I need some help with a lighting problem-I have two loops of the Malibu low voltage lighting around the garden and path, intermittenly one of the loops will start flashing and then go to a longer off/on cycle- checked all the connections etc, I swapped the transformers and the problem changed to the other loop. In the course of troubleshooting I noticed one transformer is 88 watts and one is 44 watts-88 solved the problem 44 caused it…now here’s the question, I have two other 44 watt transformers (I bought four sets-cheaper than buying loose additional lights and cable to get the setup I needed) can I, and if so, how do I wire up two 44 s to one loop to provide additional wattage while maintaining the 12 volts? I know buying a 88 watt unit is the easy answer but I’d rather use what I’ve got and spent the $ on a new piece of rolling stock or a half circle of track. Also just splitting the loop and running half on one 44w and half on another requires another wall puncture and snaking the wire under a sideway. Any help would be gratefully appreciated…Thanks
You COULD wire the two 44w transformers in parallel -but this is not advisable. ONLY if you can guarentee that there are exactly the same number of turns on each side of the transformer, and the phase out of the output terminals is the same -can you do this. The safest bet is to buy an 88w transformer. regards ralph
I agree with Cabbage you are asking for trouble limking two units together, Think of other people who may touch some thing and get a shock from it. This may not happen BETTER safe than sorry.[2c]
You have another solution. Use both of the 44 watt transformers by cutting the circuit in half. What you have done in put in brighter bulbs in your malibu’s. The 44 watt unit most likely came with six lights, each with a 4 watt bulb. You probably add a few more lights to the string. If you had kept the 4 watt bulbs and 10 or less lights you should not have had a problem. Like me, you probably thought that the light given off was not bright enough so I went to the store and purchased some bulbs with a higher wattage. My malibu string had 8 lights with 4 watt bulbs (for a total of 32 watts) when I stuck in a bunch of 12 watt lights (now I’m at 96 watts of bulb being run by a 44 watt transformer.) Things start blinking off and on, getting rather warm, smoke starts to leak out of the wires. I went out and got another 44 watt transferor, a set of 10 watt bulbs, some wire and split the circuit in half. What was one circuit is now two circuits and all works well.