasons of the yearare actually busier for you than others.

(01:03:55):
I would say well, it
depends on where you live,obviously, because some places
it rains too much or it's snowingtoo much or it's just too cold.
Or in Arizona it's just too hot.
So we don't do much in the summer, wedo everything from fall until spring.
And the project I was justworking on was on Long Island.
In New, in most of New York, youcan't do stuff after November,

(01:04:15):
but sometimes on Long Islandyou can do it the whole winter.
their ground doesn't freezeas hard as other parts and
they don't get as much snow.
Yeah.
The co the coast affects that.
So I was born on the coastin Jersey, so it was amazing.
Yes.
And you understand how much warmer it was.
And you'd go to Philly and it'd be brutal.
Yeah.
And on Tom's River it'd be nice.

(01:04:36):
Yep.
Then I moved to West Texas,so it was totally different.
It's very different there.
Yeah.
We didn't have any trees to light, justtumbleweeds, so it's not that bad.
Okay.
are there other things that weshould be thinking about that
we haven't talked about today?
Well, I wanna put in one more plug andit's for a new book that's gonna be coming
out probably within the next two yearscalled Masters of Landscape Lighting.

(01:05:00):
It's being done by the people that dothe outdoor living series of books.
And it's gonna be just landscape lightingand they're working on it right now
and it's gonna show what beautifulthings can be done and you'll have a
book that tells you where everybodyis, that you can hire to work with you.
That's awesome.
So it's gonna be a really good thingfor the industry of landscape lighting.

(01:05:22):
Oh yeah.
And the art of landscapelighting, was that written by you?
It
was.
Yes.
Okay.
And so those are projectsthat are all over the country?
They're all over the country.
Yeah.
Okay.
I'm a book nerd, butyou will love this book.
Therefore, the reason that I had acolumn called book notes for 10 years.
So Oh, that's great.

(01:05:42):
But my wife's like, can'tyou read these on Kindle?
And I'm like, no,
you have to have them.
I have to have,
There's a relatively new book calledService Berry, which is the Lanker Tree.
And it's written by a NativeAmerican woman who's written
some other really great books.
One of them is called braiding Sweetgrass.
And it's a political book.
It's very interesting.

(01:06:03):
She's got a really great approach tohow we should be all getting along.
That's neat.
I had a question.
lighting up a space for security whetherthat be from just the area you're in
or maybe you have critters like coyotesand stuff like that, you're trying to
lighten up the place to keep the crittersout and pe you know, I know friends

(01:06:23):
that their yard's not lit very well, sothey don't want to go in the backyard.
'cause obviously the outdoors can bea little noisy with the critters and
the wind and all that kind of stuff.
And lighting it helps that.
But how do you light for security reasons,but not have it look like a prison yard?
There's two approaches.
One is when I do landscape lighting,I provide safety and security

(01:06:45):
through an aesthetic approach.
So I'll understand what theclient is concerned about and
what they need from the landscape.
And I always like to light someportion of the borders of the property
because it makes the space feel larger.
It's like the walls of your house, sothat really helps with safety lighting.
if you've got dogs that you like totake out, you can put fixtures on the

(01:07:08):
top of the roof, which will be reallyglaring, but you have to be careful to
make sure that your next door neighborsare not gonna see that brightness.
And just have themmanually turn on and off.
So you take the dog out and turn those on,and then come back in and turn them off.
It's not my favorite approach.
My favorite approach isdo it right to begin with.
then you can enjoy it.
Okay.
Another question I have is.

(01:07:29):
So this is gonna be budget tiers.
So what's realistic, and I know this isprobably not an easy question to answer,
but from 5K to 20 K to 50 K plus, likein those ranges, what should you expect
when you hire a lighting designer?
Or are your numbers even close?
Yeah.
Are, yeah,
Are you talking the budget, includinghiring a lighting designer, buying

(01:07:49):
the fixtures, and installing?
Yeah, these are just roughnumbers I'm throwing out there.
Okay.
I have no idea.
He has no idea where he came.
You can't do
much with $5,000.
Okay.
You can probably light one tree.
And you're probably gonna be lookingat, if you've got an acre property
and you wanna light the front andthe back, you're probably gonna be
looking at, at a minimum of 50,000.
Okay.
So how big can I get?

(01:08:10):
it's like swimming pools.
Well, I know, I know.
I mean, I'm just curious.
It's like swimming
pools.
Yeah.
You, we can get into sevenfigures, so in outdoor lighting
you can get way up there too.
You can get into hundreds of thousandsor even more than that easily.
The project that I just finished in LongIsland was in the hundreds of thousands.
Oh wow.
Crazy.
No, that's cool.
No, I know.
some of the jobs we do are crazy too.

(01:08:30):
But
you can do good things for not much money.
And so I don't want your listenersto think that they can't afford it.
If you have a limited budget One of thethings to think about, like we talked
about earlier, is if you're young andyou're just starting your career, you
can do a little bit now and then doa little bit either next year or five
years from now and keep adding onto it.

(01:08:52):
So think about the mostimportant thing that you would
like to see in your landscape.
I just did something for one of myclient's daughters here in Arizona.
We lit one tree in her backyard.
That was it.
That's all we did.
And she's happy,
she loves it and she's gonnaget more in the future,
right?
So one of the things that as projectsgo, lightings towards the end.

(01:09:16):
And so what happens a lot of timesis, the budget, oh we spent the
money on all these other things.
And yeah, you
can't do that.
Lighting needs to be right up frontwith the landscape designer as part
of the budget for the whole project sothat you don't run out of money for it.
Yeah.
and if it's a new build project andyou do the whole thing and you don't

(01:09:36):
do the power infrastructure, thenyou're gonna be ripping up your garden.
So if you do nothing else, you have todo the power infrastructure for whatever
lighting you might be doing later,
and then you can phasethings over a period of time.
Yeah.
Okay.
That's very good advice forsomebody that's starting out.
So the ideal situation is get it alldone at the beginning, and that way you

(01:09:59):
get to enjoy the beauty from the start.
Yep.
But sometimes, we have to dothings in different orders, which
sometimes we do.
So it becomes more difficult.
But if you get a good installer andyou don't have power distribution,
they can be very creative abouthow to get power around for you.
So you wanna find someone that'sexperienced in doing this.

(01:10:20):
And I've worked in enoughparts of the country, now.
I know there are peopleall over the country.
I'm gonna go look up and seewho's here in Dallas-Fort Worth.
the courses that you mentioned thatsomebody could take is, does that when
you come in from a knowledge standpoint,do you have to have certain education
on electrical or things like that?

(01:10:40):
No.
You go into pretty basicinstructions through the whole thing.
Yeah, for learn nightlight through the20 sessions, I talk about all the issues.
Someone that was gonna take the ILIcourse, it's called the intensive course.
They go over all of that, but they're alsostarting to have online courses in the
near future that will tell you about powerdistribution and light sources and light

(01:11:02):
fixtures so that you can concentrate moreon the design while you're in that course.
So do outdoor lighting.
Designers get hired likelandscape designers do for
someone to design the system.
And then someone, D-Y-I-D-I-Y,they do the work themselves.

(01:11:23):
It's not a good idea todo that unless you're very
knowledgeable about electrical.
You don't want smokecoming outta transformers.
It's a good point.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I have had clients that I'veworked with to help them to do
the installation themselves.
And so it is certainly possible.
And I've also connected themwith a good electrician that

(01:11:44):
can give them some guidance.
I did that just recently forthe Phoenix, Japanese garden.
I brought my electrician in to workwith their guys and they picked it up
real fast and started doing all the workthemselves and just called him in when
they really needed his work or his help.
There's people in this industry arereally happy to help each other.

(01:12:06):
So you don't have to feel like youcan't do it because you can't afford it.
You can get people to help you understandhow to do it and you can do it yourself
if you've got that kind of support.
And I think that the designwould be a critical part of that.
It's whole process.
It's so you understand whatyou're doing and you're not, yeah.
Going out and spending yourmoney on things, bad stuff

(01:12:29):
that you shouldn't be doing.
I'm wondering, are y'all usingsoftware like 3D we use 3D studios
pool studio, like people useSketchUp and stuff like that.
Are y'all using that fordemonstration purposes or
You can.
When I want to give my clients anidea of how their lighting will
look, I take a photograph of eitherthe landscape lighting that will

(01:12:49):
be coming or the site itself.
And I have my husband do arendering of it in Photoshop.
And they're beautiful renderings.
There's the whole chapter of thatin the art of landscape lighting.
And there are other programs now,manufacturers are coming out with programs
all the time that can help you with that.
I prefer to do a rendering ratherthan a mock-up because it takes,

(01:13:11):
it costs the client less and ittakes less time and less equipment.
But there's really nothing thatbeats a mockup if you wanna show
somebody what the idea is thatyou're trying to express to them.
I got a, bunch of quick quick firequestions if you want to go ahead.
Okay.
Okay.
First one is most overrated trend.
There's a fixture that a lot ofmanufacturers have come out with that's

(01:13:32):
just a tiny little fixture like this big,maybe an inch and a half, two inches.
Wow.
And it has a flat plate.
And you put it in a rockwall, it looks stupid.
No matter how you do it, it looks stupid.
Don't do that.
Perfect.
Most underused fixture.
There's two I think the mostmost underused is a downlight.
People are afraid of downlights,the installers that are not

(01:13:54):
experienced or afraid of them.
And even designers are afraid of'em if they haven't used them.
But there's nothing better.
It's my starting point.
And then I think the next mostoverlooked is a below grade fixture.
You don't want fixtures standing upin the garden when you can avoid that.
So a below grade fixture is lessunsightly, but it's also the most

(01:14:14):
expensive next to a submersible fixture.
Okay.
One lighting design, pet peeve.
So is there like a pet peeve whereyou maybe you see someone's design and
it's like that it sticks out to you?
Maybe it's a great design, butit's oh, I would never do that.
There's so many things.
I think my biggest pet peeveis that people that don't know
what they're doing are doing it.
And so it just looks like cacophony andit's glaring and it's not comfortable.

(01:14:39):
Yeah.
And then last one is, if youcould light anything up in
the world, what would it be?
I would probably liketo light the Taj Mahal.
Ooh, that'd be cool.
It would, wouldn't it?
It would.
It's funny 'cause you talked aboutgonna the Parton and I didn't even know.
I've never seen that at night.
I've seen it so many times during the day.
In Greece?
It's on every

(01:14:59):
night.
And alpha Theia Deco is the name ofthe lighting designer that did it.
It was lit back in the sixties,but that's been a few years ago.
So she redid it, I think aboutsomewhere between five to 10 years ago.
And luckily the people in Athensunderstand that it, she needs to keep
working to make sure it keeps working.

(01:15:20):
And it's on every night.
You can see it all over Athens.
You can probably pullit up on the internet.
Yeah.
I looked at it and I was like,wow, that's really pretty.
Yeah, she did a really great job.
So we're gonna have a lightingconference in Athens this year with her.
Isn't that gonna be cool?
That's awesome.
It's being put on by Sterling Lighting.
Wow.
So if
anyone wants to go to Athens,contact Sterling, they're only

(01:15:42):
taking a limited number of people.
That's cool.
That was all the quickfire ones.
So at the end of the podcast, we usuallyask the same questions to everybody.
Okay.
To know 'em a little bit better.
So I'm wondering what your favoritebook movie and your favorite meal,
or maybe if you don't wanna domeal, just like your favorite food.
All right.
My favorite book at the moment,and it changes all the time is The

(01:16:05):
Backyard Bird Chronicles by Amy Tan.
If you like birds and you likeplant material, she's just amazing.
So that's book.
Okay.
Movie.
My favorite movie is Lyle Lyle Crocodile.
I Perfect.
I've seen it probably 20 some times.
I have no idea what it is,but my dad is laughing, so he

(01:16:26):
definitely knows what it is.
I don't, you've gotta
see it.
Yeah.
It's just a really great upliftingmovie, which is what I want.
And my favorite meal is being inItaly and having an Italian meal.
I just love Italian food.
And then next is Chinese food.
So if you're gonna travel anywherefor inspiration where would you go?

(01:16:48):
I'm gonna go to Madagascar.
Why Madagascar?
And that's because of plants and animals.
They have really unusual plants thatdon't occur anywhere else 'cause it's
an island and they have really unusualanimals that, again, don't occur
anywhere else because it's an island.
Yeah,
it's true.
Awesome.
has been an honor to have you on here.
Thank you.
Yeah, it was fun.

(01:17:08):
Thank you for having me.
Hopefully we can help straightensome people out on some things about
lighting and get people to giveit the proper usage that it will
create beautiful places for them.
I just think that it's somethingthat's, it could make a such
a huge difference in a space.
It really can.

(01:17:28):
Yep.
And there's a huge potential therebecause it is not done as you said.
Often.
Too
often.
Yep.
Is there a best way if someone wants toreach out to you to communicate with you?
My email is Jan Moyer,design all one word@mac.com.
Okay.
And I'm happy to answer any questions.

(01:17:50):
And again we thank you for allthat you've given the industry.
I know they even have an award in yourname that they hand out every year.
Oh.
Do they still hand out the Jen Weir Award?
Yeah.
That's great.
I'm glad that they do the A OLP does.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's great.
Oh, yay.
I am glad I didn't know if they still did.
Yeah.
So thank you so much and we'lllook forward to talking to with

(01:18:11):
you some more sometime later.
Great.
And tell Kurt hi.
Thank you.
This show is all about helping you becomea better buyer, a better pool owner,
and hopefully you're gonna find someinsights into how to enjoy your pool even
more so how to help your friends, yourfamily, anybody looking to buy a pool in
the future or that want to remodel theirbackyard, add an outdoor fireplace, fire

(01:18:34):
pit, add an outdoor kitchen area, addsome shade cells, or whatever else it is.
We wanna be that resource for you and, andthat's the end goal here, and we promise.
That there's gonna bea ton of information.
We'll try to go through it, youknow, as relatively quickly, but
also slow so people can understand.
But the intent of the show, thereason Mike and I are doing this
is because we just got a lot inour heads and we wanna share it.

(01:18:57):
So we hope to see youhere every single week.
Thanks for listening.
I.

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Ep 090 Outdoor Lighting with Jan Moyer

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