Thread: Question about outdoor light decor

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Quick question for you guys....I put my lights out on our porch today. I did orange and purple and really went to town. I have maybe 5 sets of each plugged into eachother. I know you're not suppose to do that...but how do you guys light it up without putting so many strands together. We do have an extension cord...but it's so much easier to just plug them in end to end. Any thoughts?

Its called the "Rule of 3" Plug 3 strands into each other and no more or you run the risk of popping the fuse in them and needed to replace them. It does not always happen but it can. I always use a powerstrip with addional plugs then run extension cords to give power where the three strands end. I only warn you to do this because I have popped alot of fuses in my day. I run about 25000 to 30000 lights for Christmas and alot of lights for Halloween as well.

I hope this helps.

From all the string lights I've bought, the packaging usually says how many light strands you can plug in together and stay within the electrical power requirements. If the package is gone, I'm pretty sure that there's usually a white tag near the plug that has this info as well.

LED string lights require such a lower amount of power that they can safely handle a really large number of connected strands before approaching an unsafe level.

Old LED strands used to specify the same limits as old incandescent bulbs for some reason, though we always ignored this and never had problems. It makes no sense, they would literally need to build the strand out of resistors to get anywhere close to what regular bulbs use, but maybe it was just a safety paranoia thing. Newer LED strands will have some insane number like "46 strands can be connected together".

It's nice to finally be able to decorate an older house at Christmas and not blow all the fuses/breakers every other day from trying to keep the entire yard lit up.

Thanks for your replies! That's what I figured. Our porch isn't that big but I have alternated orange and purple lights wrapped around each of the little posts. I did manage to find strands of 100 so for the orange lights I have 4 plugged in to each other. I had to do more for the purple.

I'll have to bust out the extension cord. I'm really happy with the way it turned out!! It's like a beacon of Halloween light!

My lighting is LED so no worries!

I'm thinking that we need to invest in some LED's!

Would love to see pics of your lighted Halloween porch, pls post!

i dont know how many ive strung together... but its a fair amount (given I have a pretty small porch) nothing like THOUSANDS or anything. I run 2 extension cords though, for where i need the power at halloween (at xmas one does it, im much more subtle then LOLOL). and thats largely just because the outlet on the porch isnt very reliable.

I'm thinking this year of running orange lights down the tree line along the driveway - i have 4 HUGE crepe myrtles... its so dark down in my section of the neighborhood, i dont get many ToT and i think MAYBE if they see the orange lights from further up they might come down my way.... ???? worth a shot i guess. I'm also toying with the idea of putting that horrid inflatable pumpkin I have down at the end of the drive too... i wasnt going to use it this year (cause im not a huge inflatables fan and its seen better days, anyways) but again.... trying to light the proverbial candle for the moths....

So here are a few pics of the porch...the pics didn't turn out that great. They totally don't do it justice.




I need to finish the back handrail. That'll also be done in all purple. I'll have corn stalks and pumpkins to complete the look. Hopefully sooner rather then later.