Transcription
In this video, we're going to go over exactly how to install premium commercial-grade Christmas lights on a home.
Now, if you're new to the channel or this is your first video of mine that you've watched, this is installment four of a four video series all about how to start and scale a temporary lighting business from zero to over 800,000 in a two-month period, which is what my business did. In the first video, we talked about the basics, where to get your website, your bank account, all the boring stuff, and how to start from zero. The second video, we talked about marketing. In the third video, we talked about sales. And now, this one, the one that you've probably all been waiting for is this is actually a full-blown training with myself and my director of operations in the temporary lighting business and my co-owner in the permanent lighting business, Jack. And he runs all of our install crews, does all of our installations, and he's going to run you through exactly how to install a roof line, how to do bushes, how to wire, how to do trees, how to do spheres and trees, all of that stuff under the sun.
So, Jack, come on in. We'll introduce him here. He's a lot better looking than me. He's taller than me. Makes me look bad in my hinge photos. But this is Jack. Say hello, Jack.
>> Howdy. Howdy.
>> So, let's get started. This will be a full breakdown of how to install a home.
[Music]
We're going to start with the main piece, the roof line. So, most of you guys have ordered the starter packs from CLC that I've linked in previous videos. Everything you need for the roof line is going to be in that starter pack. Outside of two things, you need to get a ladder. We recommend getting the Gorilla ladder. That's typically they're like what 22 to 24 feet, something like that.
>> 24 feet.
>> And it makes an A-frame or it can flip out and be an extension ladder. That's the dream scenario there. You're going to need to go get one of those. And if you're like, "Oh my gosh, I don't have a truck." My entire first year I installed with a folded up gorilla ladder and put it in the back of a Ford Fusion sedan. Not a hatchback, a sedan. So, you can find a way to do it. And then the other thing you need is wire cutters to actually cut the blank wire, which Jack's going to run over right now.
So Jack's going to take it from here and show you guys exactly how to install a roof line. Then he's going to go down and show you what else you can do with the roof line lights, which is you can do ground stakes with them. And then he'll show you how to wire, how to install, how to do clips, all that jazz. And then you'll move on to some trees, some bushes, different wiring, things like that. We'll talk about wreaths, timers, and go from there. So Jack, take it away.
>> So as Steve was saying, everything that we do is custom. So from the roof line, everything's custom cut. We're putting our bulbs directly on peaks, ending on corners perfectly. In order to do so, you're going to take your 15-in spool. Um, the bulbs, these C9 guys right here, they screw right in just like that. And most of you guys, we're in Arizona, so we need to use tile clips. You're going to be using ones that go first and the bulb screws into them for gutters, shingles, all that fun stuff. But 99% of our jobs are tile. So, we use these tile clips. So they snap on just like so. And like what we were saying, there's multiple different things you can do with your socket wire. So we also use it for ground stakes. So a lot of people line the walkways, um, go around the front of the brick work or the home, whatever it may be. And it's as simple as taking this guy here. So you have your line pre-bulb, whatever color pattern you want. You're going to put this guy just on there, just like so. twist it on and then you're coming down. A lot of the times when you're working around like sidewalks, um, walkways, driveways, all that fun stuff, the concrete is actually going to be poured a little further out than you think. So maybe it won't be at one spot than it will be at another. So I always like to start um 6 to 8 in off of the actual concrete itself. So come out here, go like that, press it in, and now you're good to go. So you would follow that all the way down the line and get to where you're needing to go.
Now when it's time to cut, this stuff makes it super super simple. You're just going to take those wire cutters like we were talking about earlier. I don't use like traditional electrician ones um cuz we're not cutting and splicing anything. It's all pretty simple. So I just need some good snips. Snip it just like that. In our climate, we don't get a lot of moisture, so we don't have to really worry about those ends touching each other too much, but I always just pull it up like that. And that kind of makes it so that none of the open exposed copper is touching each other. Then say that this is the end of a line. Um, so we're finishing it off. You're going to want to grab your female end. These all come in two pieces. There's a slide on the back of it. And then the plug itself, you are going to lay it so that the cord, there's two teeth inside of here. Goes against both of those teeth. I always kind of press it down. Grab that little slide like we were talking about. Coming onto here. If it's a little bit tough, what I like to do is I like to grab those cutters, use the opposite side of them,
>> and squeeze it together. And now you got a female plug. You can plug right into that with anything else that you're using.
Now, just like with the roof line and the ground stick product, all of our power wire, all of our extension cords is also custom made. So, we have white, we have green, and we have brown. So, green will run through like yards if we're going to trees in the middle of the yard or whatnot to blend with the grass. We use brown predominantly going through flower beds to get all these bushes light up. Behind me, sometimes roofs are dark, brown blends in the best. Um, but a lot of times homes have white trim. Um, there's might be light concrete where white's going to look the best. So, we carry those three types of wire. You don't have to carry them. At the end of the day, it's temporary lighting. So, if you carry only green and you only got a little green wire going somewhere else, that's not the end of the world, but we really pride ourselves on the little details. So, we carry those three different colors.
So, just like that socket wire, let's say we're starting to run, right? So, we got our male end just like the female end we showed. Putting it in there, clamping it down,
>> closing it, and we're good to go. So, we'd plug that in, measure out how far we needed to go to our next thing, and go from there. The nice part about building your own extension wire like this is you can throw just about as many females on it as you want to do. So, what I mean by that is say we stop this run here.
>> Boom. Now, we're gonna cap this off with a female. Every extension cord can only have one male on it. If you have more than one male, you're going to cause issues, jump the breaker, do all sorts of stuff. You don't want to do that. But you can have as many females on one line as you'd like. So, we just cap that off like we showed previously. And then you can do something called an inline female. So, a lot of these females, sometimes you can buy them where they're already preset to be an inline female or you have to make them yourself. If you have to make them yourself, take a look at this guy, Jake. If you want to zoom in here, see how there's a tab on one side that's not on the other? What you do is you just grab your snips, grab that tab out, and now it's clear on both sides. We're going to put that through the middle just like so. And then do the same thing, putting the slide plug over the top, closing her down. And now if there's two bushes right next to each other that you need to plug into each other, you only have one male and you're coming across, but then two different items can plug into the same line. And you could do that all the way along. If you've got 10 bushes in a row, you could have one cord running behind them all with 10 females along that lamp wire. So that's a really, really quick perk to one, save wire, and two, just make everything a lot more seamless and clean looking.
Now, let's go over and take a look at what this looks like in action. So, we did the ground stakes along the brick work. We had it along the walkway, too, but we just pulled it out. Um, as you can see, we keep everything in a nice straight line. You always want to pull the slack out um to keep spacing consistent. If you've got a little bit of slack here and no slack in other spots, it looks really bad at night. So, you want to make sure that you're controlling and keeping that line taunt as you go from ground stick to ground stick. So, an example of that spacing being off would be like right here. Say that you're going in a line and then you've got one here, not pulled taunt, but then you got one here that is pulled taunt. Obviously, that's going to look pretty crummy at night, and you wanted to do everything you can to avoid that. Sometimes there's going to be like a rock or sprinkler head in the way. Um, just try and maybe shift it away from that instead of tightening up the spacing, cuz that little shift away like an inch forward isn't going to make that big of a difference, but you going in towards the other bulb will. So, that's just something we want to avoid.
Next, we're going to talk about how we light up our bushes and our trees. So, we use LED minis. We have convex bulbs and concaved bulbs. We always use these convex ones for the warm white because it gives that extra pop when the bulb is pointed directly at you. So, it kind of gives like a shimmer look. So, you don't need to use these. It's easier if you just have all square tip lights in your arsenal. That way, you're not accidentally mixing them on trees and stuff like that. But if you can keep them organized, these are really good to have. But how we start these things out, they come in 25 foot long strands. So, typically we really wanted to light this house up. So, there's two strands on each of these bushes, but one strand like this would definitely take care of a bush that size. Um, so you would just start it. I always start my runs in the back of the vegetation. That way when I'm running my power cord, I can also run it behind so it's less visible um to the homeowner, business owner, whoever it may be. So I would start back here, maybe tie it around a little branch. You always start with the male end down because that's where the power is going to be coming from. So if you start with the female end and you go wrapping all the way, then you got to run a power cord to the top of the bush and that looks tacky. You'll do it a couple times, but then you'll really you'll learn really quickly to not do it anymore. So you'd go through wrapping it around keeping even spacing. Obviously there's already lights on this bush, so it's hard to tell, but I always go four or three fingers width depending on the size of the bush. Um, you just keep that hand spacing all the way throughout so it gives a nice even look at night. If you got 8 in in one spot and two in another, it's going to look really scrappy. Um, and the homeowner or business owner probably isn't going to be that pumped. Um, so taking pride in your spacing is the biggest biggest biggest factor when it comes to doing bushes, trees, um, anything that you're wrapping with LED minis.
So, another thing that we did on this home is we put wreaths on each of the windows. Wreaths are super super simple. A lot of the times they already come pre-built or pre-lit. This specific client wanted our red uh red wreaths, so we wrap them in red mini LEDs like I just showed you on that bush. And they already had nice nails put here. They wanted power going all the way to the ground, or else you'd be able to pull power from the roof line typically for your wreaths. But all we use is this simple cable. You can get it at Home Depot, spools of like 500 feet. I always build a little triangle. That way it keeps it from rocking and swaying in the wind. Because if it's only on one straight line coming down, it's really easy for it to spin. But when it has tension on two points on either end of the wreath, it removes that risk from happening quite a bit. So, this is wrapped up with our red LEDs. Like I said before, you just go in a spiral pattern until you run out and then make sure that male is visible. So when you're going back through to wire everything, you know where to put power to on that wreath.
Now, as you can see up here, we've got the roof line. Obviously, this is a rare case that we have shake shingles here in Arizona. Um, but we did for this job. The thing I want to highlight most and I think is what really sets us apart. It's such a little detail, but it's keeping that bulb up there directly on the peak. So, a lot of the times I'll have the cruise um if it's like a super small roof line, you start with the peak. You know, you got 10 on the left side and it's going to be the peak there. So, you can just put that bulb directly on peak. But if say it's a long run and you're starting all the way over there um and you're coming up to it, maybe you have to shorten up the spacing a little bit on the bulbs on each side of the peak. That way you get one directly on the center. Um but you always want to have one directly on top. I mean it makes such a clean finished look at the end of the day that if you're not doing that, it probably shows in your reviews and everything else because that right there is a small detail that you don't think about but adds so much to the display. makes everything look really crisp and clean at night.
Lastly, we talked about the bushes, we've talked about the ground stakes, we talked about the wreaths and the roof line. Now, let's talk about our shimmering spheres that we can put into these trees. So, we put these S hooks onto our spheres. That way we can just put them up and rest them onto the branches um without having to use like zip ties or anything like that that's going to permanently fasten it or tying the line around it to keep it up there because when you come to tear it down, that's a nightmare to do. And you can just use little hacks like this instead of getting a ladder all the way up into there or a lift or whatever it may be, you can just use a painters pole, lift it up, set it on a branch, and then be good to go. This one was low already. So, say we just grab this guy. I'm 6'8, so you might need a step ladder, but I don't. And boom. Rested right on that branch. Good to go. And that's going to look awesome at night. Be secure um for the holidays. So, that's how we do that. All of that ties in to the tree wraps that we already have done. So all of those guys need to plug into their own separate power source with those spheres. So a lot of the times when you're doing a tree and you've got multiple plugs all over the place, um you can plug them into the back. So that was a sphere plug right there. We had an extension cord coming up to hit all the spheres because there was a lot more spheres than strands of lights in this tree. And then you just plug them in like so with that extension cord that we talked about. See how we got multiple females? Female, female, female, female, female, female, female coming all the way down. So, that's an example of one line with several females on it to power all the spheres in this tree. We put it on the backside so the display at night, you don't see any of these plugs or anything like that. The tree looks really good. Or you can bundle them all up in the tree somewhere hidden. Run your one power cord up there like we talked about and then put all those females together and plug them in and keep them tucked away to where you won't see it during the day at all either. So that's another thing that we can do that way.
So it's important when we're putting these on the roof line, just like we did with the ground stakes, you want to pull it taunt. That way you don't have this weird slack gap here. You want to keep it taut coming into there. Now, the bulbs, when you have your normal gutter clips and shingle clips, they're not going to be able to shift up and down. With these tile clips, sometimes they can be drooped low. And then that one's pushed high. So, then they're going to be uneven. So, you want to keep them all at the same level. So, I'm going to push them all high. Keep it rolling. Make sure it's pushed up high. Keep it rolling. Making sure that's nice and taunt and secure. going into there and finishing off right on the corner. You don't want to stop here and get lazy. You want to make sure you finish off every line to the end because it's custom cut. You can snip it, add that female on there. And now that line is closed and good to go. And power is going to be running from that side of the house running this way. If you're wanting to start another run to go up the top of the roof, you just plug into there and keep it going. So, that's what it looks like to lay out and cut your own 15-in spool, ground stakes, apply the ground stakes, wrap your bushes, hang your spheres. It's all really simple at the end of the day. You just need to know how to cut your own blank wire, cut your own socket wire, males and females. Get it going together.