Putting a damper on things.

Today the electricians were back finishing off a few loose ends. The low voltage wiring for the LED lighting through the hallway and in the living/dining room was on today's agenda. It wasn't long until there were new wires everywhere. But only a little while after that everything was fastened neatly into place.

With the wiring complete it was on to the next task. Big Matt started in on the sound dampening insulation that will separate the floors and every room in the house.

Now that we've finished the concrete ceilings upstairs things will be coming along quicker on the ground floor now.

-grampa dan

The big one is done!

Tonight my right arm is pretty tired. I imagine that Annie's and Phoenix's right arms feel much the same. We started at eight this morning and ten hours later we had covered about 1,200 square feet of dining/living room ceilings with twenty-one quarter yard mixes of fiberglass reinforced concrete. Matt was kept busy on the ground floor running the paddle mixer and concrete pump. We were mudding from the eight foot level up to the crown of the ceiling at about eighteen feet.

As Phoenix and I finished off the mudding, Annie and Sarah started sponging the partially dried concrete behind us. Once we finished applying concrete we switched to sponging as well.

Tonight the ceilings looked spectacular. The arched ceiling over the bridge intersected with the big arch perfectly - just as we planned.

And with that the upstairs curved ceilings are done. Now it is down the lower floor. The curved ceiling in the lower hallway is fifty four feet long. Thankfully we'll have a few days for our arms to recover before the lower ceilings are ready.

Lighting magic.

This week our HEICO LED light order arrived from Quebec where they were designed and manufactured. We have been working with their engineers to design and spec out the lights we will use in our new house. These LED's will be used to create indirect lighting effects in varous areas of the house. These areas include the living/dining room ceilings, down the long hallway and around the entry hallway. We'll also use the lights under the handrail in the stairway.

HEICO LED's are unlike any LED I've ever seen. They operate wihout any physical wire connections. Instead the LED system uses Contactless LED illumination powered by electromagnetic induction. In simple language we slip the LED modules over a 14 guage wire. There are no screws or fastners to attach the wires to the modules. The lights can be moved and positioned until they look perfect and then fastened into place. The only wiring connection to be made is at the transformer. It is a wonderfully simple system that is easily adaptable to whatever I need. True to my working style I do not have to plan ahead but rather just design as I built until things look just right. 

The order for the house was a good size one, four large boxes in all. The HEICO lighting system included the four different style LED modules, mounting clips, transformers and dimmers. The Heico engineers also included a wiring diagram to help us get it right.

Seeing the hundreds of pieces laid out looks a little intimidating but the Heico LED lighting system really is very simple to use. I can hardly wait to start putting the modues in place in a few weeks. It will be pure magic when we flip the switch I'm sure.

-grampa dan