General layout idea

[Torqumada286]

I was playing with my son in our backyard, when I had a bit of inspiration. With the way my mind works, it's always working on little things here and there until something breaks through. It's a bit like background processes in computer software. I looked around the yard and saw this:



Now this thing is currently filled with lots of stuff: Halloween and Christmas decorations, parts of my comic book collection and general crap, for example. However, I started thinking that it might be a really good place to place my controllers, mini director and anything else I want secured better and protected from the elements. So, I am looking for some advice of possible internal and external layout.

To begin with, there is no external power to the front of the house. When the house was built, no one was expected to use power outside. Previous owners put some outlets out on the back porch and I have used drop cords running around to the front of the house to run my static and Mister Christmas displays over the last few years. I had a new electrical box installed when we moved in (200 amp) and it has 4 external circuits that aren't currently being used. I had planned on getting some external outlets installed later this year to cut down or remove the necessity of using the drop cords. Now I have another idea.

There is currently no power going to the building. I was thinking I could run power to the building, with enough outlets to setup 4 controllers for now. (I only have two at the moment, but would have room for later expansion.)That would be the simple part. Getting the lines from out of the building to the rest of the yard is where I am really looking for ideas.

I was thinking of using banks of outlets, both inside and outside. The outlets aren't connected to the power, but allow you to plug the controllers in on the inside building and then the lines running to the lights or other systems would plug into an external bank of outlets allowing the power and control signals to pass through and on to the lights and other devices Has anyone used this kind of system before? What does everyone think of the idea?

Right now, the only problems I can see is the cost to set the system up and buy all of the extra extension cords. I already own several thousand feet, but to pull this off I may need to buy 3000 more feet to get it to work properly. I have no idea how much it would cost to My finances may not allow that for this year. I may have to go with the less expensive solution of putting some outlets on the front of the house and save the electrical project for next year.

Any constructive input would be greatly appreciated.

Torqumada

[james campbell]

this is just me but I had my controllers out in the elements the whole season,we had a ton of rain and I had no issues. Imho that would just be a waste of extension cords. I plan on putting all my controllers as close to the props as I can.

[kzaas]

I agree with James, as long as you put the controllers in a weather tight box, it would be better to place them as close to the decorations as possible. My first year I started putting them in the garage and ran extensions out to the yard for each channel. That is a huge cost for extension cords. I now place mine out in yard and use alot less cords.

[Aaron Maue]

james campbell wrote:

this is just me but I had my controllers out in the elements the whole season,we had a ton of rain and I had no issues. Imho that would just be a waste of extension cords. I plan on putting all my controllers as close to the props as I can.

+1

[Steven]

In addition to putting the controllers as close as possible to the display elements, I also wire things with harnesses to keep the extension cord use even lower. For example, This is the controller used on last year's mega tree:



Note the 9-pin Molex connector that carries 8 channels. The harness goes up the mega tree like this:



I use a similar harness for my 9-channel mega arch.

I don't use very many extension cords.