Brass Garden Lights – the most popular choice.

Brass garden lights have been on trend as the most popular range of garden lights in recent years and feature far more regularly than either aluminium, stainless steel or copper garden lights in current garden and outdoor lighting design.

Making the right choice for your garden style.

Homeowners are choosing garden lights that blend in with the style and surroundings of their home to satisfy particular safety, aesthetic and security needs, and in doing so, highlight their garden and it's special features. Brass garden lights ideally suit the classic style of Federation, Country Style and Contemporary-Modern homes, whether by the sea, in the city or in the country side. Brass lighting has a classic beauty, both antique and modern, handsome and memorial, splendid and burnished, solid and stout and excels in blending into the garden to perform whatever is the desired function.

Why choose brass garden lights?

Quality material:

Manufactured from pressure cast-brass or bronze, the construction of brass lights offers high-stability in harsh environments over long periods of time and will retain an aged finish not unlike a conventional brass garden tap or bronze sculpture.

Diverse range:

Whether you require task lighting for walkway areas, wall lights or spot lights, recessed lights, uplights or down lights, step lights or deck lights, you can buy them all in brass.

A Multitude of Applications:

Perfect for all garden lighting applications, but particularly so for sea-side gardens near coastal areas.

Choosing any garden lighting that will be exposed to the elements the quality of the materials is paramount. The choice of brass garden lighting, renowned for it's beauty, durability and classic appeal, is perfect.

Rock Around The Block stocks Aqualux Brass Garden Lights assembled in Australia, built to last and backed by one of the strongest and most competitive warranty programs in the industry.

Designing and building a delightful, inviting outdoor living space is a great way to extend the living area beyond the walls of a home while boosting street appeal and resale value. Enjoying a garden long after the sun sets is easily possible in the Australian climate.  With the installation of a comprehensive outdoor lighting plan, the period of use for exterior living spaces can be greatly extended.

The benefits of using the NEW MultiVoltage 24V-12VAC/DC LED garden lights.

Ease of Design
The best feature of this 24V-12V garden lighting system is the ease of creating your design. All the hassle previously required to design a comprehensive outdoor lighting plan ensuring there is no voltage drop over a long run of lights, is gone.

In the past, garden lights were 24V. This changed to 12V around 25 years ago when cheap hot halogen dichroic bulbs were created for household use, and then wrongly used in enclosed garden lights using  12V incandescent auto bulbs.
This was a backward step for garden lighting because of the inability of “low pressure” 12V to push Voltage long distances without a substantial Voltage loss. To get 12V to work effectively even 30m from the 12V transformer, very thick & expensive copper cable was required.

Latest Technology
Utilising the latest technology is a stand out feature of our 24V-12V garden lighting system with the huge benefit of optimum performance over conventional 12V garden lights. This latest technology uses our multi-Voltage LED bulbs and light fittings, our thin 3.3sq mm cable, and is powered by our outdoor rated 24V AC transformers.

Significant Cost Advantage
Lower installation and running costs are achieved by the use of the thin cable and by the use of LED's . By using LED's which have a long bulb life, a quality light output with low power usage is produced.

Superior Performance
The issue of Voltage drop with our MultiVoltage 24V-12V LED lamps over hundreds of metres, is no longer a problem. Simply put, it means that even the very last light in a long run of hundreds of metres, will be as bright as the rest. The superior performance of this system over 12V lighting systems is very valuable feature.

Quality Lighting Selection
We supply the Aqualux Landscape Lighting range which is assembled in Australia, and built to last. Checkout the comprehensive garden lights range.

Consider an upgrade of your garden lighting tothe NEW MultiVoltage 24V-12VAC/DC LED .

Garden pond pump choice.  What to consider...

1. To keep electrical consumption as low as possible, choose the pump that gives the correct performance without the need to throttle it back. Relying on a tap controller to restrict the flow on a large pump wastes electricity so choose a pump to give the appropriate, unrestricted flow.

2. Decide upon the appearance and actions you want the pump to provide. Is the pump required to pump water to a fountain or waterfall, or to circulate water around a pond or watercourse, or is it to pump water through a biological filter, or all of these combined? It's recommended that you circulate all the water in your pond once every 2 hours.

3. In some ponds, it's better to separate the pump actions and use 2 pumps. Use 1 pump to run 24/7 through a biological filter to keep the water clear and healthy and use the second pump as required to run the fountain, waterfall, wet wall, or sheer descent feature.

Information you'll need...

a.  Pond volume (length x width x depth).
b.  Head height for lift where you need to pump water up to a waterfall. This measurement is the vertical height between the surface of the water (pump reservoir) to the horizontal plane level to the outlet of the pipe. The higher the head, the higher the pressure required. Pumps with lower head capability use less energy.
c.  Tubing length required to take water from the pump up to a waterfall or pond filter system or to direct water to some other area of the pond. The larger diameter the better. Larger is better as it allows for less resistance.
d.  Determine watercourse dimensions. A pump for a watercourse or stream requires a high performance pump depending on how much water you want flowing. A watercourse of 100mm of flat water requires 1000litres / hour.

 1.  Autumn's the best time to prune back waterplants and remove excess root mass in the pond. So get your gum boots and rubber gloves on, grab your secateurs and get into the pond and cut back the overgrowth. Don't forget to clear out the sludge on the bottom as well, with either a scoop or a pond vacuum. Before you begin – turn the pump off and leave it off while you're in there stirring up the mud. Wait another 2 hours after you've finished & then turn the pump back on so that any floating debris has had a chance to settle to the bottom.

2.  If you try to clean a pond by emptying all the water out and then scrubbing out the mud, you're wasting your time and effort. You'll destroy the eco-system that's been developing in the pond and it'll take at least another 6 weeks to grow back! It's perfectly fine to replace say one third of the current dirty pond water with clean water, but no more than that.

3. Give your pump a clean and service. Lift the pump out of the pond, disassemble it and clean out the rotor and the recess from where the rotor was removed with a toothbrush. Make sure all the bushes are put back on the axle shaft. You will increase the life of the rotor / impeller assembly with this service procedure. Be sure to always keep the pump well off the bottom of the pond to reduce solids intake by sitting it on an upturned pot, or some bricks.

4. If you have a biological filter, go for gold and give it a service too. We recommend that UVC lamps are replaced every Spring to get the maximum performance over the hot summer. Remember that biological filters are sewerage treatment plants for your pond – not vacuum cleaners or debris filters. Your filter must work dirty, but be porous enough to allow the beneficial bacteria happily living within the barrel's bio media to work by reducing water toxicity. Clean foams in pond water (not chlorinated water) only when choked and only ever partially.

This was our response, which we hope is useful to others.

How do you find the performance of the pump in the British sun? We hear from customers here in Australia (where the sun is much stronger) that solar pumps just don't perform well enough yet to justify installing them.

Almost all the requirements for a basic fountain can be met by a Low Voltage fountain pump e.g. the British made Hozelock Cascade 700LV.

There's only one real disadvantage of Low Voltage pumps and that is getting the cable in (which can be a problem if the surround is concreted/paved) but Low Voltage cables can be buried and hidden with ease (yourself, no electrician required) and are safe.

Lastly, if you're using a solar pump to try to save electricity, these small pumps only use 15W which would cost you about $30 a year in Australia.

What are your thoughts on solar?

We hope that one day soon solar pumps give enough performance, but they really will need a battery backup (like a hybrid car) to be able to run long enough that your pond health is maintained.

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We look forward to many more years of success as Australia's leading online garden hardware store.

Yours in gardening solutions,

The RATB Team