How Many Lights Can You Plug Into One Outlet?

Welcome to another edition of ways to decorate your home the professional way! In this post, I would like to cover how many lights can be plugged into one outlet. There are a lot of variations to this equation, but I will try and handle it as best as possible.

First of all, you need to find out how many amps the outlet you would like to use is. How do you find this out? Well, in your fuse box (usually a gray panel about 12" x 24" tall) there should be a name of the particular outlet you would like to use. Let's say it's labeled "porch outlet". Line that up with the correct fuse and you will see a number, typically 15 or 20 amps.

Let's say you have a 15 amp breaker that you would like to use. The first rule of thumb is the 80% rule. This rule states that you should never use more than 80% of the amperage for that outlet. In this case, that number would be 12 amps.

Now, every different type of Christmas light pulls a different amount of power. Just below here is a chart that will help you in determining how many of each different type of light you can plug into one outlet:

And there you have it! As always, if you have any questions, please don't hesitate to ask. May your Christmas be wonderful and bright!

Brought to you by:
Alex Saldana - Owner
Bright Christmas LLC
www.brightchristmas.com

How Do You Power A Lot Of Different Trees Without A Ton Of Extenstion Cords?

Do you have a row of trees that you would like to decorate but are annoyed by running a ton of extension cords? Me too! I'm going to tell you that you don't need to run more than one cord. But how you ask? Here's a real professional trick that will save you a bunch of money and time.

Let's say you have 5 trees in a row that you want to hang mini lights on. The "traditional" way to power the trees would be to run and extension cord from your outlet to the first tree, then use a three-way splitter, attaching another extension cord to run to the second tree, and then again, and again, and again! This is obnoxious. And most of all it's not even necessary. In this scenario it would roughly cost you about $150 for the cords and splitters. I will tell you how to power your trees for under $20!

Here's how:
We use extension cords that can be bought at Home Depot for some of our lights of course. But the type of extension cord you may not know about is called "X-Wire". What this wire is, is basically a really long extension cord with no male or female end attached to it. I use a supplier here in Denver that supplies me with my X- Wire. Here's a link to a large spool of it: http://www.noveltylights.com/SPT2-Green-Zip-Wire-1000.html

This cord is basically 16.5 cents per foot. What we do here is run one cord from the outlet, and next to each tree that has lights on it. When we've finished running the cord, we will take a male end, http://www.noveltylights.com/SPT-2-Male-Vampire-Plugs-Green.html, and attach it near the outlet. We will then attach female ends, http://www.noveltylights.com/SPT2-Female-Sockets-Green.html, along the X-Wire at the bottom of the trees that need to have power.

Plug in the lights on the trees to the female ends on the X-Wire and bam! You're done! Pop a timer by the outlet, and don't even think about the lights until it's time to take them down in April!

Here are some pictures of the cord and male and female ends we use:

As usual, if you have any questions, please ask me!
Brought to you by:
Bright Christmas

Incandescent Christmas Lights VS. LED Christmas Lights

I get asked all the time about LED lights while doing installations. People ask me if I use all LED's. When they find out that 95% of all of the lights we use are incandescent, I get weird looks. This post here is to give you the real differences between incandescent and LED Christmas lights and hopefully help you to choose which one's to use.

LED Lights Pros

• The operational life of current white LED lamps is 100,000 hours. This is 11 years of continuous operation, or 22 years of 50% operation.
• The key strength of LED lighting is reduced power consumption. When designed properly, an LED circuit will approach 80% efficiency, which means 80% of the electrical energy is converted to light energy. The remaining 20% is lost as heat energy. Compare that with incandescent bulbs which operate at about 20% efficiency (80% of the electrical energy is lost as heat).
• Rugged durability – LED lights have no fragile filament to contend with, and no fragile tube. They are resistant to heat, cold, and shock.
• LED bulbs can come in a range of colors that surpasses incandescent.

LED Light Cons

• Price - LED Christmas lights are about 90% more expensive with mini lights. With C7 ad C9 bulbs, LED's are nearly 900% more expensive.
• LED lights are a different look than incandescent. (Purely a preference.) In my opinion, incandescent bulbs look much more elegant.
• LED lights strobe. This is part of what gives a different look.
• Although the lamp life of LED's is a very long time, they are built with the same wiring as incandescent lights. Meaning, if you're putting up and taking down your display every year, about 15% of the wiring will fail.

Incandescent Light Pros

• Inexpensive in comparison to LED's.
• Readily available at many stores.
• Replaceable bulbs if one burns out.
• In my opinion, they still look nicer.

Incandescent Light Cons

• Consume more power.
• Not able to run as many strings of lights together. With incandescent mini lights, you can only string up to 5 strands together. With LED's you can string up to 70 together.
• Failure rate. Every year we replace about 20% of our incandescent lights.

In what scenario's would you use LED's or incandescent lights?

• Displays for your home that are put up and taken down every year. - Incandescent
• Displays that will stay up year round. - LED
• Displays that don't have a lot of power, but you would like a lot of lights. - LED
• If you're on a budget. - Incandescent
• If you're creating a display that flashes on and off with music. - Incandescent (LED's need to warm up and may give a delay.)

You can of course use whatever type of lighting you would like to wherever you would like to. These are my opinions of using incandescent versus LED's. Primarily the biggest decision is going to be what "look" you like the most.

I hope this helps answer any questions you may have about Christmas lights, and as usual, if you have questions, PLEASE ASK! I'm here to help you make your home or business beautiful for the season!

Decorating Your Roofline

By far, one of the most common parts of your home that you would want to hang lights on is your roof-line. There are many different types of lights that you can hang, from C9's, C7's, Mini's, or Icicle lights. How do you do it to make it look professional though? How can you hang the lights is a perfectly straight line? We'll cover that information here, as well as a few tips to make your life easier.

1st: Decide on the type of lights you would like to use as well as colors. Suggestions here would be clear C9 or C7 bulbs. This will give your home more of an elegant look. If you decide to pick colors for C9 or C7 bulbs, try sticking with only 2 colors. Any more colors than that on a roof-line and it will start to look really busy. Icicle lights look really good on homes, however they can be a little tricky to work with.

2nd: Make sure you have the right type of clips for your roof-line. There are a ton of different types of clips available on the market. We use really only one type of clip. It's called a universal or multi clip. Here's a picture of the clips we use here at Bright Christmas:

3rd: Determine how many lights you will need and starting with one end of the roof or the other, start placing the clips on the gutter or under the shingles and attaching the base of the light into the clip. Be careful to not let too much weight hang on one clip as the whole row will come undone. Funny to watch, but not fun to clean up! (Note: Work with the C7 or C9 bulbs unplugged. The bulbs can get really hot and when they're lit they have more of a tendency to burn out when shaken.)
If hanging icicle lights, you will do the same steps for installing. Be creative with the clips, trust me when I say that these clips will work on any roofline and any sort of shingle, tile or gutter!

4th: C7 and C9 bulbs pull a lot of power. With C9 bulbs, never run more than 170 bulbs in one string without going straight to an outlet. With C7's, no longer than 240 bulbs.

5th: When reaching the end of your roof line, you will more than likely have extra lights. There are two things you can do: 1. You can unscrew the remaining bulbs from the strand and hide the remaining cord by taping it up. Or 2. You can cut the end of the cord where you need it to stop and just tape the end up. You will not ruin the strand. This is the cleanest way to do it.

6th: Plug in the lights and make sure all of the bulbs work. You will probably have a couple of burned out bulbs. Replace and enjoy.

7th: Get a timer set up to turn on and off when you'd like it so that the lights are on when you get home and off at night when you go to bed. This is probably the single most best thing you can do to enjoy your display. It's amazing how much more enjoyable lights are when they're on when you get home from work and you don't have to plug in or unplug the lights.

(Note: Be safe on the ladders or on your roof. If you can have someone to assist you, this would be recommended.)

As usual, if you have any questions, please don't hesitate to ask me and I will be more than happy to answer.

Brought to you by:
Bright Christmas

Branch Wrapping Trees (THE RIGHT WAY!!!)

Smaller trees may not always have that much to decorate, but a really great way to get those trees to "pop" is to put branch wraps on the trees. This can usually be done safely up to about 10-15 feet or so without have to rent a bucket truck. There is a right way, and a wrong way to do this. Here's the right way:

1st: Pick the color of the mini lights that you would like to work with. White, red, blue, etc... (Solid colors for branch and tree wrapping look better than multi-color strands.) Also, 4" spacing or 6" spaced lights work well here. 4" spacing is preferred if the branches are thin, maybe 4" in diameter or so.

2nd: Pick 4 or 5 branches on the tree that would look nice to wrap. Keep it even around the tree. Don't pick 3 or 4 right next to eachother.

3rd: Run an extension cord around the trunk up to where the branches start splitting off. All of your different branches are going to plug into this point.

4th: Starting with the trunk, get that wrapped. Try to keep the spacing at about 2" between each wrap. You can go tighter or looser with the spacing depending on the size of the tree. Just make sure it's even all the way up.

5th: Pick the first branch that you would like to wrap. With branch wraps, it's usually best to take the lights and make them into a ball. This makes it easier to keep handing the lights to yourself. Start wrapping away, always keeping the spacing congruent.

6th: When reaching the end of a branch and you need a couple of extra feet, you can either use a shorter strand of lights, or you can just wrap the branch to your desired point and then start heading back towards the middle of the tree with the remainder of the lights.

7th: At the end of your strand, tie the lights into a simple knot to prevent them from unraveling.

8th: Continue these steps on each branch that you would like to wrap. Keeping the height of the wraps similar to the other branches and keeping the spacing of the lights similar as well will give you great looking results! Your final product should look something like the picture below:

(Remember to secure all extension cords to the tree with a simple knot as well as the strands of lights themselves. Also, with standard residential mini lights, it's suggested that only 3 strands of 50' lights be plugged in together in series.)

As usual, if you have any questions, please ask!!!

What are some tips to decorating a deciduous tree with mini lights?

Decorating trees on your lawn for the holiday season is no doubt something that most people have tried. But how do you get high up in the tree? How can you make it look right? Well, here's how we do it here @ Bright Christmas.

1st: Always test the strands of lights! The most common length and spacing we use are 50' lengths with 100 bulbs meaning 6" spacing.

2nd: The easiest way to get lights high on a tree is to get a 24' extension pole. We put a hook at the end of the pole so that you can hook on to the strand of lights.

3rd: Starting with the female end of one of the strands, hook it over the extension pole. This part takes a bit of finesse, but you need to get the female end to get wedged in between two branches at the very top of the tree using the extension pole. Lay it in between an accessible high branch, just make sure that it stays.

4th: Moving your extension pole down the strand of lights, delicately hook onto the lights again and place in on another branch moving in a circular pattern and slowly moving down the tree.

5th: When you are about reaching the end of the first strand of lights, attach another strand of lights but make sure to tie the ends together so that way they don't come undone if winds get heavy.

6th: Continue this pattern until you reach the bottom part of the canopy of the tree.

7th: To finish off the tree to make it look great, do a trunk wrap with mini lights as well. Starting at the bottom of the trunk, start wrapping your mini lights around the trunk keeping the spacing even.

8th: When finishing the trunk wrap, plug the trunk lights into the canopy lights so that you have one continuous power source to all of the lights. Plug in, and enjoy!

(Note: Manufacturer's suggest only plugging in 3 strands of mini lights end to end as to avoid fuses blowing on the lights. If you need more than 3 strands of lights, run your power source up the trunk and plug in your canopy lights separately from your trunk wrap lights. Or you can purchase commercial grade mini lights that allow you to attach 5 strands end to end. My suggestion there is Novelty Lights.)

If you have any questions, please ask me and I will be more than happy to answer them! Your finished product should look like this: (just add the trunk wrap)

How do you get garland to light up and make it look good?

One of the best ways to make your home stand out and look great not only at night, but also during the day is by wrapping garland around pillars in the front of your home. But what if the garland you have doesn't have lights on it? Here's how you can add a little life to your display:

1st: If you have regular garland without lights attached, what you can do is attach the lights, here's how: Attach the garland to two points parallel to the ground so you can get to the whole strand easily. Most garland is 9' in length.

2nd: Take a strand of mini lights with either 4" or 6" spacing and 100 lights in length. Starting at one end, attach the first mini bulb to the garland by wrapping the garland around the light (the garland should be made out of flexible wiring).

3rd: Take the last bulb in the light strand and attach it to the other end of the garland in the same manner. You should now have two points of the lights attached to the garland, one in the beginning, and one at the end, and the rest of the lights just dangling in the middle.

4th: Count the lights to the middle of the strand, in this case, bulb number 50. Now take that bulb and attach it in the middle of the garland strand in the same manner that you did the other two.

5th: You should now have a "W" shape with the lights because we have 3 points attached to the garland, beginning, middle and end. Repeat this step one more time with the two different sections now so that you have 5 points attached to the garland with the lights drooping in the middle. (The point of this is to make sure that the lights are evenly spread throughout the garland.)

6th: Once you have 5 points attached to the garland you can do one of two things. One: you can take the remaining lights and just wrap them around the garland making sure to keep them as evenly spaced as possible. Once you've wrapped all the lights, make sure to attach a couple of them to the garland by wrapping the garland around the light as to prevent them from unraveling. Two: the professional way of wrapping the garland is to continue to wrap each individual bulb around the garland. What this accomplishes is making sure that the bulb is at the tip of the garland instead of in the middle of the garland.

I hope this has helped answer any questions you have about lighting up garland! As always, if you'd like me to cover a topic.... JUST ASK!