Good day! We're about to settle on our new property and I'm doing a few value adds to the place at cost of materials, like ducted AC, total cost will be around 2k. (Sparky by trade) Anyway at the front of the property we have a short 6m driveway and carport sized concrete area, with a path from there up to front stairs. Alternative path from street through some small trees to the front door. Currently zero lighting. If it were my PPOR I would want to put a few garden lights under the trees to illuminate the path and increase street appeal Add a security spot on sensor for car parking area. Both of these options are $150-300 total. Not heaps of money. But my partner and others have made a fair point: will that add value or just add to the list of things I need to maintain. At some point doing heaps of landscaping and making exteriors come alive with lighting is worth something, but this is a 600k house in an outer suburb of Brisbane. I am chasing absolute premium rent for the area with a fully renovated house but there's a point of diminishing returns. Has anyone got some real life experience? On my own place we have 40m of digital led strip around the deck/eves which I can program in any arrangement I like and that's been a fun project and absolutely useless unless you love Christmas light displays as much as we do!
I'm actually in this space, we consult and install as well. We always recommend landscape lighting for the following reasons; safety, ambiance, extension of use (using outside more at night time) & resale, I guess the by product can be appeal too. In this case you've stated, would be more for safety and possibly resale especially being a tenanted property. With the right lighting, you will be taking out the pain points of walking up to the front door at night in complete darkness, the street appeal I wouldn't consider here.
If you were not a sparky, I would say definitely don’t bother with the garden lighting. We have garden lighting installed in our PPOR around 10 years ago, and in that time we’ve had maintenance issues quite a few times. It’s not just install and that’s it. Maybe just do a sensor light to illuminate from carport to front steps/door if possible. We recently bought solar garden lights from Bunnings $30 for 4. Spear into ground - perfect!
We're in Brendale. We go anywhere if the cost is worthwhile. Spent 3 months in Townsville and Cairns solo, building medical centres. This week I've done concreting /undergrounds for bollard lighting in a townhouse complex, installed a few AC splits in a house, A cctv system in a shop and some maintenance on a machine in a factory. I'm pretty flexible. Thanks to those for their input. Being sealed led units vs replaceable MR 16 with a gasket to leak and a DC driver, I'd say 3-5 years maintenance free would be reasonably expected.
I've been doing a big Reno at HP since September! Doing one gpo swapover isn't really worth it, but let us know! We have guys going to the sunny coast and down to Ipswich/Toowoomba as a service contract for a fuel station maintenance most days! Apparently I'm a decent concreter too, today's handiwork...
I would do it if you have the skills. Doesn't need to be over the top but some sensor (motion or light) are good safety features these days especially if there are stairs.
I'd probably opt for motion sensor for flood lights and PE + Time clock (on at dusk, off at 9pm etc) for any garden lighting, with switch to turn both off inside. For the cost of cheap Bunnings solar lights I can get lights and a transformer hardwired. Solar indeed sucks and it puts so much lithium waste into landfill
No worries. I like the cut of your jib so I was going to reach out if I needed something done but I'll probably restrict it to the medium to bigger jobs as I don't want to waste your time driving all the way out to where my properties are.
