Burt's Christmas Lights

Man, here it is in the end of July and I am already planning out my power distribution for my Christmas Lights. I just told my wonderful wife that we will not be taking any trips in November and December, since it is going to take that time to do Christmas Lights. I am glad she understands and she loves the lights as much as I do. I will try to keep up with what is going on with the construction as much as possible.

Well, I got my Light-O-Rama controllers in last week, and am starting to plan out the lighting scheme. I also started trimming shrubs and cutting down a plum tree that died because of the dry summer. The leaves are turning and a few are falling, and I am eager to see bare limbs so I can start hanging lights. I am still not sure how I will do the big tree, I may even do two with the changing lights mirrored!. We are leaving for a short vacation in a few days, then it will be back to the old grindstone.

WOW, time is flying by. This is the first year that I can remember wanting the leaves to fall faster. I am eager to get started decorating. Today, Tyler and I got all the lights down from the attic (one attic just for Christmas stuff).
I am uploading a few pictures of the lights.

a couple thousand that we picked up at yard sales.
I usually don't buy used lights, but these were neat and tested good.

The cords on the ground are new, there are 9 100' and

15 25' cords in addition to the ones I already had.

The green cords are 40' and there are about 10 of them.

I still have two 100' 10-3 cords to pick up and they will

feed the Light-O-Rama controllers

There are also about 40 or so standard brown extension

cords in another box. I will be running a 60 amp 220 volt

circuit out to another breaker box outside the house in order

to power up everything.

I also made the guest book active again, I had to shut it down because of some jerk spamming it last January.

I hope that will not happen again, so let me know what you think!

November 17th

Tyler and I put up the first of the lights this evening after work, I am hoping to get a great deal done tomorrow.

The spammers are back, I may have to shut down the guestbook again. Here is a picture with the first of the lights.

November 18

I got the icicles up today and that helps the look of the house immensely.

Keep checking back since changes will happen quite fast.

November 21

Since it was cold and windy outside, and I was not up to fighting lights with frozen fingers
I decided to work on the power distribution system. I had to build an enclosure and then
started installing components. I did not get the receptacles wired in, but close.
One of my Light-O-Rama controllers is in this enclosure.

November 22

We spent 4 hours getting the lights on the side fences yesterday,
there are 4 X10 controlled circuits on each fence with a total
of approximately 2000 bulbs per 100' of fence.

It took most of the day (5 1/2 Hours), but we got the big tree up!
For the first time it is all clear bulbs. There is only one layer to the tree this year, but
with 16 circuits, each of which goes up one side and back down the other side,
it makes for more strands on the tree. 4850 lights including the star!

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