This year, as well as last, the color scheme with which we’ll decorate the outside of our house and around the property, will be deep and vibrant blues and whites. As I put up each piece of the show, I’ll document the effort in the comments section of this post.
This entry was posted on Monday, October 26th, 2009 at 1:54 pm and is filed under Electronics, Home Maintenance, Journal, Lighting, Repair. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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October 26th, 2009 at 10:00 pm
04:45 PM: Put up all fifteen strings of white icicle lights on the front fence and a strip of blue LEDs along the top of the same fence.
I’m toying with the idea of adding several blue 400 watt metal halide flood lamps to illuminate the walls of the house. I need to first see what these blues look like before proceding however.
05:00 PM: Installed a blue CFL lamp in the west porch fixture, which will stay on throughout the entire holiday season. This advertises a little of the sorts of blues people will see once we begin running the main decorative lighting in early November. Then, once the lighting season begins, in the daytime, this will forecast what people will see if they come around during the evening hours.
05:45 PM: Put up three strings of blue LED lights around the lattice of the pavilion.
October 27th, 2009 at 8:52 am
10:00 AM: Put up two blue LED strings; one each around the south door and the west door.
10:30 AM: Set up the white LED reindeer.
11:15 AM: Trimmed the two trees back beside the west porch. Their branches partially blocked the view of this porch from the road. We don’t want this because the brightest part of our lighting will shine from here.
11:30 AM: We’ll hold off on putting up the Christmas wreath until just after Thanksgiving.
01:00 PM: Ordered C9 blue LED bulbs (60 bulbs) for the lights we put along the foot stones just off the south porch. Also requested some C7 white LED bulbs for our window candles (10 bulbs). Total cost: $118..60.
October 28th, 2009 at 3:19 pm
03:30 PM: Perused around the web, looking for metal halide fixtures and blue bulbs for them. I’m still reluctant to buy because I’ve not seen a blue metal halide bulb before. Plus, the spectral graphs for these bulbs show that they emit lots of other colors in rather large quantities as compared to the blue light. So they’re not particularly pure; not as monochromatic as the blue LEDs I’ve seen.
06:15 PM: Put up ten more strings of blue LEDs on the bridge railing and the trees / shrubs on the north side of the house.
November 1st, 2009 at 2:37 pm
Laid out and connected ten extension cords and applied power to the fence lights. Lots of the white icicle lights are burned out (perhaps a third of them). I’ll replace those this week sometime, weather permitting. All LED string however are working well; no burned out bulbs noted so far.
November 3rd, 2009 at 9:36 am
11:30 AM: Received the C7 and C9 LED bulb order I placed back on October 27th. I like the blues. However, both the C7 and C9 bulbs, in my opinion, shine too much out the top and not enough off the sides. So, they don’t appear nearly as bright as the conventional C7 incandescent bulbs when used in window candles. These LED bulbs would probably work better placed around a door or on the ground (supported by stakes), where people see the ends of them better.
I put the blues into the two 25-socket strings I have. They look pretty good. I’ll light the footway into our house with 50 of these.
November 4th, 2009 at 11:19 am
02:20 PM: Replaced 100 bad bulbs in the icicle lights. Last year was particularly hard on these lights for some reason. There are still lots more burned out ones to do yet.
09:30 PM: Put up eight strings of blue LED lights on the south and east porch railings.
November 5th, 2009 at 8:52 am
Put up three strings of blue LED miniature lights on the east porch railings.
Put up all twelve remaining blue LED strings. Have to get more.
Put up seven strings of the white LEDs that mimic the traditional C7 bulbs.
Investigated metal halide lights further, and believe that I’m after the 20000K bulbs, for the deepest yet most vibrant blue color. They got ‘em. Now it’s a question of getting the right fixture for the bulbs of choice. They make aquarium fixtures for these bulbs but I must talk to an expert to find out if these bulbs can be used in an outdoor flood fixture.
November 7th, 2009 at 11:45 am
02:00 PM: Connected all light sets I’ve put up so far, to power. They all work, and all extension cords are good so far.
02:45 PM: Also, I installed the two blue LED C9 strings along the walkway from the bridge to the south porch. They’re really blue! But we definitely need more of these.
03:30 PM: Hung up two strings of blue and white LED stars at the pavilion.
We had thought not to turn on the lights until Thanksgiving night. But since Penn State’s colors are blue and white (as are our lights here this year), and since Penn State is playing football this afternoon, we thought we’d go ahead and light them up just for tonight.
06:00 PM: Now that it’s nearly dark, and I got my first look at the 50 blue LED C9 lights along the walkway, I really, really like them. So, I ordered 150 more with which to outline the driveway. This is really going to be cool.
07:25 PM: Found one more string of blue dome LEDs. So I strung them up on the south porch steps hand rail.
November 8th, 2009 at 5:28 pm
04:30 PM: Purchased numerous sets of LED lights, and 200 light stakes for the driveway sets I’m going to put up once the bulbs arrive. Checking the sets out now.
06:30 PM: I’ve tested about half the lights. I’m sleepy at the moment. So I’ll get to the rest sometime tomorrow.
09:15 PM: Unpacked and tested the remaining blue sets. All work well. I also picked up some multi-colored LED strings for the DJ business. Looking forward to stringing those up on the hill at camp next summer.
November 9th, 2009 at 7:52 am
09:00 AM: Mom agreed to kick in $100 for this project. Great. That will pay for twelve to fifteen LED light strings.
12:45 PM: Strung up a set of white lights, and interlaced them with the blue LEDs already there, on the south bridge hand rail.
01:00 PM: Replaced approximately 100 bad bulbs on the incandescent icicle lights that adorn the front fence. These sure burn out a lot, and so I can’t wait to switch them over to LEDs; probably next year.
04:40 PM: Put up 27 strings of blue LEDs on our shrubbery.
06:05 PM: Took one of the metal halide flood lights down from the pavilion to shine around the house. Man, this 175-watt unit is very, very bright. Plus, it shoots a lot of light at wide angles. This means that I must keep it pretty close to our house, lest it shine into the neighbors’ windows. Not good. One solution to this would be to box it in with wood so that it shines practically all straight forward. Hmmm. I wonder how bright a blue bulb would be.
November 10th, 2009 at 2:56 pm
Put up three more strings of blue LEDs around the big tree’s trunk, located on the south west corner of the property.
November 11th, 2009 at 8:48 am
10:15 AM: Called one vendor who sells the RAB FXLH400TPSQ. Unfortunately, they do not supply the blue bulbs I’m looking for, although I still may buy from them.
10:30 AM: Another thought: If I go with this fixture, I’d definitely need to build a hood for it, so I’m not blasting any of this bright light at my neighbors.
11:45 AM: Cut a few branches off the tree at the south west most corner of the property, as they were touching the house and obscuring the view of the gable out there, where I want to place a lighted Christmas star if we find a suitable one.
11:50 AM: Also found another string of turquoise blue LED lights. So I added them to the three other, similar strings already there. Nice.
November 12th, 2009 at 7:39 am
09:35 AM: Gathered up all known sets of Christmas lights in the attic and in the basement, and put them all in one place. This way, it will be easier for us to know at a glance, everything we have, and should help us plan and execute better light shows as a result.
09:50 AM: I also found all our strings of C9 lights, removed and bagged the incandescent bulbs in preps for the LED bulbs, that should arrive sometime this week.
November 13th, 2009 at 11:00 am
01:00 PM: Recycled ten strings of non-working, old Christmas lights at the Home Depot, and purchased six strings of blue LED lights. I’ll put them up later.
08:00 PM: Finished putting up the six strings of C9 LED blue lights along both sides of our driveway this afternoon and tonight. I tested them, and they look absolutely marvelous.
08:20 PM: Played some more with the metal halide floodlights from the pavilion. I found a good place to position the one I hope to use on the north side of the property. But in order to illuminate the whole side of the house equally well, we must position the light itself across the driveway from the house (considerably farther away than the incandescent floods we utilized last year). The distance isn’t the problem. Rather, I’ll definitely have to build the hoods to stop any light from going way off the sides and into the neighbors’ windows. No big deal on that however, because we got the wood to do it tonight.
Also purchased four 4” X 4” planks from which to make the pedestals for the metal halide floods.
November 18th, 2009 at 8:11 am
10:08 AM: On the lilac bush in the north west front yard, I hung six strings of the C7 LED blue lights (this exhausts my entire supply of this type of string). But avoiding the “skimpy” look on the bush requires perhaps ten more strings — the bush has a very large diameter.
10:15 AM: Also, I ran the necessary extension cords to power the bush lights.
November 23rd, 2009 at 9:22 am
11:21 AM: The plan for today is to connect all lights to main power, for the first night of full operation. Ah yes. This is going to be good.
01:55 PM: Connected all lights. They’re functioning properly and, I might add, in a most visually pleasing way. So far, I’m running them all on one, 20-amp circuit. Only small amounts of wire heating were noted; the use of LEDs has really lowered power consumption of these light displays. Nice.
05:30 PM: Well, nightfall just fell, revealing the full, blue luster of these wonderful lights. I see that there are a few sparse spots that require more LED strings. So I’ll get to those this week.
November 25th, 2009 at 3:52 pm
05:15 PM: Put up ten more strings of blue LED lights at the following locations:
* two strings I lined each side of Mom’s new ramp with, just off of the south porch
* four strings I wrapped around the trunk of the green spruce tree near to, and to the east of the foot bridge on the south side of the house
* four strings I wrapped around the trunk of the green spruce tree near to and to the west of the foot bridge, again, on the south side of the house.
09:25 PM: Deployed four more strings of blue LEDs on the north side of the house, in the bushes outside Mom’s sitting room; they looked a little sparse tonight, but not now.
November 27th, 2009 at 10:00 pm
08:00 PM: I deployed the wreath that Mom had put together last year, with the blue LEDs and white incandescent strings. It now hangs on the front (the west) storm door, and comes on each night now, with the rest of the light display.
November 29th, 2009 at 12:16 pm
01:00 PM: Sister Jojo put up the garland outside on the front fence and on the south porch banister.
02:15 PM: Mom and I applied Christmas garland to the hand rail going up the steps to my living quarters. We used a second string of multi-colored LED lights, because with the garland in place, it took more lights to completely cover the railing. Twice as many lights look a good bit brighter, and prettier too.
03:42 PM: Mom’s putting up her little Christmas scene on the kitchen hutch, and she’ll be using, for the first time, a string of multi-colored LED lights. We’re all really into the LEDs this year.
04:32 PM: Relocated the C9 blue LED strings along the south bridge walkway. With the addition of the ramp since these were initially staked, to have a wide enough walk, they had to be moved south of their original position by a couple of feet.
04:35 PM: Deployed two more strings of blue LEDs on the north side of the house, to strengthen some weak spots there.
November 30th, 2009 at 4:39 pm
05:00 PM: Noticed half the lights on one string of blue LEDs growing very dim on the east porch railing.
06:40 PM: This string has been repaired, as described here.
December 1st, 2009 at 3:19 pm
05:18 PM: Noticed another dim string tonight. This time, it’s located on the west side of the south porch, on the upper railing. This one however, was easy, as it had a bulb that was clearly burned out. Replacing this one stopped the rest of the lights in the chain from dimming. The entire string is now lit at full brightness once again.
December 4th, 2009 at 3:31 pm
05:20 PM: Noticed another string of LEDs going dim. This time, it was located on the lower part of the east handrail of the stairs, leading up to the east porch. I brought the string in to my workbench and found and replaced one burned out bulb. That brightened the rest up some; but not fully. Then, I pressed each light a little to make sure all were completely seated in their sockets. That didn’t help either. But as I was handling the strong, all the lights brightened to full luminosity, inexplicably. There must be a loose connection somewhere that I inadvertently moved into a well-connected position. I tried running the strong through my hands, hoping to get the lights to go dim again. But I was unable to re create the problem. So I put them back up outside and fully expect that when they come on tomorrow afternoon, that bad connection will show up. If not, then I’ll just leave them up, until it does, or something else gose wrong with that strong.
December 5th, 2009 at 5:10 pm
07:05 PM: Found two newly dim strings of lights. The first, located around the south porch entry way to the house had a single burned out bulb. Replacing this restored full brightness to the entire string. The second, with the same symptoms, I found on the south bridge railing. Two defective bulbs were darkening this string. But in this case, I had to take the string to the work bench, as only one of the bulbs was obviously out. The other was not bad per se, but a resistor attached to it was the likely culprit. However, I pitched the whole unit, as replacement of the resistor would likely have damaged the LED anyway, rendering it totally inoperative. As it turns out, I had ample replacement buibs. So once again, we’re back in business.
December 7th, 2009 at 5:10 pm
07:10 PM: Noticed that same LED string on the east rail of the east porch steps glowing dimly again. This time, a single bad bulb was causing all of it. Hmmmm, seems like almost every bulb that has burned out so far is one that has a resistor attached to it. I wonder if the resistor gets too warm, and that heat travels down the wire into the NP junction in the LED itself, and destroys it? Oh well. If I have too many more of these resistor bulbs go bad in this string, I’ll have to add an external resistor to replace them; the replacement bulbs I’ve used so far have no resistors. So far, I owe this string 60 ohms. If another bulb fails, I’ll add a 120 ohm resistor in series.
December 8th, 2009 at 3:01 pm
05:00 PM: Two of the white LED strings on the shrub at the north west corner of the house are not working. I investigated; checked the fuses and all were fine. Then, I examined the bulbs themselves and found that many of them had rusted pins; the pins are so deteriorated that you can’t remove a bulb from its socket for testing without snapping them off. So I think these strings cannot be repaired. Thus I’ll salvage whatever bulbs and parts I can. But we need new strings, and, it just so happens, that I’m going to Wal Mart tonight for a shopping trip. So I’ll get some then, if they have any left.
11:25 PM: Looked for replacements for these two strings on tonight’s shopping trip. But this is late in the season for buying Christmas lights, particularly since the stores seem not to have stocked as many this year as in years past, no doubt due to the rickety state of our economy currently. So I’ll check around and see if I have any older, working, non-LED strings to replaced these failed strings with.
December 10th, 2009 at 10:18 am
12:15 PM: We put up our indoor, artificial Christmas tree just now. All lights work well.
07:05 PM: Pulled all still-good bulbs from the white LED string that I took out of service yesterday due to excessive rusting of the connections. Also, removed the male and female plugs, as well as the three resistors. I’ll save these for use in other sets, because they’re encased in a waterproof vinyl and should hold up better than any resistors I have in stock; mine have no weather-resistant coating. So, to get a similar effect, I’d have to wrap mine in heat-shrinking tape, the cost of which in terms of time and money makes this salvage non profitable I suspect. So I’ll retrieve whatever resistors I can from the retired LED strings.
So far this year: One string has been retired.
December 18th, 2009 at 3:36 pm
05:30 PM: I removed the six sets of C9 LED blue lights from our driveway due to the threat of lots of snow over the weekend. I feared that they’d be destroyed by the snow plows clearing the driveway, should we get more than six inches of snow. So now, I’m pondering where else I might place them, where they will still be as visible from the road. Hmmmmm. I dunno. Perhaps they’d look nice around the lilac bush out front.
January 2nd, 2010 at 2:07 pm
Now that I have the new totes from the New Years eve shopping trip, I stored the blue LED C9 lights in one of them, for the next Christmas season. These totes will probably hold all our lights for this year and those to come, as long as we don’t expand the light show too much.
January 3rd, 2010 at 7:39 pm
Bagged and stored the stakes for the C9 lights. Next time we decorate, I must remember not to place these so close to the driveway, lest I have to take them up again when the snow plows come.
January 12th, 2010 at 12:20 pm
02:00 PM: I began taking down the Christmas lights; I removed all three strings from the south bridge railing, which included the following:
* 2 strings of LEDs.
* 1 string of the incandescent, miniature lights.
I replaced one bad bulb in the LED string. But the incandescent lights didn’t work when I tested them at my work bench. I’ve decided not to bother repairing these either since we’re in the process of migrating away from incandescent, and toward LED technology. I’ll keep them around for spare bulbs though.
03:00 PM: I removed all four LED strings from the east porch stairs. These had five burned-out bulbs, which I replaced. Now, these are ready for storage.
05:40 PM: Took down one string of LEDs from around the kitchen door. No defective bulbs found on this one.
January 13th, 2010 at 2:03 pm
03:50 PM: Removed all 6 strings of LEDs from the north side lilac bush. No defective bulbs discovered. However, three of the bulb covers are missing. I’m not sure if these were gone when I put the strings up, or if they came off in all the bad weather lately. I tried digging around the bush with a snow shovel but had no luck finding them. Oh well, perhaps they’ll emerge once all the snow over there melts.
January 14th, 2010 at 7:40 am
09:40 AM: Removed 1 string of LEDs from the little bush on the north west side of the south porch. No defective bulbs found.
09:55 AM: Removed 6 strings of LEDs from the west side bushes and shrubs. No defective bulbs found.
10:10 AM: Removed all 2 strings of LEDs from the south porch ramp. One defective bulb discovered, due to rusted connections. Replaced.
11:30 AM: Removed 5 strings from west bushes just outside the west den. 7 defective bulbs found. But since I have no replacements, I junked the string, though I harvested the other 53 good bulbs, two resistors, and the plugs and fuses. They’ll make ideal replacements next year for the numerous other strings we have like this one.
12:00 PM: Removed 2 LED strings and one incandescent string from the west porch. Replaced 1 defective bulb.
12:50 PM: Removed 7 more LED strings from the west side of the house. No defective bulbs.
01:00 PM: Put away the LED reindeer and flood light that shined at the west porch. No defects.
01:30 PM: Removed 4 more LED strings from the west side of the house. 3 defective bulbs replaced.
03:30 PM: Took down 12 more LED strings from the west and north sides of the house. No defective bulbs found.
06:40 PM: Took down 5 more LED strings from the bushes on the north side of the house. One defective bulb found and replaced.
January 15th, 2010 at 1:54 pm
03:40 PM: Removed the two strings of C9 LED blue lights from along the south walkway. No defective bulbs found. However, I could not excise some of the stakes for them yet, as the ground is still frozen. So I’ll try to pull them out early next week.
05:05 PM: Took down the 8 strings from the trunks of the two southmost trees; one on either side of the south bridge. Three defective bulbs discovered and replaced.
January 16th, 2010 at 11:22 am
01:00 PM: Removed 8 strings of blue LEDs from the very tall, north east-most bush, just outside Mom’s sitting room. No defective bulbs found.
01:15 PM: Removed all remaining stakes; the ground thawed enough to do this, this afternoon.
02:05 PM: Removed all 5 white LED strings from the tall bush at the northwest corner of the house. All but one of these has failed due to rusted contacts. So I’ll probably junk these, salvaging whatever bulbs and parts are still good. Not many though, but the bulb covers are all okay. Perhaps they’ll fit on some other string that’s missing this cover.
04:10 PM: Removed 3 blue LED strings from the west side of the property, north west most tree trunk. Replaced 7 defective bulbs.
January 18th, 2010 at 4:46 pm
06:30 PM: Mom and I dismantled and put away her little Christmas scene on the kitchen hutch tha she assembles each year.
January 21st, 2010 at 3:09 pm
04:50 AM: Took down four strings of the blue LED lights from the south west corner tree trunk. Replaced two defective bulbs.
January 23rd, 2010 at 11:29 am
01:25 PM: Took down all nine strings of blue LEDs from the west fence and replaced nine defective bulbs before stowing the strings for next Christmas season. However, three of these strings have whole sections that do not light, and so they’ll require some additional troubleshooting to fix. Once I do that, I’ll update these stats for the fence lights.
01:40 PM: Removed the last LED string from the south porch. No burned out bulbs found.
02:30 PM: Removed all five LED light strings from the pavilion, including two sets of snowflake LEDs. Replaced five bulbs in that batch.
02:58 PM: Removed all fifteen strings of incandescent “icicle” lights from the west fence. With this, all outdoor Christmas lighting has been taken down. All that’s left to do outside is to pick up and wrap the extension cords. Perhaps tomorrow.
09:25 PM: Replaced seventy bulbs this evening in the fence strings, and that was just on one string.
Fourteen more to go.
January 27th, 2010 at 9:31 am
11:30 AM: Gathered up all extension cords from around the yard and took them to the basement. As soon as they warm up I’ll inspect them for damage, and throw out any that I find, that cannot be repaired.
February 14th, 2010 at 1:41 pm
03:40 PM: Put away our artificial indoor tree; back up to the attic.
03:45 PM: We also put away the ceramic Christmas tree in the front room (west den).
03:50 PM: Put the lights away on the indoor banister. Almost all signs of Christmas, 2009 are gone now.