Storage techniques

[morrisonri]

I use the ball method. When I put my lights up, I put them up in order of color. First I do all the green, and then I do all the red, then all the white, and then all blue. As I put the lights up, I turn each LOR channel on, on the corresponding LOR controller for that color (using the Light-O-Rama Hardware utility) to verify the light sting is still working . When complete the yard and house will all be the same color. It usually takes me one night to put up all of the particular color that I am working with. I have had neighbors stop by and tell me how cool the display looks, as one night it will be all green and the next night it will be all red and so on.

When I take the light strings down I do it in reverse order, first blue, then white, then red, and last green. As I take the light strings down I roll them into a ball by wrapping them around the palm of my hand. After i have the light ball ready for storage, I test the lights. To see if the string has gone bad (and you can tell). If the light string is bad I put the string in the repair bin for later repair. If the lights are good they go into bins according to color. There seems to be no tangles when I use this approach.

[Max-Paul]

toymakr000 wrote:

Max-Paul wrote:

Well I got to say now that's the cat's meow for winder uppers. It appears that you are using a magnetic pick-up that fires a motor that advances the guide. How are you remote controlling the start and stop? Although I see that you also have local control too.

Great job toymaker

The indexing motor is simply a micro switch getting momentarily tripped as the main motor spins the spool. The video was an early trial run. i have dialed in the micro switch so that it winds much more parallel now. So parallel that when winding power cords I had to switch to smaller rolls so I could carry them:shock: The remote control is one that I found at Meijer for $14 it just plugs in.
Similar to this
http://www.amazon.com/Stanley-31170-3-Outlet-Receptacle-Wireless/dp/B0020ML76M

Ok, Great I have one of those on my inside Christmas tree. Sure does beat trying to push branches out of the way to plug in the tree every night for a month.

Thanks Toymaker

[James Hawke]

pixeldigger wrote:

http://christmasalabama.com/index.php?link=lightball

My light ball tutorial

This is how we do it too. Real easy and easy to test them later.

[Dave Batzdorf]

For the 3-wire cords, I use a hose reel.

For singles, very few, I wind on my hand starting with the female end first. When i get to the part with no lights, i coil that across the batch and plug it into the female. keeps the coil from unspooling.

For the long house runs, I made my own spools and wind them on it. If you do make spools.

For the SPT cords, I made a mini-spooler. I wind each up separately checking the plugs and insulation integrity. Each of the cords are about the same size and fits in my cord foot locker very nicely.

I put everything, except the mini trees and the spools in a 10x14 shed.

[Leeruby]

I am going to do the plastic bag and tote trick but I also got the arches and a little 2 car garage. Love to work on cars and dont have enuff light so im hanging one on each side of garage pluged int a swich for those dark nights. Hell with storing tge use what u can. Lol..

[TJ Hvasta]

I wrap the single color lights into balls and they go in a tub.. This was the first year for SuperStrings, so I'm going to try the ball-method for them also, see if it works.. I had done the H-winders but they see more trouble than what I was getting from them (easier flat storage). My four 8-sleeved archs will go into a tub or large TV box for garage storage, the 14' mega-tree pole goes back up on hooks on garage wall. Mis-fit Island toys go into another large TV box, Rudolph and Clarece (wire-frame reindeer) get dis-assembled and go back into their original boxes. The 8 mini-trees go under the workbench.

The long exterior 12 & 14ga. extensions get loop-wrapped and go into cabinets.. the 100 or so 6' & 12' brown "lamp cord" extensions get zip-tied and go into a tub. the sidewalk Candy Canes have pretty much come to the end of their lifespan, so they'll probably go into the dumpster.