Some landlords frowned upon Christmas lights, especially if electric was included in the rent
Despite this I still decorated, using window candles & a few strings of lights
I purchased my 1st house in 1997
It needed a lot of work, so other needs had to wait until I had a dry roof over my head. With only 1/10 of an acre, & only 10' to the street - I was limited on what I could display When a local store had a $1 sale on strings of C-9's, I bought 2 dozen sets (or more). Every year after that my house was outlined in C-9's. I lined the house, fence, & the shed out back. Finally I even climbed the large Maple tree out back & decorated with blue C-9s. I also climbed a large 100'+ Oak tree on the side of my property & put a Nativity star about 50' up. That star could be seen from a great distance
In 2002 I was married, little did my wife know the repressed decorator she had married
In 2003 we found a new house & started to move in. This was delayed due to several snowstorms every weekend until mid-December
I was lucky to even find & unpack the window candles. Painting & unpacking from the move took a priority
In addition to that I installed & setup a 240g Saltwater aquarium setup - another hobby of mine
In 2004 I ripped the roof off the back 1/2 of the house to build a dormer, Master bedroom & bath
This took most of the summer & fall & 2 weeks vacation. At the end of July I was roughed in & ready to roof. I installed 4 skylights & had the roof on by the end of September
I also enclosed our front porch during this time
2005
2005 was the 1st year that I had what I consider to be a decent display
We bought our 1st 2 Gemmy Inflatables - The North Pole Express and a 12.5' snowman that my wife thought was too big. I thought it was too small (but did not say so)
We had a wire frame deer family & display that looked very nice. Additional decorating was curtailed when I had to spend 2 weeks planting over 5,000 fall bulbs. After Christmas I went a little nuts at Lowe's clearance sale.
2006
In the summer of 2006 my son was born, a few days later I broke a rib. I spent the rest of the summer taking it easy & healing. By September I was restless & eager to do something My Halloween display was unreal for 2006. No sooner was Halloween over then I was planning my Christmas display. I started to unpack the clearance "loot" from the prior years purchase. I found things I did not even remember buying. On Craigslist I found 44 Un ion and Empire blow molds for sale for $75. Madness ensued as I scanned E-Bay for auctions to complete the Nativity set. I bought additional blow molds (plastic lawn decorations) to bring the total from 3 for 2005 to over 100 for 2006. I installed CFL lights to reduce the electric usage by 800 watts. I started decorating & kept adding to my display in anticipation of the night I light up - Dec 1st
Warm weather fueled my ambition & I made a C-9 Christmas tree supported by pulleys from our Oak tree
This tree alone was over 2700 watts, I used 2 dedicated 20a circuits for the side yard to spread the load out
Santa & his 8 reindeer went on the roof, as did rope light. As more packages arrived I would unpack & put them out on display
My wife would keep asking about the packages, "Is this it?"...I would reply...Uh..I think so....
I was very happy with the way the 2006 display turned out, but planned a LOT of changes for 2007
I "only" had approx 15,000 lights, small compared to what some people setup
2007
As I have increased my lighting I have run additional circuits to handle the load. With almost 80a of lights for 2006 I realized I needed to do something to handle the power usage
In 2006 I had used a power meter to test each circuit to make sure I did not exceed (or come close) to the breaker and wiring capacity. Creating a spreadsheet in Excel to track the decorations made me realize that I would exceed 180a for 2007. I decided I would need to stop using the strings of C-9 lights - only 900 lights but they use 6600w - over 1/3rd of the juice for my display. Shortly after this I re-discovered PlanetChristmas.com, a site for Christmas decoration enthusiasts. Here I found many resources, including information on how to animate my display to cut electric usage by up to 75% or MORE!! I was back in business!!
I made multiple trips to area stores buying lights & decorations at 75-90% off
In one store I borrowed a large cart to haul my loot to the register. I had to guard the cart as many people thought I was an employee & were trying to take stuff from my stack
I bought over 2000' of rope light, my overall light count will increase from 15,000 to over 80,000 (possible) for 2007. I have purchased a radio transmitter & will be broadcasting music as part of the display. I am also purchasing controllers to animate the lights, since the lights will no longer be on 100% I expect my electric bill to go down. This will depend upon how many lights I animate. I was unable to complete all of my plans for the display in 2007. Once again work on the house took priority. I added a 15' x 17' Sunroom on the back of the house with an 8' wrap-around deck. I replaced the power hungry C-9 Mega Tree (2700 watts) with a Green LED tree that only used 80 watts!!
The display was much larger then 2006, but I am looking forward to more changes for 2008
2008: No Animation or Music :(
In October 2008 I started building my 24x36' garage & great room
So once again my LOR animation & music will need to wait
2007 I used mostly LED lights (only 5,000), for 2008 I'm hoping to have all 22,000+ LED's up!!
2009: Animation & Music!!
Animation & Music were put on hold for 2007 & 2008, hopefully I will be up & running for 2009
LED's
With LED's I can increase the number of lights while actually decreasing the power used.
Well at least if I get rid of the old power sucking C-9 lights (not in use but I still have them).
I started buying LED's in 2005, but only a few strings on sale - they are expensive
After Christmas in 2005 I bought more for 2006. Checking power usage with my watt meter they did not even register 1w for a string of lights. Compare that to the 175w used by a string of C-9's!! I placed a bulk order of LED's for 2007. In addition, most of the decorations I bought on sale after 2006 are LED powered
I am hoping to start replacing the bulbs in the C-9 strings with LED C-9 bulbs!!
I am looking forward to the 2008 Season, the bad news is Thanksgiving is "late" this year. There will only be 3 days between Thanksgiving & Dec 1st - the day I normally turn everything on. This means I will have to start setup earlier in November, I usually like to wait until after Thanksgiving. Of course, as my display has increased in size, I have to start setup earlier each year to be ready in time
