Christmas 2010 Photos Of Our LED Christmas Lights Display

You'll see photos on this page of:

Setup and teardown of our Christmas lights
Night time photos of our Christmas display
Daytime Photos of our Christmas Wonderdland
Rebuilding the Megatree; extreme engineering

For 2010 our Christmas light display had about 60,000 lights, all of them LED, not a single string of incandescent Christmas lights in our display. There were no new creations, we spent our setup time rebuilding and strengthening our major components. We did re-design and completely re-built from the ground up our Megatree. After years of use, our mega tree, a PVC skeleton core that was always marginal as a support structure needed a redesign.We rebuilt the core using threaded metal pipe. This has withstood the wind like a charm. We had removed all the 4 color superstrings from the megatree at the end of 2009 and reconditioned all 30 LED super strings and restrung the tree. The tree is also about 2 feet taller now and much more majestic this year. We also bolstered the giant snowflake cascade, removing the 45 degree PVC joints and switching to threaded metal pipe joints, and using all 1/4 bolts and nuts to prevent high winds from tearing our custom PVC structures in our Christmas display apart.

We got a new roof in 2010!
After months of fighting with our insurance company over Hurricane Katrina damage, they finally caved in and we got our new roof in October, just in time to install our lights for the Christmas season:

Rebuilding the Megatree, our Megatree Re-design for 2010

Photos below show the aftermath of the tearddown after the 2009 Christmas season, and our mega tree was in real bad shape. The PVC wa snot holding up over the years, and the PVC cement joints just don't stay together, so we decided to re-build it from the ground up with metal threaded pipe. We took every string off the mega tree after the 2009 season and stored them in bins and reconditioned all the strings later on.

Below we improved our support studs under the maga tree rolling platform, adding many through hole bolts, nuts and fender washers to keep all out struds securely fastened and keeping the platform rigid. Warping was a problem for us in the past because studs had separated from the platform. Close-up shows the top of the mega tree threaded pipe structure. No wind will tear this apart! We restrung 13,000 LEDs onto this gorgeous Christmas tree.

Our Christmas light setup ran Monday - Wednesday:
Photos below show the new improved metal pipe skeleton core of the megatree. Notice that we were able to maintain our original design using couplers at half height to be able to drop the tree to half height and roll it into the garage. Three Light-ORama lighting controllers were fastened to the core and a patch bay was created for all the 48 circuits to control all 4 colors red, white, blue, green.

Below our student Santa's Helpers work on putting Christmas lights up on the roof. Bottom Right photo: Mega tree circuits form a custom patch pay at the core of our Christmas mega tree. We rented a JLG 450 AJ Articulating Telescopic Boom Lift cherry picker. This has a 35 foot reach and did quite well as we installed our Christmas lights up high. I prefer the JLG 450 AJ articulating boom, as it had better control, and a smaller bucket platform to fit between our palm trees. But for teardown we use the 400S, which is a 40 foot long telescoping boom, not much articulation but a bigger basket to hold a few workers and take down Christmas lights and displays and LED rope light snow flakes from our roof.

Below right shows how we wrapped the palm fronds. I used twist ties from garbage bags spaced every foot along the bottom of each palm frond, so every light bulb is visible from the ground. One person holds the string of Christmas lights in place, the other person quickly tie wraps the Christmas lights to the frond. Any PVC joint on our megatree or snowflake cascade was drilled and bolted.

Our majestic Christmas megatree and stars on top. The plexiglass sheet protects all the light string connectors that hang on hooks just below the stars, Middle photo bleow shows the inside view of our megatree looking up. Below right is the huge nest of wires for just one of the 3 Lightorama controllers in the core of the tree:

It's scary looking down at the Christmas lights on your house from twice the height of your house!

Daytime photos of our Christmas Lights Display
Our home looks every bit a Christmas wonderland during the day as it does at night. A daytime drive by is a must once you've seen it at night.

Below: Some of the food donations that were collected on their way over to the food pantry at God's Little Acres. We also brought donate dfood to First Presbyterian Church of Coral Springs, to the Riverside Christian Fellowship, and to Food For The Poor. Below right, arial shots from the cherry picker across the street.