|
|
|
|
|
If you intend to electrify your dollhouse, it is best to have a "game
plan" before you start the assembly of the house.
There are several methods and opinions as to what works best.
I'll cover one of them here.
Tape wiring is a very popular method and is easy to do and goes
rather quickly. I have found through personal experience that running the
tape wire behind baseboards, crown molding, door/window frames, and under
flooring is the easiest way to "hide" it.
Tape wire can show through paint and wallpaper if the proper steps
are not taken to conceal it. When
applying the tape wire to the house, try to run your tape along the
bottoms of walls, on floors, through doors, etc.
When you need to transition from one floor to another, I've found
that running the tape wire along the back exposed edges of the house is
ideal. This way, it can be easily hidden by channel molding.
If you want to have outlets for lamps, simply run a strip of tape
wire up the wall just enough so that it will extend past your baseboard by
1/4" or so. This allows
plenty of tape for the outlet to be plugged right in! It’s not necessary to know
where you're going to put each light fixture before you start, but
it's a good thing to at least have an idea.
This way, you'll know about how many fixtures, or bulbs, that
you'll be using...hence, what size transformer you'll need.
Transformers are supportive of the actual "bulb" count in a
dollhouse; not the fixture count. Many
ceiling fixtures such as Chandeliers come with numerous bulbs and each
needs to be taken into consideration.
Here's a guideline:
3 Watt Transformer will support up to 4 65ma
bulbs It is highly recommended that
you draw out on paper where your tape wire runs are located just in case
you need to access them at a later date.
Using this method will make drawing your electrical diagram (so you
can easily locate your tape wire in the future) easier because there's
minimal measuring. As
you’re wiring your dollhouse, it is recommended that you "test" your
lines along the way with a test probe; especially with each new
intersection and connection of a fixture. This will allow you to trouble-shoot as you go rather than
find out at the very end that something doesn't work. It can be a difficult task trying to find out where the
mistake is, and hence correct it, if you don't test as you go. For ceiling fixtures, the wiring
for these will connect to a tape run on the floor above via a small pilot
hole that can be pre-drilled in the spot where your fixture will go. Before attaching the ceiling fixture, be sure to run the
fixtures wire through the hole so that it can be attached at the floor
above.
|