1. Are the columns solar powered?
No. After an investment of two years toward research and development
of a solar-powered Landscape Lighting Column, we finally arrived at a unit
that could provide solid and acceptable illumination even during the length
of a New England winter. But, alas, we ran into a roadblock with securing the
preferred solar panels from the Argentinian manufacturer. Their inventory was
being gobbled up by the German Government. So we gave up and moved ahead with
this product, offered as a hard-wired unit requiring low-voltage wiring. Had
it been the States gobbling up the Argentinian's inventory, we would have felt
much better. But America appears no more capable of conservation and alternative-minded
options than a barnyard cow could be expected to recite poetry. It seems we're
heading backward from our last responsible energy policy way back in the Carter
Administration (In the first week of Reagan's administration, Carter's solar
panels on the White House were summarily removed).
Doesn't it ever occur to
you how obscene it is that the notion of poles and wires outside your home
have not changed, have not been improved or advanced since Edison wired J.P.
Morgan's home in NYC? By golly it's time for a change in the national sentiment,
away from an oil-based imported energy consumption, away from the minimum nutrition
of fast food outlets, from the fertilizers and steroid-fed livestock and while
we're at it, from the chain box stores that have homogonized our choices and
robbed us of the once healthy, thriving downtowns? It's scary how this dilemna
is not even recognized by so many Americans as a dilemna at all. Why, in Kentucky
they are proud of their fast food options and their Wall Marts, while
turning a blind eye to the rampant decimation of their once thriving little
villages, boarded up for twenty years now.
This was illustrated in the summer of 2005 during a road trip through Kentucky
that had Charles experiencing six county seats that had not one sit-down eatery.
Not a breakfast diner, nor a restaurant with waited staff. When asked, Charles
was proudly directed up to their Commerce Blvd, littered with an endless string
of fast food outlets. "Pretty much anything you want, we got down there
on Commerce Boulevard"
But back to solar: It is not uncommon that a site will utilize
existing panels to power their lighted columns instead of a low-voltage source
drawn from their local utility provider. As technology advances, we will
eventually modify the columns to solar power.
2. Do we need an electrician?
Probably. Unless you are handy with low-voltage, supplying the
Column area with trenched wiring. The Lighted Columns arrive with the wiring
stubbed out, the extra length of wiring fed out through the bottom
of the Column for a fairly simple junction below grade.
3. How do they fasten to the posts?
This is covered in detail on both the Installation
Guide, Product Specifications, as well as the Gate
Column General Information and Cost Page. The Columns arrive as 3-sided
assemblies that are simply slipped around your post, insuring your wiring
is fed out at the bottom before mounting the fourth side to the assembly
with the provided screws, plugs in the pre-bored holes.
4. Do they arrive fully assembled?
Didn't I just address this concern in the above item? So I need to repeat myself. The columns arrive as 3-sided assemblies. The fourth side is mounted once the Column has been slipped around your post and secured to your post. For wood posts, the columns are secured using the provided screws and pre-bored holes. For steel posts, it is necessary use the provided bolts, set to the pre-bored holes but requiring you to drill through the steel post on site. Okay, maybe I didn't cover it quite so thoroughly in the above item. I apologize.
That's okay. There must be a lot
of stress associated with a company that caters to an entire nation.
Stress? I experienced stress once back in the mid-80's on
one of the upper slopes at Squaw Valley in the Sierras during a total white-out
blizzard. Anyone with a brain was down at the lodge, which would explain
why I was not among them. It was so blinding that I could not even see
my skis. I had to negotiate 5 miles of a blue-diamond run in white-out
conditions and throughtout this odyssey I told God that I swore I would be
a believer if only he got me down alive. This was a hedging
assumption that such a God was listening and available to lend a hand to someone
who has throughout his life distrusted organized religion and the assumption
that man needs an organized religion to steer them toward good and away from
evil. As if Man were incapable of knowing one from the other without
the dictums and ultimatums drawn from doctrines such as Bibles and Korans and
ranting, fist-waving evangelicals.
Well, you apparently survived. So
did you keep your promise to God?
Promises of such a nature are less accountable
than those between real people. You are stressed. You say things. Fortunately
there were no witnesses. I survived, yes. A reprieve to live another
day, another decade, and for that I am thankful. But thankful to whom is
the eteranal question. Anyway, you're only allowed one question and you've
had more than. The next questioner, #5, has I believe been waiting
patiently for some time while you chat away as if we were old pals.
Hi, this is #5 and I don't mind. Really,
I rather enjoyed your story about God.
Hi #5. This is #4 and
don't you agree that Charles should just tell stories and forget about
these boring business FAQ's.
Your last reprimand, #4. One question only. Now let's listen
to what concerns #5 has regarding the Columns.
How do you know, Mr Prowell, that it wasn't God who saw to it
you survived the blizzard afterall?
I don't know, #6. I don't know.
#5. This
is #5, Mr Prowell, and my question was if we should seal
or stain the columns?
Sealing the columns is not necessary unless you prefer the aesthetics..
If so, you will probably want to slip out the plexiglas backing behind the
grids before doing so. Also, be certain to give the underside of the Column
cap the same seal as the upper, exposed top of the cap. otherwise it may
cup and warp.
Is that it? How come #4 got a
whole story with his answer, and he broke your rule about one question
per person. I
followed your rule and I get no story. Is it because I am a woman? You
treat women and men differently?
I apologize, madame. It could be because you are assuming
both #5 and #6. Which is it? Because you cannot be both.
Madame?
Maam?
Maam?
Miss?
My name is Rainbow Dove, for the record.
Dove. That reminds of a few years back we had a little incident
in Sebastopol back in the early 80's when Edgar Edgar and his son Edgar Edgar
Jr went dove hunting in the Laguna behind the Ford dealer and their one shot
ricocheted off a no-trespassing sign to carom off the side mirror of a new
F-150 and eventually clean through the front tire of little Adlai Means' new
tricycle and you'd a thought it was a gang war, given all the hullabaloo.
People over-reacted--hippies mostly, with names like Rainbow and Dove--and
they boycotted the Ford dealer, who had only the one truck to sell anyway,
and they had lots of meetings and basic hippy effrontery that resulted in a
sign posted on Hwy 116 that said: Welcome to Sebastopol
Nuclear free zone
Land mine free zone
Drug free zone
Pesticide free zone
Dove-free zone
6.
Can we use timers for the lights? And by the
way, my name is Frank and Mister is fine.
Yes. The timer can easily be installed within the column near
where the transformer is located, but your access to it becomes cumbersome,
as you must remove the cap, remove the light fuxture and it's supporting shelf,
to gain access. So it really is far more prudent to simply mount the timer
near the bottom of the Column, where it is more or less unnoticed, but accessible. You
can also elect to have the standard transformers replaced with a single sensor
transformer that mounts outside the columns--either at the house to allow you
the low-voltage trenching to the columns, or they can be mounted somewhere
near the columns themselves. We'll ask you, with your order, which you
prefer.
7. Can we choose a different plexiglas color?
Of course. As long as you source and purchase this yourself. We
will provide you with the sizes required. You can then simply slip it
into place within the slots and set the column cap on and you are done. You
will want to let us know if you prefer to do this over the standard white-light
plexiglas we provide.
8. What are those light holes in the cap?
They are a feature whose sole intention is to solicit breathless gasps from your guests who arrive and depart in the absolute darkness. The columns, you see, are invisible in the total darkness. There is only the light splayed through the grid pattern, and the small throws of light escaping through the weep holes in the cap to be thrown against the underside of the cap overhang. A stunning feature that will, in the event of stalled dinner conversations, rescue you with the aplomb of a proud offspring.
--So who designed it? You?
At this juncture--January 2007--everything on the CPW site was
designed by myself. But this may change, as my youngest son Ben is well into
the last stages of his lifetime apprentice by enrolling in the North bennet
Street school of Woodworking in Boston. Upon completion, he will be better
equipped than myself to procure the designs of those decades to come. This
would leave me of course with little else to occupy myself beyond, well . .
. answering FAQ's. Do you understand the thrill of making one's way into the
shop every day for decades and decades, puttering and absorbed and occupying
oneself with the culminating process of creating tangible entities and all
to the wafting backgrounds of a familiar opera that helps, in a Pavlovian effect,
to diassociate the woodworker from danged near every distraction imaginable.
Do you understand how quickly dimentia and senility leap at the opportune void
of idleness? Well, do you?
--Maybe. You sound troubled. Was
it Rainbow Dove who upset you?
Upset? I'm not upset, other than I lost my swing this morning.
I don't know where it went. I couldn't buy a fairway. I spent my round foraging
in the woods and wading through water hazards like an indian scout while the
rest of my foursome chatted and laughed within the civilized scenery of a groomed
fairway. I arrived onto each green as a host to crawling insects, scratches,
bruises, and an assortment of limbs caught to the cuff of my muddy trousers.
No part of my game residing on the fairways but the sound of my grunting expletives
penetrating the canopy to reach the groomed cut like a detestable limp. A detestable
limp.
--So what's so hot about son Ben?
Is this you again #4? Are you back? You keep breaking the rules.
One question per visitor. Don't you have anything else to do but break my rules? I
suppose Rainbow is with you?
-So what if it is? And yes, Rainbow's
with me now. We're a couple, it would seem. And we're
forming a new company, together. We're
stealing everything of yours and calling it our own. It's legal. I checked
with a lawyer first. He says you'll never go to the trouble of suing us.
Well you're not the first. There are innumerable knock-off efforts, scattered everywhere. It reminds me of the Union Army.
--Union Army?
The Union Army was this procession, this traveling cornucopia followed everwhere they marched by a veritable city of parasites, of whores and vendors and scavengers, the whores who infected the soldiers with disease and the vendors who sold medicines and supplies to the army at exagerated prices and the scavengers who scoured the battlefields on the morning after a battle, collecting boots and belts and anything of value from the dead bodies, selling it all back to the vendors who sold it back to the same traveling battalions. A trie trickle-down economy. Because there was simply no way to stop this practice--the Union soldiers too exhausted from the day's fighting to parole the battlefield and guard the dead--it continued throughout the duration of the war. Anyway, one thing you cannot replicate is Sir Teddy.
--Sir Teddy?
Sir Teddy. Our aging Mascot. The pure bred West Highland Terrier responsible for all of our intuitive decisions. You cannot bribe him. Unless, well . . . he does have this damnable weakness for Pekenese.
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