# Forum Home Renovation Lighting  Christmas Lights

## Smurf

If you're going to have lights then you may as well have lots of them. Here's mine. 
Not sure how many lights, would be around 25,000 (must get around to counting them next year). Power consumption runs a bit over 8kW in operation. 
I've already bought more for next year too. Some normal Christmas lights for the front, and ordering some nice new coloured bulbs (big ones, 240V) too in Pink, Purple and White which aren't easily available in Australia (ordering from NZ and UK). For some reason, they only sell Yellow, Orange, Red, Blue and Green around here. 
Also will be building (for use next year) a new control system for the rear floodlights. This will get a lot more colour combinations out of the current lights with much greater diversity of sequencing. Details next year when it's operating.

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## justonething

Thats beautiful.
Are you the only one in the street with lights like that or the whole street is in the same festive mood?

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## Uncle Bob

Nice Smurf. 
There's some fantastic ones' here in Canberra. We drove past a few last night and one of them was incredible (should've taken a picture) with lights that flash in time with the music, which you can listen to on a FM radio, robotic Santa and fake snow everywhere.

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## Jon

Smurf, are you a member of the Aus Christmas Lighting forum?

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## InsaneAsylum

not a fan of Christmas lights but each to their own. what really grates me is people too lazy to take down their lights/ornaments after Christmas and end up leaving an illuminated reindeer on their front lawn all year.

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## Smurf

> Thats beautiful.
> Are you the only one in the street with lights like that or the whole street is in the same festive mood?

  There's one other house a few doors down with a display. But there's plenty more around Hobart and lots of people out looking at them. 
First photo shows the front, second one the rear. The lights at the rear are there since it's visible from a nearby major road and a number of suburban streets since I'm on a hill. The flashing white ones at the top, total 10 x 100 Watt lights flashing constantly, are clearly visible many km away across the other side of the river and also from the top of Mt Wellington.

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## Smurf

> what really grates me is people too lazy to take down their lights/ornaments after Christmas and end up leaving an illuminated reindeer on their front lawn all year.

  It does take a lot of work to put them up and take them down (and even more work in the garage maintaining them) but leaving them up all year is getting a bit extreme I think. It's a bad idea actually, since the sun outright ruins the lights - the less time they're up, the better in terms of longevity. 
Mine go up in November, the ones on the front lawn being the last due to the problem of grass growing and not being able to mow when they're in place due to wires everywhere. And the majority are taken down on the first weekend after the 12 days of Christmas has passed, any that remain beyond that being not generally visible when off (eg on the roof or at the rear). But I still get them down as quickly as possible to minimise the sun damage problem.

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## InsaneAsylum

> It does take a lot of work to put them up and take them down (and even more work in the garage maintaining them) but leaving them up all year is getting a bit extreme I think. It's a bad idea actually, since the sun outright ruins the lights - the less time they're up, the better in terms of longevity. 
> Mine go up in November, the ones on the front lawn being the last due to the problem of grass growing and not being able to mow when they're in place due to wires everywhere. And the majority are taken down on the first weekend after the 12 days of Christmas has passed, any that remain beyond that being not generally visible when off (eg on the roof or at the rear). But I still get them down as quickly as possible to minimise the sun damage problem.

  it's pretty clear you take pride in your creation  :Smilie:  merry christmas!

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## ErrolFlynn

> with lights that flash in time with the music, which you can listen to on a FM radio, robotic Santa and fake snow everywhere.

   As an alternative to being synched to the radio you could have the audio feed set up from microphones on the street.  That way you could have santa say, 'bah humbug' everytime a mic picked up someone speaking on the street.  And the lights could flash in synch as every hoon drove past in their hot rod.  Different colours for trucks too as well as regular cars that drove past, not forgetting lights tuned to the sound of motorbikes.  Kids could come out creating a din with sticks and cardboard boxes as pretend drums to enhance the light and sound show.

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