Which housing for LED strip driver in the garden (and sanity check on other bits and bobs)

[pedr0]

Hi,

I'm hoping to put a 3m run of led strip in my garden and am mainly looking for advice on the driver housing. However, all things told it's looking like this might cost £70-100 just for this 3m run , so I would also appreciate any pointers if I can do this cheaper.

I'm thinking of Aurora/Enlite IP67 24V 9.6W/m strip EN-ST324/30 @£7.84/m.
I'll house it in a corner profile (yet to be found)
And I'll probably get a knightsbridge 50W dimable driver 24DC50D

Most of the IP rated drivers I've found are really high wattage, but I've read it's better to try and ensure the load is at least 50% of the driver full power. Hence why I've gravitated towards the modest-powered Knightsbridge driver (good price too). But it's not IP rated.

The driver will need to live outside, so I need to put it in an IP box. All my other boxes are going to be the plastic wiska boxes. But will the driver get too hot in one of these? Would I be better going for a metal box, and if so, where can I get such a thing? Or should I try and find an IP rated dimable driver?

 

[ericmark]

First point is careful on the name "driver", really a driver is a current controlled device often with a voltage range up to around 70 volt, the LED is a current dependent device. However we tend to build the driver into the package, it may be a simple resistor, or with AC a capacitor, or a pulse width modulated unit (PWM) some DC units have a voltage range of 10 - 30 volt. The fixed voltage driver should really be just called a power supply, and you can get some really large 24 volt power supplies.

However the problem is volt drop, this was where I first saw drivers used, on a run way, all the lamps were supplied from current transformers wired in series to ensure all lights had same lumen output, so 70/3 = 23 so you can have around 22 LED lamps from a driver all with same lumen output, as wired in series.

But most the decorative lighting is a simple 3 or 6 LED's (12 or 24 volt) and a resistor, there is no real control so as you get to end of run the LED's are dimmer, so in the main it is one run per power supply.

As to IP rated everything has an IP rating even if IP11, all it is is an easy way to say what resistance the item has to the environment. What it does not do is give insect resistance rating, the number of problems with spiders in electrics. But if protected from the majority of weather a IP54 unit will work for years outside. But IP54 says protected from splashes for 5 minutes, so buried in garden looking at IP68. So some thing like a bird box, so unit out of weather, and any water that does get in can drain out. I have an outside light under my eves that has been there before I moved in, and broken so no seal against rain, but the eves protect it, and it has been no problem. Wooden boxes with preservative on them tend to stop insects, so work very well for putting power supplies in.

 

[Sureitsoff?]

could you use solar powered led instead. i have just put two of these round a pergola
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/313535958812

were even cheaper when i bought