soffits

on thursday, i spent the day changing wiring for the soffit lights. the lights will be controlled by a motion sensor, or can be forced on with a switch by the side door. the sensor and switch are located at opposite ends, with three soffit lights between them.

i ran two 12-2 cables, both starting at the switch. one hops between the soffit lights and lands at the motion sensor. between lights, hot and neutral are distributed on black & white wires. at the last light, only neutral is carried to the sensor. the other cable runs from the switch straight to the sensor. this carries hot on black, and carries switched hot on white (connected to the sensor's red wire.)

the wall switch will either connect the black wire of the lights directly to hot when switched on, or it will connect black to the red wire of the sensor. this way i can keep hot & neutral fed to the sensor at all times, and only switch the red line to the lights. the sensor automatically starts in a test mode when power is restored to its hot & neutral.



anyhow..

friday, katie & i visited ed. at the end of the day, i stopped at the lot and put up some soffit panels.

on saturday, i installed the rest of the soffit panels and window trim for the south wall. the recessed lights i used are of the type with two mounting bars and a housing that slides along the bars. i mounted them such that they can be slid along the direction of the wall. as the soffit panels went up, i moved the light so that its corresponding hole would only be within one panel. i nailed up the piece, then used a roto-zip type tool to cut out the hole. this produced tons of tiny shards of pvc showering over me and covering every inch of me. definitely requires goggles.

i stuck around until dusk and powered the lights to see how bright they are. they did a good job of illuminating the entry and walkway, however the yellow bug lights i installed have a strange, neon-ish color to them. maybe it will grow on me..