Light up a roof?

Status
Not open for further replies.
I

IrishRugger

Senior Member
Customer stops me yesterday and wants to know if he can have the roof on his new house lit by installing some type of exterior lighting along the lines of his roof meaning the ridges, peaks, valleys ect. He says he saw some houses in the south western US ( he wasn't specific exactly where in the region) done like this and wanted to know if there were any products on the market to do this. I thought of something like neon lighting or rope light but aren't there certain UL requirements as the installation of rope light such as factory made lengths, and just how well does rope light stand up to extremes in temperature and weather. Without mentioning rope light or anything else I asked him if he took any pictures, he said no.
Does anyone have any idea what I could tell him, or have any pictures so I can corfirm his idea with him? Common sense tells me that one would have to be very careful in choosing a product as well as installing such a system for accent lighting. I told him I would do some investigating. I appreciate you input.

P.S. This guy is a Plumbing Contractor
 
Yea, I do that every year in December. They're called Christmas lights. :grin: :grin: :grin: (Not my house btw, just pulled it off a Google search to assist in my obnoxious post.)

100_0856.jpg
 
I put up red and green NEON that I stripped off a job on my friends facia one Christmas. The neighbors HATED him for a while. It was intense :)
 
Residential outline lighting has been mostly done with rope light. I bet those new LED rope lights would excel at this application.
 
mdshunk said:
I bet those new LED rope lights would excel at this application.
Click to expand...
Especially with an RGB color mixer. In fact, why stop at the outline? Have you ever watched Deck The Halls? I'd love an LED matrix across my entire roof, minus the rest of the baubel... :grin:

18760874.jpg


This film was shot about 30 min from here. Here's the specs on the LED matrix from Color Kinetics:

- At full intensity, the 14,300 LED nodes drew just 7,150 watts of energy -- the equivalent of four average hairdryers.
- By comparison, wrapping the house in the same fashion with conventional exterior string lights would have drawn approximately 100,100 watts -- 14 times more than the LED installation -- yet without the capability for programmable effects.
- The electrical current draw of the entire LED installation was 126 amps -- which is the approximate draw of 1.3 average households.
- By comparison, the same configuration using conventional exterior string lights would have drawn 812 amps -- approximately 6.5 times more than the LED installation, or the equivalent of 8 houses' worth of power.
- Each tri-color node of iColor Flex SL incorporates a microchip that was custom-designed by Color Kinetics, making it an individually programmable "pixel."
- Filming was interrupted numerous times by small aircraft that were attracted to the set by the lights.
 
Last edited:
mdshunk said:
Residential outline lighting has been mostly done with rope light. I bet those new LED rope lights would excel at this application.
Click to expand...


Okay LED rope light I can see what you are saying one question marc, what would be a good & safe way to fasten rope lights to roof? Thee clips they have made for them arent designed to attach to shingles and ridge lines.
 
I service and maintain the lighting on this building:

vfiles26607.jpg


I wasn't the original installer though.

If you look at the dome roof you can see the silhouettes of the metal halide uplights. This may be the kind of thing you're looking for on a smaller scale.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top