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Transformers and wiring under the bench...  Under the bench was a different story - this is where the tangled web of wiring is now situated. Not all of the lights are powered from these outlets though. As in previous years, two external cabinets housing extra relays and outlets were situated next to the front door, meaning less cables needed to pass through the hole in the floor or out through the window. To control these cabinets, and other relays for low voltage lights up in Central Command, a pair of DIN sockets were added which feed 24 volt control signals from the sequential switcher unit to the relay coils. There are unswitched loop-through outlets for each 110 volt transformer too - the grey outlets with yellow covers supply 110 volts direct to one of the outdoor cabinets. They were removed from the fronts of the three transformers leaving just one outlet on each where before there were two.
In the hole left behind in each transformer, I plan to add a delay-on relay that will let me set a time (around 0 - 10 seconds), after which the transformer will switch on following application of its 240 volt supply. There were a few days when the timer switched on but the surge from all three 3KVA transformers kicking in at the same time was enough to trip the 240 volt breaker. Most of the time when this happened I was there to hear the *thump* of the contactor pulling in and quickly dropping out again, so the breaker could be reset. But a couple of days it happened while I was at work, meaning I came home to a dark house and a feeling of worry as to what could have caused the failure. Adding a delay-on timer to each transformer will allow me to set them so they come on one after the other in a similar way to the lights themselves, preventing one large surge from occuring and hopefully solving the breaker-tripping problem. I did replace the breaker with a C-type, slower acting one, but it still tripped occasionally. |
