Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Chris Debol]

So I have a last minute addition to a wedding event I am doing.  The  couple wants to have 6 trees wrapped with strand ligting.    The trees have a diameter of about 15 inches and are about 10 feet apart from eachohter.  Two of the trees have 20 amp edison boxes installed next to them.  Not really my area of expertise so I thought I would ask on the board.

What color strand lighting would you recommend?  Green strands with clear bulbs or white strands with clear bulbs?  

What is the best way to power the other trees?  I am hesitant to run wiring through the grass for fear of someone tripping but can't really see any other way.   Should I use standard AC or run Add A Tap?

Given that the tree are 15 inches or so across and they want it wrapped to a height of about 5 or 6 feet, how long of a strand would you recommend?

Thanks for any and all advice.  

[Rob Blohm]

For a wedding, I'd go with white strands with clear bulbs. White seems to be the color of choice for weddings.

As far as running your power, I suppose you don't really have any other options to running it through the grass. Unless you want to wire up a battery pack to each tree...haha. If trip hazard is a concern and you simply can't place the wiring in areas with no foot traffic, then simply find a way to conceal it. A nice looking rug/carpet staked into the grass would be a good way to cover cables while still looking classy. You could use a yellowjacket (I think that's the name of those things), but those really wouldn't look very good at a wedding. If you're only expecting foot traffic the carpet should work. Not sure about the legalities of it though.

As far as strand length, well do some math and figure it out. You know each "loop" will be roughly 15 inches (even though I assume you're going to spiral them up the tree and not just wrap in circles). Figure out how much spacing you want, and just do the math. But since strands come in pretty fixed lengths, you might just want to decide on a set number to use, and adjust your spacing to that total length.

[Chris Debol]

Rob,

Thanks for the information and for taking the time to respond.

[Mike Pyle]

rob blohm wrote on Thu, 26 July 2007 08:52

...As far as strand length, well do some math and figure it out. You know each "loop" will be roughly 15 inches (even though I assume you're going to spiral them up the tree and not just wrap in circles). Figure out how much spacing you want, and just do the math. But since strands come in pretty fixed lengths, you might just want to decide on a set number to use, and adjust your spacing to that total length.

If the tree is 15" in diameter, multiply that times pi (3.1416) to determine the circumference. Each loop will be ~47.124" long.

[Rob Blohm]

Mike Pyle wrote on Sat, 28 July 2007 14:21

rob blohm wrote on Thu, 26 July 2007 08:52 ...As far as strand length, well do some math and figure it out. You know each "loop" will be roughly 15 inches (even though I assume you're going to spiral them up the tree and not just wrap in circles). Figure out how much spacing you want, and just do the math. But since strands come in pretty fixed lengths, you might just want to decide on a set number to use, and adjust your spacing to that total length. If the tree is 15" in diameter, multiply that times pi (3.1416) to determine the circumference. Each loop will be ~47.124" long.

Ah, thank you Mike for catching my bad math. Haha, I better go brush up on my geometry again. I don't know what I was thinking.