Electric work - part two

It's been amazingly cold here on nights this week, also the nights are getting dark again. This has made me think of fall lately. I would not actually like to think of fall, I feel like the summer has passed so fast that I did not even notice it. There has not been many regular summer activities, I have not been to a single festival, I have not been to the beach, I have not been to a single wedding or batchelor(ette) party. Nor have I been sailing or spent time at someones cabin. Perhaps that is why I feel like the summer just disappeared. But it's only August, I can catch up, I could atleast go to a beach.

Well because fall came to my mind I thought I could atleast prepare for the season. On fall and winter the livingroom window becomes a mirror, it's so dark outside and so bright inside that you cannot see anything but yourself from the window. I think by adding a light outside the mirror effect of the window will disappear and the livingroom too would feel larger and more connected to the outdoors. Last year I had bought a spotlight to light up a thuja just outside the livingroom. The light had a leg that you could just stick to the ground, so I did that. Then winter came and the light was covered up by snow. It has a halogen light bulb, so it heats up, but not as much that it could have melted all the snow from the top. It would have needed to be on all the time for it to remain uncovered. So I needed to rethink it's placement. Also the lamp had a very short cord.

In order to lengthen the cord of the lamp I needed to change it completely. Ofcourse I could have added an extension cord, but it makes an unatractive bulge. I told about the problems I had with finding the correct size cable, the hole and seal for the cord in the lamp was very small and in the end I did not get the exact correct diameter so I had to shave off some of the rubber from the cord. It's not probably considered safe, but I was very carefull not to shave off so much that the wires would show and the shaved part went inside the lamp so it does not need to withstand elements as much as the rest of the cord.

When the lamp was reassembled, I attached it to the beam on the terrace and run the cord through a small gap of the conservatory roof supporting beams. Then I run the cord against the roof beams to see how much cord is actually needed. I cut the cord and added a plug to the end.

It seems that cords for outdoors use are only sold in black, at least here. The place where the cord runs is very visible, also the place I wanted to put it needed some touch up with paint, so I desided to paint the whole thing with cord and everything. If I do want to remove the lamp, I'd need to paint the area again, but I assume I'm not going to move the cord or lamp anytime soon.

Here is the view through the livingroom window without the light on and with the light on.

 

Do you see a difference there? I think there is a huge difference, it's not maybe too visible when all the lights are on inside but in that situation I don't think much any light outside will stand out.