Some Landscape Lights Not Working? Check These First

With some landscape lights not working and the rest still on, check the GFCI and breaker feeding each transformer, then the timer or photocell. Next, look for fixtures buried in mulch or knocked askew, and for recent digging near the dark run. Past that, the fault is in the cable, a connection or the transformer, and needs a meter.

Before you start: what is safe to touch

Go out after dark first and note exactly which lights are off. One dead fixture, one dark bed and half a yard gone dark point to different parts of the system, and that note saves time whether you end up fixing it yourself or not. The causes behind each pattern are explained on our repair page, under what usually causes a section of landscape lighting to fail. This post covers only the part a homeowner can check without tools.

That part is everything above ground and outside the wiring: the GFCI buttons, the breaker, the timer or photocell setting, and the fixtures themselves. Opening a transformer housing, cutting into a splice or handling connections while the ground is wet is not on the list. Digging for a splice you can only guess the location of is how one fault in a bed becomes two. If a fixture is dim rather than dark, leave it closed. Dimming is usually an electrical symptom, and it is covered further down.

Check the GFCI and breaker

This is worth doing even though only part of the yard is out. Many larger systems run on more than one transformer, each plugged into its own outlet, so a single tripped outlet can take out the front beds while the back stays lit. Outdoor GFCI outlets commonly trip after heavy rain. The reset button is also not always on the outlet the transformer uses. A GFCI in the garage, a bathroom or on another exterior wall can protect that outlet from upstream, so if the transformer’s outlet has no buttons, go looking for the one that does.

Press reset, then check the breaker at the panel. If the lights come back and stay on, you are done. If the breaker or GFCI trips again straight away, stop there. Something in the system is shorting, and resetting it over and over is not a test.

Check the timer or photocell

When a system is split across transformers, each one usually has its own timer or photocell, and one of them on the wrong schedule looks exactly like a partial outage. Nothing has to be broken for this to happen. People leave timers on last season’s setting, and shrubs grow over photocells, and either one can keep a working system dark for months. A photocell that can see a porch light or a new floodlight may decide it is still daytime.

Check the clock against the real time, then the on and off times. Daylight saving time ends in early November, and a mechanical timer that does not adjust itself will be an hour out until someone resets it. A power cut can also wipe the settings on some digital timers. Lights that flicker, or come on at the wrong hour, point the same way: the timer, the photocell, or a connection working loose at the transformer. That last one is a repair, not a homeowner check.

Look for buried or knocked fixtures

Walk the dark area with a flashlight. Well lights sit flush with the ground and are the first to disappear under a fresh layer of mulch, while path lights get swallowed by a summer’s growth or a drift of leaves. A covered lens looks off from the patio even when the fixture is fine. Clear it by hand, keep tools away from the cable, and look again that evening.

A fixture knocked sideways by a mower or a rake is a different case. It may still be lit, just shining into a shrub or the ground. Leave the aim alone rather than bending it back by feel, because a stake forced upright can pull on the connection below it and aim set in daylight rarely matches what looked right after dark. Our outdoor lighting maintenance and repair page covers what a seasonal visit catches before it turns into a call.

Walk the run for recent digging

When one bed or zone is dark and the rest of the system works, the likely cause is a cable fault on that run, and most of the time the cable was damaged by somebody digging. Think back over the last few months. A new planting, an edger run along the bed line, lawn aeration, a fence post or an irrigation repair can all nick low-voltage cable without anyone noticing at the time. The break is often within a few feet of where the work happened.

Note the spot and roughly when the digging was done, then leave the soil alone. That note shortens the search for whoever traces the fault with a meter, and opening the bed yourself can add a second break to the first. If the timing lines up with a storm or a hard freeze instead, our piece on landscape lighting and Tennessee weather covers what that does to a system.

Swap the lamp, if the fixture has one

A single dark fixture in the middle of a working run is the one case where swapping a part yourself is a fair test, and only if the fixture takes a replaceable lamp. Many newer fixtures have an integrated LED with nothing to swap, so if yours is one of those, skip this step. For a replaceable lamp, turn the system off at the timer or unplug the transformer, let an older halogen lamp cool, and fit a new one of the same type and wattage.

If the new lamp lights, that was the whole problem. If it stays dark as well, stop there, because the fault is in the socket, the connection under the fixture or the voltage reaching it, and a third lamp won’t change any of that. For the wider picture of what fails and what drives the bill, see our outdoor lighting repair guide.

When to stop and book a repair

Some symptoms skip the checklist. A fixture that stays dim at the far end of a run is usually voltage drop, and a brighter bulb will not fix it. Faults that come and go with the weather usually mean a corroded connection, which can test fine on a dry afternoon. Fog or water inside a lens means the seal has failed, and drying the fixture out does not bring the seal back.

The faults Gemmell Outdoor Lighting sees most on repair calls are failed transformers, corroded connections, cut cable, water ingress and fixtures at end of life. Of those, only cut cable shows up in a homeowner check, and even then only as a likely location. That is also why a repair gets quoted after the system is tested: the fault has to be found before anyone can price it. Gemmell works on systems across Greater Nashville and Williamson County, including ones another company installed, from Franklin to Brentwood. If you have been through the checks above, get in touch and say which lights are out and what you have already ruled out.