Prepping for Wiring

 

Watch the video here.

 

 

This week for my Tuesday video I thought I would have you join me as I did some of the prep work to tape-wire the Beachside Bungalow. I also took the opportunity to explain a bit about the parts of the system we are testing.

So we start with the Transformer. This is what allows the electricity that is powering our real house to work to power the lights in the dollhouse. Transformers come in different sizes and you do need to pick the one that is the correct size for the dollhouse you are wiring. If the transformer is too big it will give too much power to the system and among other problems your lights will burn out much faster. If it is too small you will not get much light and it will put too much of a load on the transformer.

The first step to picking a transformer is to do a count of how many and what kind of light fixtures you will be using in the dollhouse. You need to count how many bulbs will be used not how many fixture you will be using. So if a fixture has 1 build it counts as 1 but if you have a fixture for say over a dining room table and it has 5 light bulbs that will count as 5 not 1. I hope that makes sense. The thing that really counts here is the milliamps that the lights are drawing and a quick and easy way to figure this is simply to count the bulbs. Much less math to do that way.

The packaging for the transformer will tell you how many bulbs it can handle. If you are ordering online that information should be in the description of the transformer. As a general rule a 5W transformer can handle up to about 7 bulbs, a 10W up to 15 bulbs, a 20W up to 31 bulbs, and a 40W up to 62 bulbs. You have some leeway on this I am aiming for between 10 and 16 bulbs in my current build. This will give the correct amount of drain on the transformer and not over power the lights.

Some of those lights will not be installed for a while as I decorate and find them. In the meantime I will need to be careful to not leave the small number of lights turned on for very long at a time.

The next part in the system is the lead-in wire. This is what connects the transformer to the dollhouse. One end fits onto the screws on the transformer and the other end plugs into the junction splice. Most of the time these wires have an on/off switch on them. This makes life much easier and is well worth making sure yours does.

The junction splice is the funny little flat object with the nasty looking spikes coming out of it. This is what the other end of the lead-in wire plugs into. Those spikes are put into the tape wire to allow the electricity to flow through the dollhouse.

I like to test the system when I set it up. By that I mean when I sit down to put the lead-in wire onto the transformer I like to set up a test area on a small piece of foam core with a short piece of tape-wire. Then after I put the cord onto the transformer I plug the junction splice into this piece of tape-wire and plug the lead-in wire into it. I then plug the transformer in and use my test probe to make sure I have light. It is much easier to do this now than to wait until you have the wire in place in your house and it doesn't work.

Since these were all new just out of the package parts (except the tape-wire) I was pretty confident everything was in working order but I still always check it.

I hope this information was helpful to you. Be sure and join us on Sunday as I actually start wiring the house.

As always I do want to sincerely thank all of you for watching my videos and reading my blog posts. It means so much to me that you are supporting me in this way. If I could ask you all to do just a bit more by subscribing to the channel and liking the videos and leaving comments. Those help more than you can imagine. Also if you could pass the links on to your friends I would appreciate it so much.