What's Watts?

This post is mostly for my own information as I always seem forget how many light bulbs a transformer can hold and I wanted this to be readily available whenever I had to ask the question.  Hope you find it useful too!

Count the number of light bulbs you have connected (that's light bulb, not light fixtures - a 5 light chandelier counts as 5; a flourette or spotlight count as 3).  Look at the front of your transformer and find the OUTPUT watts (not input).  A 5 watt transformer will handle 8-10 bulbs; 10 watts 17 bulbs; 20 watts 34 bulbs; 40 watts 65 bulbs.  If you have too many bulbs you will need to get a larger transformer. 

 Here's a great link for troubleshooting tape wiring.

Here's a great link for wiring your dollhouse.

Junction Splice (attached to dollhouse).
Lead wire (white) plugs in to junction splice and is then screwed to the transformer.

The above photo shows a 40 watt transformer.  I have two of them that run most of the lights in the manor and the basements, and then three 10 watt transformers that run the chandeliers, outside lights and basement night lights.  That's a lot of lights!

I chose to run hard wire in the manor and I'm so glad I did.  It is fun to run the wire and then solder it to the tape wire that runs under the manor and under the sub-basement.  I've had tape wire in previous houses and it caused me much consternation.  Whenever it was humid out the lights would falter and if I had a light that didn't work it was a nightmare to figure out how to fix it.  With hard wire, lighting my dollhouse has been a breeze!

And as a side note - if you plan on wiring your dollhouse, be sure to run your wire (either hard wire or tape wire) to the side of your house.  It will be much easier to disguise.

Have fun and if you have any questions I'd be happy to help if I can.