Part 5. Lighting in and around your pool and spa can add significantly to the appeal and mood of your pool at night. This guide covers pool equipment to consider is building or expanding your pool system. This part addresses the components for lighting.
1. This pool was designed with a number of striking lighting features. The pool and spa and all of the water features have color changing lights. At night the pool and spa will be lit up in one color while the waterfall and bubblers will show another. The four laminar will also throw columns of changing light into the pool. Samples of these lighting effects are shown below.
2. The spa lit up in green.
3. The pool and one laminar lit in blue.
4. Lighting is also provided around the perimeter of the pool by the seating and up into the landscaping.
5. All the lighting is controlled by a touch panel inside the house. One button can activate any of these features singly or in groups. This is a picture of the Jandy Touch Panel mounted inside the house.
6. The lighting fixtures are powered by either 120V or 12V. The Laminar and Bubbler lights use 12V power so they require transformers to step the house power down from 120V. This picture shows the light junction boxes and transformers. The four (4) sets of power leads from the four (4) laminars are collected in the right hand junction box and fed to the right hand transformer. The two (2) sets of power leads from the two (2) bubblers are collected in the left hand junction box and fed to the left hand transformer.
7. Most light fixtures in and around the pool and spa require a plastic or metal niche like the one shown at left. The niche is secured in a hole constructed in the side or base of the pool and is grounded to the base grid built into the foundation of the pool. Niches are designed for concrete or fiberglass/vinyl pools.
8. A Fish Tape like the one shown at left is used to string wire through the underground tubing between the niche and the control panel at the side of the house.
9. This picture shows the insertion of the Fish Tape into the electrical port of the niche. The green wire is a separate grounding wire.
10. When the Fish Tape comes up at the other end of the tubing, the electrical wire is attached and pulled back to the niche with the Fish Tape. This same method is used to replace a light fixture or upgrade it to a newer technology like LED lights.
11. This pictures shows where the lighting wires are connected to the control panel.
12. Some lights, like this pool's Bubblers, run water and light through the same fixture. This niche shows two ports, one for water and one for the electrical wire.
13. This is the light fixture for one of the Bubblers - water comes up through the middle and lights are installed around the circumference.
14. This concludes our guide on setting up equipment for in ground pool lighting.
If you have any other questions about pool and spa products please do let us know - we are here to help!