Is this a brand new neighborhood?

Well, time to add the lastest steps in my LED build.

One of the challenges of doing U-Channel was how to cool it (if it needed it). I don't know that I will require cooling but I've planned for it none the less. The clusters of LED's on the large 4" channel will build the most heat and so I've put double the fans in there.

http://i485.photobucket.com/albums/r...1-03212843.jpg

http://i485.photobucket.com/albums/r...1-03212852.jpg

It was a real bugger to figure out how to attach the fans...finally found this PVC channel that I could cut down and screw to the aluminum to provide some real surface for the fans to screw down to. Not uber pretty...but no-one will see that part of the light anyways.

Then I had the challenge of not wanting too much noise. The 6 smaller channels are spread out so I only wanted one fan to cover each side group. Found this 22cm fan at Newegg...covers the whole area and will blow through the gaps to gently cool the area between the splash guard and the Lenses. These fans push over 100cfm and are dead silent.

You can vaguely see the fan here.
http://i485.photobucket.com/albums/r...1-03214749.jpg

All of the fans will be controlled by a 5 channel fan controller. My plans are to mount the separate drivers into a PC box as decent sized project boxes are hard to come by in Canada. This will allow me to mount the fan controller as well and it should look cool.

Tonight I will start to run the wiring between the LED's.

Too bad about the variance, I know what it's like as I had a similar issue with my house which ended up being over only 2cm! We ended up settling a deal with the neighbor to buy 2cm of land of them which fixed the issue... Not sure if that's an option for you but perhaps worth looking into.

Yeah, we've looked into it...but after the city kept us waiting over 6 months with a partial build, the neighbors are ****ed and won't entertain the discussion.

cash speaks louder than words, if purchasing the land will solve your issue a written offer could spike the neighbors interest if the price was right. For instance if it's really going to cost $40K to fix it then offering half that to the neighbor will save you money and time and there's no way the neighbor would turn that kind of offer down.

yeah, I was disappointed in the neighbor too. I've met them both and he seemed really nice...she instantly seemed difficult. I'm trying not to get too frustrated with them as I will have to live beside them for many years to come and our children are similar in age.

We have run into another problem related to getting space from the neighbor...the city has decided that we are a good example for demonstrating to other builders why it doesn't pay to make mistakes...they've already told us they would "kibosh" any attempts at subdivision to add sq. footage to my property from the neighbor. It's funny, the neighbor was mad because of the unfinished house for 6 months...which was because of the city...who then decided to prolong the problem by killing our variance request.

Wow that seems like total BS to me, unless they have reason to form a predigest decision on your builder I see no reason why they can legally prevent you from pursuing legal solutions. Actually never-mind, judging by the mess I went through it sounds about right although for me things seemed to be left more up to the inspectors than the county.

But on a second note if it's your builders fault then it's up to them to fix it, is it not? How are you responsible for their mistake?

Well, it comes down to this. Normally when a builder does a home for you...they have a good profit margin as well as an administrative fee built into the cost of the home. We had been waiting on my long time friend as a builder for years...but in the interim, we had 2 other builders quote on the job...When they give you per sq. foot costs...they are really really padding. When I wanted a breakdown from them...they had 25-40k in admin costs alone plus profit.
My builder and I worked out a cost plus program. I get every invoice for every single nail he uses...and I pay cost plus on that invoice. Labour hours are tracked at each guy's rate...and I pay cost plus on that as well. I have left him no room for any deviation and in this situation the city could be blamed for much of the problem. I just don't feel right in completely saying it's his cost to bear. I'm sure he will take much of it on, but I want to do the right thing. I've found that when someone is making nothing on a project...things don't go well...so part of my desire to assist is selfishly trying to make sure nothing else goes wrong or is poorly done.

IC, best of luck!