How To Hang Christmas Lights With Nails
Hang holiday lights like a pro in two hours or less with these expert stride-past-step tips for planning, choosing, and hanging Christmas and holiday lights.
Outlining your eaves and windows and festooning your trees and shrubbery with decorative lights is a sure manner to enliven your dwelling for the holidays. Merely hanging outdoor vacation lights can be a less than cheerful feel, especially when you're faced with a teetering ladder and tangles of light strings that don't work.
Unlike decorating your Christmas tree, the best fourth dimension for hanging Christmas and outdoor holiday lights is before your weather turns wet and cold. Non only is it easier and more than comfortable to piece of work outdoors in mild conditions, merely it is also safer. Safely climbing ladders and working forth the eaves of a roof can be a unsafe claiming in bad atmospheric condition.
Even if you don't actually hang your light strings well ahead of the season, you can get much of the training done, such equally running outdoor extension cords, installing hooks and hangers, and so along. Scan Christmas light supplies on Amazon.
Test yourlights!
It's smart to test your Christmas lights before it's fourth dimension to hang them. (You can buy an inexpensive Christmas light tester on Amazon.) Pull them out of storage and check them to make sure they're functional. This way you will take plenty of time to make repairs and a shopping list for replacements and other supplies.
Most dwelling improvement centers and other retailers begin stocking Christmas lights and supplies well before Halloween, so taking intendance of your shopping early is easy. Buying the gear online is even easier for well-nigh people.
RELATED POSTS:
• The Best Way to Store Christmas Lights
• Ladders: The Ultimate Guide to Choice and Safe Use
Mensurate and Make a Plan
Map out where your lights volition get and brand sure you have enough working lights for that surface area. Use a long tape measure to figure the number of strands you volition demand. Be sure to take into business relationship the eaves, windows, doors, shrubs, trees, railings, and the like. Again, plug in the lights to brand certain they work before hanging them.
When buying lights, opt for shorter rather than longer lite strings. That way, if a string stops working or becomes damaged, you tin can supervene upon it more hands and affordably. We recommend light strings that have a male plug at one stop and a female plug at the other cease—these are all-time for connecting (or "daisy-chaining) together from end to end.
Also See: Ownership a Portable Emergency Generator
Tools & Materials
- Tape measure
- 14- or 16-gauge outdoor extension cords
- Ladder
- Gloves
- Timer or lighting controls (optional)
- Cord lights
- Hanging clips
Types of Holiday Lights
Many different types of decorative lights are available, from conventional mini-lights and icicle lights to mesh-style light strings fabricated for wrapping tree trunks.
(Links get to Amazon)
LED vacation lights– LED bulbs are generally much smaller than their incandescent counterparts and are great energy savers.
Clear cord lights– These minor, incandescent clear lights are smaller than C7 and C9 bulbs simply unremarkably larger than like LED strands.
C7 Christmas lights– All types of "C" incandescent bulbs wait like minor strawberries and are larger than clear string lights and LEDs.
C9 Christmas lights– C9's are the largest of the "C" incandescent bulbs. They burn hotter and use more energy than the smaller options.
Icicle lights– Icicle lights are made of clear string (incandescent) or clear LED bulbs, hanging in vertical strands to resemble glistening icicles from your gutter or railings.
Colors of lights
You can cull articulate, white, or colored lights that stay lit, blink, or chase. The correct style for your home will depend upon the look yous desire to create, your budget, and your energy-usage goals, so be sure to have your fourth dimension when shopping.
Sizes of lights
Larger, traditional colored bulbs are designated with a "C" for "candle" or "cone" due to their shape, which some would say looks like a strawberry. Lights designated "C-7" and "C-9" have v- or 10-watt bulbs like to those used in conventional nightlights. The larger the number post-obit the "C", the larger the bulb.
"Mini-lights," as the name implies, utilize miniature bulbs; they are popular because they are inexpensive to buy and to power, thank you to their cool-called-for 1.v- or 2.5-volt bulbs. The larger C-9 and C-7 bulbs go very hot and consume considerably more energy than the same number of mini-lights.
On the other paw, C-9 and C-7 light sets are heavier-duty than mini-lights and are more reliable. If one bulb is broken, missing, or twisted in a mini-light string, all or function of the remaining string won't piece of work. This isn't the example with the larger bulb sets; they continue to operate.
LED Christmas lights
LED'south are ordinarily the best option if you're buying new holiday lights. Though they are initially a fleck more expensive (from $15 to $25 for a 100-foot string) than conventional incandescent string lights, they last up to 25 times longer (up to fifty,000 hours), burn cooler, apply upward to 80% less electricity. Every bit a result of their low energy utilisation, you can plug together many more calorie-free strings on one electrical circuit without having to worry near overloading information technology.
Shop all types of Christmas lights on Amazon, including C-seven, C-nine, Christmas mini-lights, and LED lights.
Regardless of the type you buy, choose lights that are UL-approved for outdoor apply.
How to Hang Christmas Lights: Footstep past Step
Here's how to get started on this DIY job:
1 Locate an electrical receptacle. Plan to run heavy-duty 14- or 16-estimate extension cords from a working 120-volt electrical outlet protected by a ground-error circuit interrupter (GFCI).
Ideally, use a switch-controlled outlet, or plug the lights into an automatic timer. Both the receptacle'due south circuit and the timer must be rated to handle the combined amperes of all the light strings. Do non apply an indoor timer outdoors. Scan timers on Amazon.
2 Measure the lengths. Using a long measuring tape (ideally 25 feet or longer), measure the length of your house along the ground. Also measure its height and the height of any bushes or trees you intend to light. Then measure the lengths of the calorie-free strings you will demand to outline doors or windows. Figure the number of 50-foot calorie-free strings it will take for all of these measurements.
three Exam the lights. Before you plug them in, visually inspect the light strings, looking for broken or missing bulbs and worn or defective wiring. If yous discover faulty wires, supercede the string entirely equally this could nowadays a burn or electrical hazard. If bulbs are broken or missing, replace them.
To extract a broken seedling, wear gloves and employ long-olfactory organ pliers (pull mini-lights directly out; unscrew C-seven or C-9 bulbs counterclockwise).
Once a low-cal string is complete, plug information technology in and check for burned-out bulbs. Unplug the string before replacing faulty bulbs and so retest it to be certain all the lights work. If the string doesn't work at all, check it for a blown fuse, per the manufacturer'due south directions. If the fuse has blown, replace it; if it blows over again, supersede the entire string.
4 Ready a ladder. If your home'south eaves are low, you may be able to use a stepladder; otherwise, program to use an extension ladder. Place it firmly on flat ground and, extending it well above the eaves, lean it against the eaves at an bending that volition be comfortable and safe to climb—neither besides steep nor too apartment. If you must lean the ladder against the gutter, place a curt piece of ii by 4 inside the gutter to reinforce it. (For more near proper ladder use, come across Ladder Condom.)
5 Hang the lights along the eaves. Your objective is to hang lights equally hands and safely as possible without marring your home'south trim or walls. For attaching lights along gutters or the roof, use plastic clips made for the job—these grip shingles or gutters and take a lower hook that holds a light strand or extension string.
6 Attach the lights to the trim. For attaching lights to window trim and similar vertical surfaces, use rope light clips or adhesive or boom-on plastic string light clips. You can notice both at Amazon, or at most domicile comeback centers.
Infinite them well-nigh 12 inches autonomously or equally recommended. Practice not apply staples or nails to hang light strings—they can pierce or wear away the protective insulation, creating an electrical hazard.
Video: How to Hang Outdoor Christmas Lights
Here is a helpful video, produced past Lowe's, that will walk y'all through the process:
Adjacent Encounter: The All-time Mode to Shop Christmas Lights
Source: https://www.hometips.com/diy-how-to/install-christmas-lights.html
Posted by: suttonyouldry.blogspot.com
0 Response to "How To Hang Christmas Lights With Nails"
Post a Comment