It's late winter, which is when a young man's fancy turns to things he'd like to do with the garden. Me, too.
We had a lamp post at the end of the drive way, and we intend to have one again. When that gets reinstalled, we want to put in a power socket, unswitched, at its base. We have one now that's up in the corner of the front landscaping next to the house, so this would be just a matter of extending that power line down to where the lamp post is. At the same time, we want to extend the power line along the sidewalk and install an unswitched power socket somewhere about half to three quarters of the way along the front of the house. Both of the new sockets would be used to power garden tools, and also Christmas lighting.
Speaking of lighting, we want to put some in the front of the house, in the landscaped area. We've wanted to do something out there for quite some time. The landscaped area is roughly oval, bisected by a walkway, with a large tree in one half and an almost-as-large tree in the other. We'd like to do something to pick out the prominent growing features, and to provide some security of a sort. The current idea is to put two small floodlights in at the far corners of each half, aimed at the tree in that half, as well as the house behind it, and to put six or so perimeter lights around the curve of each half, both to illuminate the greenery when it's in season and to outline the area, generally. This new lighting would be controlled by a switch that's currently unused, down in the garage, on an array that controls the garage interior and exterior lights, as well as the lamppost.
What would really be nice is some kind of remote that could operate, and show the status of, all of the outside lights, so that we wouldn't have to hike down to the garage to do it, but I suspect that's far beyond any of the local people.
I'd say 'that's the plan', but it's much too nebulous for that!
4 comments:
All you need is money, honey, and they can do anything!
Not around here, they can't. They're competent, but not adventurous.
We're in the process of figuring out the external lighting - we need some! When there's no moon, it's very dark around here. Especially at night... :-D
I've got a wiring diagram started for an entire lighting system! A motion detector light for the driveway, with light detector lights for the end of the driveway. Both will be on an interior switch so I can see where I'm going when I put the trash out. But there's another switch to make sure none of it comes on when we don't want it to. (Well, it's actually the same switch; it's what's called a "4-way system") Additionally, there will be a few outlets for electric garden tools, etc.
All I need is the permit (it's not a project I can do and hope no one notices...) and the time. Oh - and the lights. I've got the conduit, the cables and the various boxes I need. I'm hoping to install it this spring.
I'm looking forward to seeing where I'm going when I take the trash to the curb.
Carolyn Ann
I never quite understand when a permit is needed. I tend to think that projects which substantially alter the property, or would cause noxious aromas and the like, do, the rest don't. I am sure that that's not the case, though, so I tend to use the New York theory -- if they didn't see it, it didn't happen.
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