DIY Garden Project – Patio Lighting & Finishing Touches – Part 6

This video shows the final touches to our DIY garden project — finishing the sleeper steps with concrete and paving slabs, building a rockery, levelling and grass seeding the lower section, and adding ambient garden lighting with festoon, LED strip and fairy lights, all on remote switches. I also plant some climbing plants below the trellis arch to complete the transformation.

Product links (affiliate):
Wireless switches: https://amzn.to/3VdeDSL
24V LED power supply: https://amzn.to/42xlJFx
10m waterproof LED strip (warm white): https://amzn.to/3VgNfmN
Junction box: https://amzn.to/42xlSZB
Festoon lights: https://amzn.to/4mjkTmN
Christmas/ fairy lights: https://amzn.to/47EmsZ7
Wago wire connectors: https://amzn.to/4pF0P1t
solder tubes: https://amzn.to/463UwMZ

Check out the full garden project playlist here: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLF2pSkJX87bveXyaNB_GQ2_r8lkwhD-PF&si=CwMNlwO7MosVzozQ

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⚠️ Disclaimer: This video is meant for educational and entertainment purposes only. I am not responsible for any injury, damage, or loss caused by attempting the content in this video. If you are unsure or uncomfortable, please seek professional assistance.

#gardendesign #diy #lighting

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https://uppbeat.io/t/arnito/chanson
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https://uppbeat.io/t/the-lakes/photographs
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Hi guys, and welcome to part six of the garden project series, the last episode. Now, grab yourself a brew, sit back and relax while we finish off this garden project together. There’s still lots to do, so let’s get on with it. We need to finish off these stairs, finish the arch. We’re going to be grass seeding the bottom section of the lawn, building a rockery, and also installing some nice ambient garden lighting. And the best part about it is you can just sit back and relax while I do all the work. If you remember from the last episode, I built these sleeper steps and then filled it up with this hardcore. Now, the hardcore is a little bit loose in places. It’s not, it’s just bits of old concrete and brick. So, I start off by just putting some really long screws in around the edge of the sleepers on this top section. And the idea is that should help strengthen the concrete when we pour it on top. a bit like using steel rebar in concrete bases to reinforce it. These screws will help tie it all together. That’s the idea anyway. Whether it works like that, I’m not too sure, but it makes sense in my head. And now we’re going to mix up some concrete to pour on top of it. So, I’m going to be doing a 4:1 mix. So, four parts sharp sand, one part cement. [Music] Hey, [Music] hey, hey. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] [Music] [Music] I only had four bags of sharp sand and one bag of cement. So, this had to do. There was a little gap in the corner, but I’ll just fill that up with mortar when I come to lay the slabs. So, it’ll be absolutely fine. Don’t worry, cowboy. I had to wait for the concrete to set overnight. So, in the meantime, I built a little rockery to go in the corner of the garden. [Music] [Music] [Music] So, with the concrete set, it was time to lay some more slabs. But first, I had to cut them down to size with 20 mil overhang. I think that’ll look quite nice. So, I just measure it, mark it out, and then cut it using an angle grinder. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] How’s it looking? How’s it looking, man? looking good. [Music] With the slabs cut down, I then mix up some mortar. This is just ready mix stuff, so it’s a bit more expensive, but I’ve only got four slabs to lay. So, just mix it with water. And you’re looking for a consistency a bit like this. You don’t want it too wet or your slabs will just sink. And then you don’t want it too firm because it’ll be hard to lay them. So, I pour out my first mix and then realize that I forgot to slurry the back of the slabs. Rookie mistake. I know it’s been a while since I’ve laid any slabs, but there we go. So, I spread out the mortar mix evenly, and then eventually I realize I haven’t slried the back of the slabs, so let’s just do that. Then, you are supposed to let this slurry primer dry before you lay the slabs, but I’ve already put a bed down, so I’m just going to be laying them anyway. I’m sure it’ll be fine. Yeeha. I then just use a rubber mallet to tap it down and bed it in position. I want it to be level across the stairs and then slightly sloped away from the brick wall so that the water runs off. So, let’s just check that for level. And it’s sloping away slightly. So, that’s just how we want it. I then just repeat the same process for laying the last three slabs. [Music] Tada! [Music] [Music] We took a little trip to the garden center to have a look at the climbing plants and get something to grow over these trelluses. Unfortunately, they didn’t have any of the nice smelling clitorises. So, we ended up getting some of these jasmines instead. And they’re going to have a really nice scent in the summertime when they come into bloom. And with the little lights popping through, I think at nighttime as well, it’s going to look stunning. So, let’s get these dug into the ground and I’ll plant them up in pure gardener world style for you. What are the chances? I came across this bloody pipe in the way where I wanted to put the plant. Now, you may be wondering why I’m not planting it in the center of the trellis and I planted it to one side. And that’s because we may put another type of climbing plant on the other side depending on how this looks. If it needs something to fill it out a little bit or perhaps we want a bit of color during the winter time, then we may put another climber in there because this is purely for the summer. I’m not sure whether it’s evergreen, so it may look a little bit twiggy when it comes to the winter. These plants have been in pots for quite some time, so they are positively parched. So, I give them plenty to drink and lots of words of encouragement. So, hopefully they like their new home and they enjoy climbing up this trellis. I think if I were a plant, there’s no place I’d rather be. I went a little bit mad with the Christmas lights and just completely covered the trellis in them. Um, I can’t remember. I think we got 50 m and I just used cable clips to clip it all over the trellis. So after rotivating the bottom section of the garden, I then just use my rough neck rake to level it off and get rid of any large stones. This is preparing it for the grass seed. So you want to rough it up a bit and make sure the soil’s nice and loose so when you sprinkle the seeds over it, it gets in between the soil and um it just helps it to grow basically. [Music] I then use a rake again just to lightly scratch the surface of the soil. And that’s to bury the seeds. And finally, because it was a hot day, I turned on the sprinkler just to water it in. Although that wasn’t needed for long because it’s been showering non-stop since. I’ve got a nice size waterproof junction box to put all the lighting controls in. Now, if you saw earlier, I turned on the Feson lights using a remote switch. So, I will show you how to wire one of those up in this video. Uh, but first of all, I’m just going to drill out a hole here to put a 20 mil gland in. And this will be for the main power coming into the junction box. I’ve got this decent quality cable to run into the junction box. And it’s already got a plug top on it, so that saves me a job. So, let’s put that cable into the junction box. I then strip it back and expose the cores. I then pull the cable back through the gland. So, there’s sort of 30 mil of the black insulation coming into the junction box. And then I just tighten it up. These are the wireless light switches I’m using, which I showed you a little bit earlier on in the video. And they’re about £11 at the moment on Amazon. So, I’ll put a link in the description if you want to get some. And I think this is a great way to do your garden lighting projects because it means you don’t have to run a switch wire all the way down to the bottom of the garden uh to control the lights from inside the house. You’ve got these remote switches which can be inside the house so you can switch your lighting circuits on and off remotely. Now I’ve got two of these remote relays and I’m going to have three different lighting circuits at the moment. But I’ve got a rather large junction box here just in case we want to add anything on later. So, let’s mount these remote relays inside the junction box, and then I’ll show you how to wire them up. I start by stripping back the wires from the main power cable coming into the junction box. So, I just strip the wires back, and then twist the strands together, and then I put them into these multi-terminal WGO connectors. We’re going to have one for the lines, one for the neutrals, and one for the CPC’s. So, just put that in there. And then we’re going to connect up the input side of our relays into these terminal blocks. Forget about the CPC because we don’t have a CPC on these relays. You just have line and neutral. So, put all the lines together and put all the neutrals together. So, that will give your relays power. And then on the output side, you can connect that to your lights. This wire I’m just feeding into the junction box is for the Feson lights which go around the patio area. And the relays come with these inline WGO connectors. So you can just put your line and neutral from the Feson lights in one side and then connect up the output side of the relay into the other end of the WGO connectors. So in this case on the output side of the relay the black goes to brown and the white goes to blue. Now the problem I’ve got with this transformer plug for the Christmas lights is that it doesn’t fit in here. and well, you can’t close it once it’s in there. So, to get over this issue, what I plan on doing is soldering my wires directly onto the back of this plug. And then obviously, we’ll put some heat shrink over it so we haven’t got any bare conductors. Then this transformer will go inside the waterproof junction box so that it’s not outside and it can’t get wet. To aid the adhesion of the solder to these pins, I’m just roughing up the surface using a small piece of sandpaper. I then put a small amount of flux on the pins. And this will also help the solder to stick. And then I just use some lead free solder to solder the wires onto the end of the plug pins. Lead free because I’m mad enough as it is. Once we’ve soldered those wires on there, I then realize I’ve made a bit of a mistake. Can you spot it? Yep. I’ve wired my colors around the wrong way. I thought I was looking at the plug from the other side for some reason, and I thought blue would be on the left, but it’s not, is it? It’s going to be brown on the left because we’re wiring it from this side of the plug, not the other side like we normally would. Anyway, silly mistake and well done if you spotted it. I’m going to be covering this up with some heat shrink anyway because obviously we don’t want any exposed conductors. So, I’m going to be starting off with a bit of black heat shrink and then I’ll recolor code the conductors so that it is correct. Well, sort of correct to old standards where the line and neutral conductors used to be red and black, but they’re now blue and brown, but I don’t have any blue and brown heat shrink. So, let’s just cut them off and nobody has to know. I then put one more 20 mil gland into the box, and this is going to be for the Christmas lights and some LED strip light. You can install as many different lighting circuits as you want, but just bear in mind each relay has a maximum current draw of 10 amps. So, just don’t exceed this. Although, lighting circuits tend to be very low current draw anyway, especially if they’re LEDs. So, unless you’re planning on installing the Blackpool illuminations, you should be all right with a few lighting circuits. So, I connect up my Christmas light transformer to the output side of the other relay. Um, so we’re going to have this on a separate switch and that means we can independently control the festune lights and the Christmas lights. So, I take the junction box outside and then just connect up the Christmas lights into the box and connect it into the transformer. Because the Christmas light cable isn’t perfectly round, it’s not going to seal properly in the gland. So, I put some insulation tape and wrap it around the wire. And that’s to make it so that it’s round. And then that way when we tighten it into the gland, it forms a waterproof seal around the cable so that you don’t get water in the junction box. I’ve got a little bit more grouting to do on these steps. But before we do that, we need to seal the sandstone. So, I just paint it using the sandstone sealer that I did an experiment on in one of the previous episodes. And I’ll put a link below to the full garden project series if you’ve missed any episodes and feel free to go back and check it out. Okay, I’ve got this outdoor LED strip, warm white. It looks really good quality, actually, and it comes with this 3M double-sided tape on the back of it, so you can stick it wherever you want. The only trouble is the wire it comes with isn’t very long. And this connector is not going to be waterproof. So, I’m going to begin by cutting this off. And then I’m going to connect that onto this doorbell cable here so I can extend it to the junction box. Strip this insulation back a little bit to give us something to solder onto. Although both of these wires are white, one’s actually got two lines on it and one’s got one line on it. The two I always put on on the black. And to connect these together, I’m going to use some solder shrink tubes. We want to get the right size. I think reds will do this. I’m just going to push these wires together and twist them. And do the same with the the red. And now we just push our solder tubes over the connection. So the solder ring is over the copper. We do the same on that one. push that over there. And then I’m going to get some heat on it. You can use a lighter, but I’ve got a heat gun. So, let’s just shrink this down. Oh, hell. Nearly took my eyebrows off. Now, you just let it cool and you’ve got a nice waterproof connection there. Okay, I’ve just put a little bit of heat shrink over these um because I burnt off some of the insulation there. And now I’m going to get this big heat shrink tube and put it over the whole lot. And then let’s shrink that down. Now I’ve got a nice waterproof connection there. It comes with these as well, inline connectors and for going around corners. So, we’ll be able to use those. I’m going to be putting these warm white LED strip lights around the edge of this fence so that it frames the patio area. And with the LED strip lights pointing down over this slatted fence, I think it’s going to look really nice and modern. Now, the warm white LED strip light does come with the 3M backing tape, but I’m going to be using a bit of hot glue as well, just because I’ve had it in the past where you use the double-sided tape and then it gets warm and kind of peels off. Another good thing about this LED strip is that you can cut it every few centimeters. So you can get really precise measurements. Whereas sometimes you can only cut it every sort of 10 cm and then either your LED strips too long or too short. Whereas with this you can get it really nice and accurate. It also comes with these little crimps so it’s really easy to connect up to the doorbell cable. I run the wires up and over the arch, hiding it in between the trelluses. I then drop it down the other side and run it through the fence, obviously hiding the wire along the way so you can’t see it. I then reconnect the LED strip on the other side of the gate and continue running the strip light all the way around to the end of the fence. [Music] To power this LED strip, you’re going to need a 24vt DC power supply. And depending on the power consumption of the LED strip light you go for and how long your run is will depend on the size of power supply that you need for it. So, I’ll put links in the description to the 10 m LED strip light I used and the power supply to go with it. [Music] [Music] And that’s our transformer for the LED strip light in our control box. And I’ve just connected this to the output side of one of the relays. So that will come on with the Fesoon lights. And that’s the output there going to the strip light. So let’s just put the lid on that so that it’s all waterproof. And then we’ll be hiding this amongst the rockery so you won’t see the control box. [Music] This project has definitely not been easy. And I have to say I’m pretty glad that it’s over. But thank you ever so much for watching this series. I hope you’ve enjoyed it. If you have, please don’t forget to give it a thumbs up. Consider subscribing to the channel if you’re not already subscribed. And if you click that alarm bell, you’ll get notifications when I post new videos. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. [Music] Heat. [Music] [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] [Music]