Outdoor Christmas Lighting
With all you do inside to get ready for Christmas, don’t forget to decorate your house, apartment or yard with all you’ll need to make your holiday bright and wow the neighbours.
Begin by going outside and designing a plan. It can be as simple as lights around a door or windows or as complicated as lights on trees, banisters and freestanding decorations that you purchase.
Next, figure out how many electrical outlets you’ll need and where you’ll get the electricity from. You may need to hook up a circuit breaker panel that has several outlets for all the outlets you’ll need. In some cases, just an extension cord is needed. This kind of lighting can be either mains lighting, or low voltage lighting, so make sure you check the type you require before buy them.
Low voltage lighting is supplied with a transformer that simply plugs in into the socket in your home and is connected to your lights, although it is important to read the instructions as the different types of lighting vary. If you choose lights that are mains voltage you must make sure that your lights are plugged into an RCD (Residual Current Device).
Now is the fun part of purchasing all that you’ll need. Hopefully, you’ve taken down measurements and know how long of strings you’ll need to buy. There are lights in a variety of colours including, red, purple, clear, pastille lilac, frosted clear and multicoloured. Some lights blink while others are steady in nature.
Check each string to make sure they work before you go through all of the trouble to put them all up. Make certain that all the lighting is certified for outdoor use as it may be cold outdoors and it could possibly frost or snow.
Get a sturdy ladder and a helper to help you put up the lights. They make special lighting hooks for strings around the roof of the house and for around windows that can be removed later. Otherwise, you may have to use sturdy clear tape like packing tape or staples to hold up the lighting. Follow your plan and put up the Christmas lights correctly. Be careful on the ladder.
Plug everything in the way you planned it. Use the right kind of connections based on the directions on the lighting box. Put up silhouettes if you wish. These are moulded shapes of Christmas characters that are encased in plastic tubing and can be put up in the garden or lawn. These are usually mains voltage so use an RCD when putting these up.
Think about icicle lights around the eaves of your home to mimic a white Christmas. Net lights can be used to decorate trees and bushes without having to wrap around each individual branch.
Quick Tips
- Always read the directions on every box of lights so you don’t plug something in unsafely.
- Buy a set of lights that has replacement bulbs or buy identical replacement bulbs and keep them safe. Make sure you mark them when you store them and make certain the wattage of the bulbs are the same as the ones on the string of lights you bought.
- Keep the wire out of reach of small children or anywhere someone can trip over it.
- Use low voltage lighting if at all possible.
- If you use mains voltage, use an RCD along with it.
- Enjoy your outside decorations and light them whenever you want to feel festive!
Happy Holidays!
Remember that when choosing LED lamps you will greatly reduce the need to add circuits since they are 70 to 80 percent more efficient than traditional incandescent lamps.
September 14th, 2008 at 10:35 am
I found a really cool site that has Christmas Projectors and Halloween Projectors that you can use to project Christmas and Halloween images onto your house. They have one that projects animated laser movies too. Pretty cool! Check them out at Holiday Projectors
September 16th, 2008 at 2:43 pm