Swimming Pool Lighting

Low-Voltage Landscape Lighting adds a warm and personalized touch to backyard swimming pools. Perimeter, accent, and moonlighting can all be used to extend living space around a pool at night, providing beauty, safety, and security. Be sure to check with your local building department for applicable codes that pertain to the use of landscape lighting around a pool. And remember that low-voltage landscape lighting is not designed nor approved to be used within any swimming pool!

In designing landscape lighting for a pool area, one must be aware of ambient light levels. Competing light sources will often wash out intended landscape lighting effects. This applies not only to exterior lights on the house or in the neighbors' yards, but also the light level within the pool itself. Does the pool use fiber optic lighting? Does it use a large, "Cyclops" light (or lights)? Are the lights set in the pool so they shine directly into the house windows or user's eyes? This can be very distracting! Is the pool lighting controlled by a dimmer or just an on/off switch. Do the clients have "nosy neighbors", and need to create privacy by use of light screens? Is there a particular focal point in the landscape lighting design, such as an adjacent patio, a gazebo, a set of stairs to navigate, or thick lush landscaping that becomes a living wall when illuminated at night?

Perimeter and accent lighting can be accomplished in a variety of ways. Path lighting can be installed along the edge of the pool deck. This provides a safe traverse zone for guests. For example, use a low path light such as a Footliter or Scout to gently and evenly illuminate the pool deck in all directions. Or if the deck is narrow and using pathlighting is not practical, try uplighting interesting portions of the adjacent landscaping. Use uplights such as the Lipinskiliter or the Coverliter with a wide-flood lamp. Remember to use a lamp with the proper wattage and beam spread for your work.

For an even more pleasing effect, try backlighting the landscape against a perimeter fence or wall. This works nicely if the wall is stucco on block or a high-quality wood fence. The effect of light on the back surface will turn the landscape into interesting shapes and skeletons. Use Walliters or Softliters with wide flood lamps, placed at regular intervals within or behind the landscape to create repeating rhythms of light. This is also a light-screen effect when there are no fences between your client and the neighbor's yard.

Landscape lighting can also be extended to a moonlight effect in a pool area. Placing gentle flood lighting within large nearby or overhanging trees can create wonderful shadows on the pool deck and the pool surface. Use the Artisan or the Acrobat with wide-flood lamps, mounted high up in the trees, to recreate a bright moon. And just think how pleased the client will be when the wind gently blows through the branches and the light shadows begin to sway and dance back and forth!

We have examined lighting design around a pool area. Now you should also consider your lighting design when the lights within the pool are turned off! The same lighting design that you so carefully crafted for the clients to view and enjoy will now be visible in the dark pool surface as mirror lighting! Remember this effect when assembling your overall plan.

Steve Atkinson

Nightscaping® Sales Rep

El Dorado CA 95623

stevea@nightscaping.com

cell: 530_409_0795

Contractor of the Week Steve Messer

The above photo is at the Aspen Creek Lodge, built by Aspen Homes of Post Falls, Idaho. Steve Messer designed and installed the low-voltage lighting system for the home including underwater lighting in the pond stocked with Rainbow Trout. The home won Best Landscape and Best Architecture in the 2006 Spokane "Street of Dreams" Luxury Home Tour. Congratulations Steve!

After a distinguished career in the United States Military, Steve relocated his family from the southeast to north Idaho. Steve covers northern Idaho and eastern Washington, specializing in custom residential outdoor lighting. He networks extensively with designers and custom home builders, and has designed custom dock lighting for dock builders on Lake Coeur d'Alene.

Nightscaping® is proud to be a part of the unique style that Steve continues to display through his work of consistent professionalism.

Alpine Landscape Lighting, LLC

Rathdrum ID 83858

ph: 208_819_3206

steve.aspenhomes@

cda.twcbc.com

A Hobby Out of Control

William "Bill" Locklin

"By engaging with the community, you'll make connections that form part of your burgeoning support network, you'll meet individuals who will become your friends and allies, and you'll increase the exposure of your enterprise, which is almost always a desirable thing.

It took me a while to figure out where I wanted to put my roots down, but when I did, I went forward at full speed. I advise any burgeoning entrepreneurs to spend some time traveling, figuring out what areas of their region, their country, their world, suits them best. After all, it's much easier to get involved locally and stay interested if you actually like the people and place you're getting involved with.

After about three years traveling the continental United States with my wife and daughters, we all decided more or less together that it was time to return home to Southern California. With my wanderlust mostly taken care of by three long years on the road, I was ready to find a place to stay for a long time.

Redlands, California happened to be this place. Not far from the Victorville train station where I was abandoned; not far from Lucerne, where I'd ridden backwards on a burro through my boyhood; not far from the Hemet farm or from the Colton cement plant in which I'd first learned about electrical work. Yet still far enough that I didn't get too caught up in the old memories, which weren't all that great.

Redlands was known as a family-friendly place, a nice community in which to raise your kids and get old. The climate and air seemed good for my youngest daughter's asthma condition as well-those of many of the towns we'd been living in during our trip hadn't been so good. So, having found our place, now it was time for me to get going.

One of the first things I did was to buy an old, run-down orange grove. There was plenty of room here for my old Quonset hut, which had largely been collecting dust over the past three years. I moved it here to Redlands from Colton and started up again.

There were a ton of successful agricultural owners in the area, and it's in this field-large agricultural/industrial electrical systems-that I began to concentrate. Doing a good job was only one aspect of building a successful contracting business, however. Redlands was a very tight-knit community, and to get anywhere you had to become a part of it.

And so I did."

Excerpt from recently published book of Nightscaping's® owner and president William J. Locklin

Congratulations Bill!