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Here
you see the house primed and tape-wired for electricity. There are two circuits - one
which will handle about 30 bulbs, and one which will handle up to 12. Look on the bottom
of the house - see the little bits that are circled? They are actually running through
slits to the 'crawl space' under the house. The power transformers plug into two places
underneath. Before starting, I decided I needed to know where the lights would be. And in order to determine that, I needed to know where the furniture would be! So I put all the furniture inside. Then I was able to see where I wanted wall sconces, where table lamps would go, which fireplaces would have "burning" fires in them, etc. and mark placement with a pencil. |
| All of the rooms will have overhead
light fixtures, which will be wired into the tape on the floor
above via a small hole (yet to be drilled). You can see the tape going up, across and down
the other side of the first and second floor doors. Both will have a pair of sconces.
There will be a pair of coach lights on the outside of the front door, too. They will be
connected to the tape inside. Last night I took careful photographs if each room as a visual log of the wire placement. Then I wrote out the wire placement in each room in a notebook. An example: "One inch in from back, across width of room. Back to 2" from front in middle of room." Inside, I will be using sconce adapters by Cir-Kit, which are first wired to the light fixture, then simply plugged into the tape right through the wallpapered poster board. The tape on the floors will be covered after I install the various finished floors. I plan to construct the flooring on mat or poster board cut to the shape and dimensions of each room. Then the baseboards will hold them in place. |
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I drilled holes in the center of some of the rooms so I could thread the wire through from below and connect them to the copper tape on the floor above for each ceiling fixture. I also drilled holes for outside sconce lights on either side of the front door. The inside sconces are connected using dollhouse sconce adaptors, which allow you to plug the light in to the wall where you want it. |
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My advice: get Tom Berkner's (Earth & Tree Miniatures) eyelet insertion tool. This wonderful tool makes light connecting easy! Also, test, test and test again as you go. Before connecting it, test your light to be sure it works, by touching the two wires to the two prongs on the transformer's plug (don't cross those wires!). Test the tape with your test probe. After you connect the light, test to be sure everything lights up. Don't skip any of these steps -- you will regret it! On to More Progress....
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