Our solar gnome house project started as a way to make the loss of a beautiful catalpa tree a little more enjoyable. By saving the stump a little taller than normal, we were able to use the remaining stump to construct the gnome house. The stump was hollowed out by carpenter ants that lost their home, and we’ve treated the area. The center of the stump provided the opportunity to light the windows and doors of the gnome house. It also provided an area to store the battery and solar controller inside the tree itself.
We would like to give a special shout out to my sister, Anne Wallraff for making the stained glass windows. With very little direction from us, and an open slate to start with she came up with some pretty awesome designs. The round gnome window is a special touch that really sets the project off. We featured it at the top of the house so that it’s located at eye level and seen by everyone that checks out our project.
The solar controller that was purchased for this project was perfect for the application. It has a set of switches that allow the user to control the on & off aspects of the lights; or whatever else you decide to power with it. This allows us to set the lights to come on at dusk, and keep the lights on for a predetermined amount of time. This saves the battery power so that the battery doesn’t get completely drained every night, and has some power left for the next night, should the following day be less sunny.
The light sockets and LED lights are very inexpensive, and actually proved to be a little two bright. As darkness fell, and the lights began to glow, they were so bright that they washed out the beautiful stained glass. By taking a little brown paint we had around, and applying it to one of the three LED’s on each light bulb, we were able to reduce the light output to what you see in the video. This is much more gentle lighting. It doesn’t reduce the amp draw from the lights, but they don’t really draw enough amps to be a problem for the small solar system.
Below are links to some of the products used in the construction of the house. We welcome your questions on the project and would love to see your gnome house if you have one.
Happy gnome house building!
Greg & Angie Thill
Battery Box:
www.amazon.com...
Battery:
www.amazon.com...
Solar Charger system (20 watt system used / 30 watt system linked):
www.amazon.com...
194 Light Bulb Sockets:
www.amazon.com...
194 LED Light Bulbs:
www.amazon.com...
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