Very Nice! How long does it take those lights to melt the snow?
Most are LED's so not much snow melting is going on. We've been hitting the after-Christmas sales on decorations for the past few years and buying up what's left of the LED lights so we can transition from incandescent to all LED. Needless to say the electric bill is a lot less in recent Decembers compared to what it used to be...
What the picture doesn't show is those blue and white icicle lights I have hanging on the house have a few LED lamps in them that twinkle. We bought those strands years ago after they first came out and they are unique (each stand has a mini transformer in them unlike the ones you buy today). I have been unable to find more of these same strands, seems as though they have gotten cheaper (made) since I bought these and they don’t make the same style anymore.
The heads on all my deer in the yard move, and the gift box near Santa opens and closes. If I had a decent digital video camera I would have posted a video but my current camera gets washed out by all the artificial light. =(
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03:20 PM
2.5 Member
Posts: 43231 From: Southern MN Registered: May 2007
Very nice Darth. I travel a lot and a month or so ago I called my wife commenting on the lights I was seeing. Some very nice ones, such as yours, which put one in the spirit. Spreads it so to speak. A "wishing you a Merry Christmas" to each and everyone who passes. The wife did not want to put up all the hoopla, inside or out, this year as we have both been too busy to enjoy putting them up/taking them down. It is a lot of work. I also check clearance decorations but did not know to look for LEDs. I fancy antique (circa 1970) lights and grab them whenever I can find them. They mix in well with the newer lighting giving a different look. Many houses/businesses look the same. I do have a question for all. Most every strand of light I see says not to put more than three in a row from the same power source. Fire hazard warning. There are not enough 110v outlets on most homes for this to be feasible. I have always taken my chances and then closely monitored them when they are on. No leaving home with them on. How do you all solve this problem ?
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06:56 AM
Darth Fiero Member
Posts: 5921 From: Waterloo, Indiana Registered: Oct 2002
Very nice Darth. I travel a lot and a month or so ago I called my wife commenting on the lights I was seeing. Some very nice ones, such as yours, which put one in the spirit. Spreads it so to speak. A "wishing you a Merry Christmas" to each and everyone who passes. The wife did not want to put up all the hoopla, inside or out, this year as we have both been too busy to enjoy putting them up/taking them down. It is a lot of work. I also check clearance decorations but did not know to look for LEDs. I fancy antique (circa 1970) lights and grab them whenever I can find them. They mix in well with the newer lighting giving a different look. Many houses/businesses look the same. I do have a question for all. Most every strand of light I see says not to put more than three in a row from the same power source. Fire hazard warning. There are not enough 110v outlets on most homes for this to be feasible. I have always taken my chances and then closely monitored them when they are on. No leaving home with them on. How do you all solve this problem ?
First off, Merry Christmas to you too!
To answer your question about the safety warnings, the total load of end to end strands of lights can't exceed what the first strand (the one you plug into your electrical outlet) is rated for. Your incandescent bulbs, be they small or large like C7's or C9's; pull a lot more power (amps) than LED's. The LED strands they are selling today are using the same size electrical wire as the old incandescent strands and I think on one of the boxes I have - it says you could hook up to 80 strands together, end to end. If you are still using old incandescent strands of lights, some of these only allow you to hook 3 or so strands from end to end. If you find yourself running out of outlets to hook everything up, you can use outdoor power strips, extension cords, and outlet splitters. There are several extension cords sold today that were designed specifically for Christmas lights. They are heavy duty and have several outlets spaced along the length of the cord. JUST MAKE SURE you don't overload your outlets. The typical home electrical outlet is only rated for 15 amps and most homes are wired only to supply 15 amps of current to a given circuit (and several outlets may share this same circuit).
If you find yourself in a situation where you have 30 amps worth of lights to hook up, you should really split these up to 3 or 4 seperate outlets that are on seperate circuit breakers. Back in the day before we got all the LED's, I was putting out about 28 amps worth of lighting. I have a nifty little plug-in amp meter that I used to tell me how much current each bank of lights was pulling on a particular outlet, and I used that to make sure I wasn't overloading the outlet or circuit breaker that supplied power to that outlet (and everything else on the circuit the outlet shared). I split my lights up to run on 3 seperate timers which were hooked to 3 seperate electrical outlets, none of which shared the same circuit breaker.
Another thing to watch out for is to feel all of your cords and wires near where you have them plugged into the outlet. If you feel the cord or wires of the strand of lights getting warm, that's a warning that you may be overloading that cord/strand. And you should take action to reduce the amount of power load you are putting on that cord/strand because this can be a fire hazard.
ALL of the Christmas lights sold today come with plugs that are protected by micro fuses of some kind to guard against overload. Light sets manufactured years ago did not have fuses so you must really be careful how many you hook up, end-to-end.
Here's my pitiful effort. Wanted to do all the way up to the peak, but getting on that steep pitch metal roof was more than I wanted to do--(maybe next year)--especially considering no one but my wife and I will ever see them in person. (I am surrounded by National Forest, and the house is not visible from any public road.
Not visible here of course, but I put up a lot of real holly, cedar and pine on the handrails and posts of my porch, as I have loads and loads of it here, and the holly is loaded with red berries this year, and decorated our gate posts with fresh cut holley, cedar, and yaupon, which is also a local evergreen with red berries. I only did that much because we are hosting the family get together and Christmas dinner tommorrow.
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06:56 PM
Dec 25th, 2010
fierofool Member
Posts: 12908 From: Auburn, Georgia USA Registered: Jan 2002
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