Vol.1 No.16
16 October 2002


Hard Wiring Your Room Box Part l
By George Hoffman

We (The Hoffman Collection) began making room boxes in the 1970's and used a hard wire system designed by our son Mark. The advantages listed below we find have worked well and been easy to maintain.

Note! The type of wiring system I describe lends itself to room boxes. Dollhouses may be hard wired too but will need more thoughtful planning as space is required to route wiring from floor to floor and to the individual rooms.

Advantages of hard wiring:

• Hard wiring can be routed through small areas
• Hard wiring bends to shape and holds the shape
• Solders easily and ensures better contacts
• Shrink-wrap covers the solder joints
• Removes the danger of nails short circuiting the system
• Different color wire makes it easier to view each circuit
• Positive connections with less failure

Mark designed a Formica panel that is built into the side of the room box. The panel has switches to operate each circuit, a terminal block, a circuit breaker fuse, and a panel-mount jack. We connect the panel-mount jack with a 1/8" phone plug that has a zip cord attached to it and runs to the transformer plugged directly into the electrical source. Keeping the transformer out of the room box eliminates the heat build up and reduces or eliminates the need for additional venting in the box.

You may want to review the previous issues of "Constructing a Room Box using Foam core" listed on the Forum page; it will give you a better perspective of the project.