We are working on several options.
Several months ago my cousin told my father about a mural that had been installed in the 1st floor of the building back when it was being built in 1967. AT that time he nor anyone else knew if it still existed. After a few calls it was found that it indeed existed but no one knew if it still worked. See this is not just your ordinary mural. It was designed by Joe Cox an artist out of Raleigh. He was mostly known for his paintings but he created a few of these murals. The one in our building is thought to be the first of it's kind he designed and built. There is another one in the ceiling of the CCB building in Durham. Though I think it is smaller and is currently not working. The only other one know in existence is in the NC State library.
The Color Wall - Restoring NC State University's kinetic light sculpture in D.H. Hill Library The NC State mural had fallen out of repair for several years. After a year of fundraising they were able to put it back to it's former glory.
Our mural is 8 ft high and 32 ft long. It is a lighting mural consisting of a giant aluminum box with vanes of different sizes and angles. Behind it is a white wall. If front of it is a set of 30 lights of mainly blue, green, yellow and red that shine down on theses vanes. Due to the different angles and sizes of the vanes the lights mix on the wall behind it giving it a kaleidoscope of different colors. The mural was said to still be functioning in 1995. But from what I can tell by the shape it was in it couldn't have been working much longer than that. Nothing worked. The good news was the wall vanes and lights were still there, though they had covered up about half of the mural with cubicles. I ended up finding the switches that controlled the mural over near the tellers area. Pressing buttons proved to fruitless. It was dead. I feared it would take an electrician and a whole wad of cash to get it back running again. I know this was not something we wanted to do. At that point I figured I might never see it come back to life.
Fast forward to today. I had to come back to do another walk through of the building. It looks so much better with the mess the county made cleaned up. It's still kind of sad seeing it so empty. I can remember going there as a little boy with my granfather to go visit Uncle Hector every summer. I can remember going and eating lunch with them on the 4th floor. As I walked through the basement I noticed a metal box on the ground we had been puzzled by last week when we were there. No one from the bank knew what it was other than it was old and was something that was installed in the bank. Well today I figured out what it was, or at least Gary our building manager did. He noticed that one of the plugs on this box matched a plug in the janitors room on the 1st floor. So after I had done the initial walk through and Gary had left I locked the front door and went to work. I took the box from down in the basement and brought it upstairs. I plugged it in and went and pushed the buttons over at the tellers office only to be disappointed. I then noticed the box wasn't getting any power and realized I needed to bypass a switch that wasn't working. I finally could hear the transformer humm. Went and pushed the buttons and got nothing. At this point I thought I was at a dead end until I remembered seeing another cable down in the basement. I went and retrieved it. It plugged into the box as well and after 15min of studying the box I had it figured out. I jumped some of the wires to see if I was right and I could hear the relays clicking and from a distance I could see light from around the corner of the lobby. 15 minutes later I had it completely wired back up. I buttoned everything back up and cut everything back on. Walked back to the tellers area and pushed 1 button at a time. I had light! but not a lot. Of the 30 lights only 4 or so worked. So I made a trip to Lowes during dinner. 30 new flood light bulbs and I was back installing them high in the ceiling. After about an hour I had finished the job. I turned off the lobby lights went and turned the system back on and went back over to the tellers area and pushed the #1 button.
Once again Joe Cox's Color Wall was back from the dead. It went from shades of blue to green to red all with the push of a button. I'm sure Joe is up in heaven smiling right now. I know I was. I took video of the different colors each button did. I'll try to get that uploaded this weekend when I have some spare time. I didn't run the system for very long. Maybe 5 min tops before I shut it down to cool off and to check for any issues. I did find some. A connector in the control box had some evidence of some heat. This is most likely the reason why it was taken out of commission. Connectors back 40 years ago were just not meant to handle 30 90 watt bulbs all on one wire. That being said I don't think Joe really thought that control box would last as long as it did. If we want this mural to be a good reliable system we will need to put in a new connector (maybe 40 dollars). Also the system relays on relays. 30 of them in fact. There were a few that are bad. They are plug and play type so it wouldn't take but maybe 5 min to replace them. I think the biggest improvement to the system would be different bulbs. The shear number of high wattage bulbs are what tax the system. Back then that was all they had though. Today we have LED bulbs that put out just as much light but at a fraction of the wattage. Running 30 LED lights would be about the same as running 5 regular bulbs. Plus they would last longer. Only problem with LED lights is that they are expensive. They run around 40 dollars a light. Though adding these would solve any electrical issue the system might have. Considering the building is empty I don't see the need to do anything right now. If someone wants to see the lights on in person it might be best if I or an electrician are present. It's not something I would feel comfortable just letting anyone plug it back in. For the time being it will stay unplugged.
I hope you enjoyed the story as much as I had working on it. I love troubleshooting.
