WANTED: Tips on planning for Christmas 2012

[james campbell]

one thing I want to add,be safe and respect electricity!!!!!!!!! we have folks around here post some scarey stuff they were doing with electric. I have all my cords on gfci and had one circuit give me problems,but it was doing it's job.

[Max-Paul]

Man James,

I think your post is the most important one so far.

[milateket]

I agree. Eventhough I am very good with electric I still had an electrican wire a subpannel and help with undeground electric. If you did not hear about the little gire being electricuted in Orlando at a mini golf course you need to look that up. Makes you want to be very areful with electic outside in water areas.

I agree. I actually have the power company coming out to check things out as there is a bit of a voltage draw between my house and the nearest transformer. My electrician (family member ) is coming out shortly after that to put a new pannel in my house and a sub pannel in the garage. I did run my lights off of GFCI's last year. This year I am putting a bank of them off the garage and three off the house. I had a lot of trouble with one of the GFCI outlets last winter and after some snooping discovered it was the wiring to plug that was the culprit.

The OP actually fully sequenced four songs between mid november and late december. I had some very nice people here at the LOR forum offer some of their sequences which I was able to modify for last years display. I figure I have many years of sequencing, lighting and most importantly making my kids smile so I will not worry too much about time restraints. I had a blast last year learning the very basics. And I will have even more fun this year learning more of the basics.

Thanks for everyones input!

[Max-Paul]

Sorry that I missed that you put on a show last year. Getting all of the newbies that want to put on a show this year that have no idea what they are getting into. I am sorry but mistook you for one of those newbies.

[milateket]

Sorry that I missed that you put on a show last year. Getting all of the newbies that want to put on a show this year that have no idea what they are getting into. I am sorry but mistook you for one of those newbies.

Well, everyone has to start somewhere and that means from scratch when you start doing something you never did before.

[jbzeus]

Probably what helps me the most is labeling my strings and drop cords. I have either colored electrical tape or a colored zip tie on the ends of each of my drop cords and I run incandescent with RGBW so four cords for a superstring drop cord.

I also draw a map so I know what I used to each element for cords, lights, cat5 and controller location.

[Steven]

If you did not hear about the little gire being electricuted in Orlando at a mini golf course you need to look that up.

Google Orlando miniature golf electrocution for a number of reports. They say:

• The 11-year-old girl was electrocuted when she stepped into a 2-foot-deep pond.
  
• The breaker supplying power to the pump in the pond was required by code to be GFCI, but it wasn't.
  
• 2 other guests were injured while trying to rescue the girl.
  
• The reports say the cause of death was determined later by the M.E., but I bet everyone at the scene knew immediately
  

Besides the obvious lesson here about the value of GFCI protection, there is another electrical safety rule, and that is if you see someone being electrocuted and try to be the hero by jumping in to rescue without proper rubber gloves and boots, the result will be 2 people being electrocuted.

[Max-Paul]

Lets not limit ourselves to rubber gloves and boots Steven. A dry rope, a board, a belt or two joined together. In an emergency sometimes a simple thing is more handy than some rubber gloves. And in some cases a fly tackle will do also. Of course not this time.

[75redman]

As mentioned earlier about the visualizer, It does look a lot better once the lights are up. I put up my mega tree up in the back yard this weekend to see the true effects. They are so much better in person. And who cares what the neighbors think they will love it come Christmas time.