Customer project 22- Fibre optic star ceiling above hot tub

This was a neatly-executed project by our customer, Stephen H, in which he added a fibre optic star ceiling to the canopy above his outdoor hot tub. The project is best described in his own words:

"160 fibres were spread over the entire surface of the roof and, as you see, spread out in clusters. It is quite difficult to space at random and my way, in part, was to close my eyes and spike the top surface of the roof as quickly as I could so I did not have time to think about it !

The hot tub in the garden has a Cedar shingle roof above it for use in all weathers.

"However I have incorporated the Plough and Delphinius star configurations using a paper template. As far as incorporating the cables in the roof, the floorboarded ceiling was laid first on the erected trusses, the 1mm holes were drilled from above down through the ceiling and did not splinter on the underside so they were virtually invisible. Each cable is secured above using the adhesive you supplied, which was ideal.

The whole roof is covered in Cedar shingles trapping the fibre optics in place. I left the cables long initially until the roof was completed in case they became dislodged and finally cut them flush with the ceiling. The control unit (light source) is secured in a weathertight box under the eaves screwed to the sloping ceiling and all the cables from it are concealed behind the timbers.

160 optical fibres are spread across the underside of the roof, running between the planking of the ceiling and the Cedar shingles above.

"The installation is invisible, and is a wonderful surprise when friends see it switched on day or night. It's very pleasant to soak in the hot tub and watch the lights changing colour.

Nice little bit of interest to the hot tub and quite interesting to install.

Thanks alot for your excellent service which was speedy, and you worked out the cable lengths very well."

Stephen did a neat job of drilling holes in the ceiling planking, and says that the bare fibre ends are virtually invisible until the light source is turned on.