History
I remember as a child, I loved to go look at the lights at Christmas time. One year when I was in high school, we decorated a large evergreen in our yard. It was so tall, that we used a bow and arrow to shoot a rope over the tree. Strands of C-9 lights were then tied to the rope and pulled up the tree. At the time this tree was easily 50 feet tall. After I went off to college, there were some years that I went back home and decorated one of the smaller spruce trees with those C-9 lights.
When we got married, our anniversary is around Thanksgiving, my wife received a couple of strands of christmas lights as a shower gift. At the time we lived in an appartment and I think these got used to decorate the railing on the balcony. The following spring we built a house, and that Christmas I decided to outline the house in lights. The next year at Thanksgiving I got our families to help me put up lights, and this became tradition. I also started putting up lights at my parents farm.
In 2003, after living in that house for seven years, we decided we needed more space and moved into our current home. The first year here I rewired the two outside oulets so that each was on their own circuit, as well as a couple of additional new outlets. I put up about 14,000 lights that year. At the end of the season, I purchased an animated 3-D ropelight train.
The next year I added a couple more circuits and wired in relays which allowed me to control all the circuits with a single timer. The light count for 2004 was up to around 20,000. By this time the display had grown to the point that it was no longer possible to hang all the lights on Thanksgiving day. Due to the time my display was now requiring, this was the last year that I also put lights up at my parents.
The display continued grow in 2005. While searching the internet for a replacement controller for the train I came across the Planet Christmas web site, which contains all sorts of information related to christmas displays. I visited one member's web site where instructions had been posted for creating arches over the driveway. I decided to add one of these to the display. Another circuit had to be added, as the light count was now up to around 25,000.
When I returned to work from our 2005 Thanksgiving break, a friend e-mailed me a video of a house that had it's lights blinking in time to the music. I was in awe, and after watching that video numerous times, I knew that I had to find out how to do it..... next
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| 2004 - about 20,000 Lights |
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