Creating Leaping Arches with Rope Lights

[Richard Hamilton]

Westport Lights wrote:

I built one last night and it works fine also. I'm using 3w ropelight instead of 6w. I'll be putting a shiny garland on the backside to use as a reflector. The garland should hide the power connections pretty well too.

Nice idea about the garland. I'd like to see that. Glad to hear you had good look too. 3 Watt ! Hmmm, sounds like an LED rope light to me? Otherwise they would not be very bright.

[Madhatter]

It isn't the hollow snake light stuff is it? Just a string of lights in a single layer plastic tube? I use a lot of rope light, duralight and lumalite , It's heavy stuff, certainly heavier than yours is.

[Richard Hamilton]

Madhatter wrote:

It isn't the hollow snake light stuff is it? Just a string of lights in a single layer plastic tube? I use a lot of rope light, duralight and lumalite , It's heavy stuff, certainly heavier than yours is.

Hmmm. Maybe we are talking about two different products. The ones I am using are from Walmart. Cheap stuff... about $6.50 for 18 feet. It does not seem to be that heavy and certainly does not generate much of any heat even when on all the time. Yea, I think the heavy stuff might not work... especially if people use the gray electrical pipe. I use the white pvc stuff just for the reason that it is a lot stiffer and isn't sagging with the lights on it.

[Westport Lights]

Here's a video of mine: No garland to cover the connections or to act as a reflector yet, but you'll get the idea.

It's 1/2" 2-wire Flexilight Clear Rope Light.



I used 3/4" Sch40 Gray PVC Pipe. I used the hose clamps in a similar fashion at the beginning of this tread, After placing the hose clamps, I staggered SPT-2 wire along the outside of the pipe, then secured them to the pipe using electrical tape. This makes the pipe thicker and hides the wires. If someone was to do this without hiding the wires, I'd say to use 1" or 1-1/4" pipe instead because the ropelight can't be wrapped too tight.

My rope light is not tight against the pipe, it's only snug enough to eliminate slop. You'll notice the first channel has a few bulbs out in the middle from wrapping too tight. That was my first one and that's how I found out about wrapping too tight.

It is fairly heavy, but I'll be using 4` rebar with about 1-1/2` in the groud. I'll be spacing these roughly 6ft end to end and use fishing line to stablize it also.

[Richard Hamilton]

Westport. It looks nice. It will be nice to see what it looks like at night and mounted in the lawn.

I guess I got lucky. Out of the 5 arches I built, I did not have any lights go out on me due to wrapping, but as I mentioned earlier, I did have one malfunction right out of the box (manufacturing defect). I also use 2 feet of rebar as suggested in this thread. It supports the whole arch without any additional support. I put 1 foot of rebar in the ground and 1 foot in the pipe.

[thebaronn]

wow! I was searching for leaping arches ideas and apparently i hit the jackpot! Its nice to know that you used the stuff from walmart. I have only used rope light from creative displays and I have to say I have been very disappointed with it. I had my halloween display up for 4 weeks. I had to replace two different 3' sections and a 9' section on the mouth of my pumpkin and as i was outside tonight i noticed that the 36' section of my pumpkin shell has a 3' section out (or course it directly in the middle!!!!!) and i dont make any corners even close to what you are doing with the arches.

I may have missed it, but could you tell em the exact type, brand, etc of rope light you bought at walmart?

Also, is it one sold piece of PVC pipe, or two pieces connected with a coupling?

Thank you for the great idea I am about to steal!!!

Eric

[Richard Hamilton]

thebaronn wrote:

I may have missed it, but could you tell em the exact type, brand, etc of rope light you bought at walmart?

Also, is it one sold piece of PVC pipe, or two pieces connected with a coupling?
Eric

Yes, I used one solid piece of PVC pipe. Some people use the gray electrical stuff because it is more pliable.

The WalMart rope light is “HOLIDAY TIME” brand. It's 18 feet long. The "CRACKED ICE" style is part #97950A and that is the one I used, but they also have the "CRYSTALIZED" style. I don't have the number for that. As I recall, the price was $6.95 and comes in red green and white. I used White.

I don't know how long this rope light will last, but I did buy some of it in the spring time to use as accent lighting around our pool. It's been on for a few hours most every night for several months and hasn't failed yet.

The hose clamps (worm gear clamps) I used were Home Depot 1/2 inch to 1 1/4 inch clamping range. Part # 67125. Any brand from any store will work.

[Need2hug]

Hello

This is my first year getting involved with computerizing my display. I see alot of people share and help each other out on this site. This is great considering there are so many options and ways to do things.

I am curious if anyone has a good site or directions on creating your own designs like snowflakes,stars, etc,

I have many rope lights and various other lights that I could put to better use. I figure that I can make these things myself that way it leaves the money I will save to add more channels.


Thank you for any help provided.

Enjoy the lights!

Chris

Need2hug@aol.com

[NWSanta]

What a great idea. Nice spin on the original Idea. I used C6 Strawberry LEDS they are from Creative displays before they went to the ones that people are having problems with.

I haven't got them up but, they look really cool lying on the ground...

Thanks for sharing your innovative idea.

-Evan

[Richard Hamilton]

It looks like I will be able to get some video of them in a week that I can post, but it probably won't do any good for anyone this year as most people have their arches done I hope?

[Richard Hamilton]

Just coming in to post an update on this technique.
For the shopping mall show in Texas, I had a guy create some rope light arches after I showed him how to wrap the first string. He did a great job and when we fired them up during a test run of the show last night, they looked wonderful. The "cracked Ice" style really has a nice appearance. And by the way, none of them failed.

[Seaclear]

Hey Richard,

Great Idea with the rope light. Do you only get 2 arches on a 16 channel controller? I try to add as many lights as can on my controller or as many amps. I hate to only add 3 or 5 amps to a 30 amp LOR.

[Richard Hamilton]

Seaclear wrote:

Hey Richard,

Great Idea with the rope light. Do you only get 2 arches on a 16 channel controller? I try to add as many lights as can on my controller or as many amps. I hate to only add 3 or 5 amps to a 30 amp LOR.

Yo Seaclear,
I'll bet you are really "Tim the Tool Man Taylor" posing as an LOR user; (more power, more channels)... ha!
Yea, it might seem like a waste of good controllers to only put 3-5 amps on one, but on the plus side, you aren't pushing the controllers hard at all. They are going to run cooler and probably last longer.

The way I state specs for arches is in "segments per foot". I see a lot of questions like "How many channels should I use", but the people who have made arches know the answer depends on how long you want the arches to be. When you think about it, 8 channels on a 10 foot pipe (arches to about 4 feet high from the ground) looks pretty decent; whereas 8 channels on a 30 foot pipe (arches to about 10 feet) looks too sparse.

A significant factor is to keep in mind how fast you plan to move between segments. On fast songs where dancing happens quickly, the eye and brain is a lot more forgiving about seeing fewer segments because of the limited perception rate. With slow movements, you need more segments on the same length of pipe. It seems most people are using 10 foot pipe and I've seen folks saying they use from 5 to 10 segments.

I wanted to conserve channels for other purposes so I only put 5 channels on a 10 foot section. Also, the rope light wraps to almost exactly 2 feet per section on 3/4" pipe. Thus, I used 10 channels to control 2 arches. I'm happy with the result. During fast movement, the effect is fine. If I were doing slower movements, I'd want more segments to have a more smooth effect. Personally, I think that more than 8 channels on a 10-foot pipe is the point of dimishing return unless you have some very slow movements or special effects designed in.

Another technique I used was to create 2 more arches and mirror them to the 2 arches on the controller. This lets me have 4 arches. The only disadvantage is that all 4 of them can't run individually, but to most people in the audience, they don't miss that effect. Maybe next year, I'll dedicate a controller to just the arches.

[Seaclear]

Hi Jeff,

Here are 2 companys that have clear pvc. US Plastics and Ryan Herco. US Plastics has any type of plastic container, acrylic rods, pipe etc. and Ryan Herco is a plumbing supply company and has clear pvc. Most clear pvc pipe has a blueish tint to it. It can be expencive.

Mark

[Rick Hughes]

Richard, now that you've had a season's experience with your arches, any comments or suggestions for those of us who are contemplating doing something similar?

And ... I may have missed it ... but is there video posted somewhere of your arches?

I'm quite intrigued with perhaps incorporating them this year. I need really "good looking" arches like yours because there is only 15' between the front of my house and the sidewalk, thus visitors are quite close to the display and will see any imperfections. Your's looked great!

Rick

[Richard Hamilton]

Rick Hughes wrote:

Richard, now that you've had a season's experience with your arches, any comments or suggestions for those of us who are contemplating doing something similar?

And ... I may have missed it ... but is there video posted somewhere of your arches?

I'm quite intrigued with perhaps incorporating them this year. I need really "good looking" arches like yours because there is only 15' between the front of my house and the sidewalk, thus visitors are quite close to the display and will see any imperfections. Your's looked great!

Rick

Yo Rick,

No, I did not take any video of the arches. I got so tied up with things that I jsut ran out of time to do a lot of things over the holiday.

The only thing I can say other tha what I already posted above is that I am glad I went with the rope light. The main reasons are that they look very smooth, and they are not easily damaged at all. In fact, they are quite tough, and I don't expect to be replacing any bulbs.

[Tim Herberger]

Last fall, after seeing Richard's post about using rope light for arches, I really liked the idea. I started doing some calculations on how many feet of rope light I would need to build 6, 24' long arches that I was planning for 2009.

Using 1-1/4" electrical conduit, 18 feet of rope light only covered 15", so it would have took 115 boxes. Half of the lights would also be on the back of the arch and not be seen, so on to plan B.

This only would need 48 boxes of rope light After letting the rope light warm up by plugging them in, I folded them into 3' long sections and zipped tied them to 1-1/2" (for extra strength) electrical conduit.

I cut off the factory ends and used SPT1 , tinned the ends of the wire and inserted the into rope light, then sealed the wire to the rope light with A vinyl repair adhesive called "Shoe Goo".

Tim



Attached files

[Tim Herberger]

another

Attached files

[Tim Herberger]

another

Attached files

[Tim Herberger]

another

Attached files