Tis the season to pull out all those dusty boxes of Christmas lights and decorations and start ‘decking the halls’ with the stuff.
🙂

While I DO enjoy the end product (the decorated house), the prospect of actually doing the decorating is something I dread each year. Invariably, it seems (according to someone who shall remain nameless) that our current decorations are not quite up to snuff for this year, and as such, that multiple trips to the store to buy more are warranted. Of course, this approach seems to leave us with {cough} perfectly good {/cough} stuff that is no longer needed.

Among the casualties this year there were a couple of lengths of rope light, no longer welcome out on our back deck, where they had added a dull blue shimmer for the last couple of holiday seasons (OK, I’ll admit – these weren’t the nicest of Christmas lights). When told to “get rid of them”, I (being the pack rat that I am) of course snuck off with them and put them out of harms way.

WHY?!

Well, aside from the fact that I’m a “waste to resource” kinda guy in general, these lights MAY be able to serve a different purpose this year – helping to keep some worm bins warm down in my basement.

This particular application (bottom heat for worm bins) is my idea, but credit for the concept in general definitely goes to David LaFerney, and his fascinating article “Home Made Bottom Heat for Seed Starting (or pet bed)” on his website, “The Door Garden” (a very interesting site in general, by the way).

I stumbled on the article back in the summer, and immediately saw the potential for keeping worm bins warm during colder weather (in an unheated garage, cold basement etc). Of course, it didn’t make all that much sense to write about it then, so I made a mental note to revisit the idea again in the fall.

As is often the case with my “mental notes”, this one ended up crumpled up and hidden in the dark recesses of my noggin, and if it hadn’t been for the recent incident with our unloved rope lights, it might have been fallen into the “void”, never to be thought of again!
😆

The basic concept here is to create a simple framework of channels on top of a bench/table for the string of lights to sit in, and then to put some sort of a surface over top (upon which your worm bins, seedling trays, pet beds etc will sit). David used hard styrofoam for the channel walls and a piece of drywall for the surface – he actually took it one step further than that by adding a sheet of vinyl flooring as well (to make the surface waterproof).

Because the lights only get slightly warm to the touch there is virtually no fire hazard (I’m no fire marshall – this is just based on the opinion I share with David), and since the lights are designed for outdoor use there wouldn’t be a shock hazard either.

As far as I’m concerned, David’s creation is nothing short of brilliant. As he points out himself, commercial bottom-heating pads can cost quite a lot of money, and will only heat a relatively small area. With this approach you can create a much larger surface, and for a lot less money. Since these are very low wattage lights, the cost of running this set up won’t likely be very much (or use up much power) either.

The only downside might be the fact that it’s not controlled via a thermostat of any sort (although I wouldn’t be surprised if the really enterprising DIYers out there could come up with something).

Anyway, I HIGHLY recommend you check out the article on David’s site (linked to above)! He outlines everything in great detail and provides a lot of really helpful photos.

Oh, and don’t forget to come back and share your thoughts here about the potential worm-bin-heating application!
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