How Do We Do It??
This Page explains how we do some of the lights.
An overview of the lights
The lights on the main house are C9 7 Watt colorbrite Lights from Noma. They are strung in lines of 7 strings per line.
The figures are all welded by Doug Musson after designing them on paper. They are all hand made. The Rope light is attaches using wire ties. You can see details on how we made the motorcycle by going here.
The sleigh and reindeers are wire sculptures. The sleigh has 1100 clear mini lights and each reindeer has 600 mini lights. It is a real pain when one light goes out.
The Santa on the from lawn has 1200 mini lights on him. He is also a wire sculpture.
The Dove in the tree is a wired sculpture with 400 mini lights on it.
One of the biggest jobs is wrapping the Catalpa tree and the tree on the boulevard. These have in excess of 5000 mini lights.
The arches over the driveway have a total of 300 feet of rope lights and 2000 mini lights for a total of almost 6000 lights.
Where does all the power come from??
We presently have 18 devoted circuits with 15 Amps each running at capacity. We use 2 pony panels off the main panel. When we first started we had to have the service to the house increased from 100 to 200 Amps.
All of the circuits run through timers.
The fading on and off of the scenes is controlled by a device called and Omni controller. For those of you familiar with DJ equipment, it uses DMX512 signals programmed in it to 8 dimmer packs with 4 circuits each. This allows for unlimited control of the scenes.
Omni Controller Dimmer Packs
The arches use a pre-programmed light controller called a light bug. This is a great device for anyone wanting to easily animate their Christmas display.
Click here for pictures
of the 1999 display
