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National Décor & Lighting Press Release 4-12-03: A California company has gotten its name in lights by making a name in lighting. National Décor & Lighting, Inc. of San Diego was founded by sales and marketing director Joshua Trees. They have been dedicated to providing commercial and residential clients with quality Christmas lighting since 1996. The firm, also known as “www.WeHangChristmasLights.com”, was started as a source of additional income to supplement the slow season of another business. As the name implies, the company hangs Christmas lights. Trees explains that the company’s goal is to provide its customers with a service that is all inclusive and eliminates any of the hassles associated with holiday decorating. “The service includes installation, removal and all of the materials that are necessary to create a beautiful residential or commercial Christmas display,” Trees said. Residential customers find the service convenient because they dislike climbing on roofs or ladders, or the hassles of taking the lights down. Electrical problems are an additional concern- an improperly wired display could blow fuses, trip circuit breakers or even create a serious fire hazard. “Our customers really like the fact that we are a complete service.” Trees said. “They know that we have been decorating for almost 8 years now, and trust our design and installation expertise.” National Décor & Lighting’s residential service can range from as low as $250 for a simple display, to elaborate home displays costing as much as $30,000. Trees said, “An average residential display will cost around $850.” An average commercial job for National Décor & Lighting is around $15,000. Their list of commercial clients includes Saks 5 th Avenue, Marriott Hotels, the City of Escondido, and several shopping centers to name a few. With over seven years in the industry and the experience of decorating for more than 850 commercial and residential clients WeHangChristmasLights.com is quickly becoming the leader in this growing and profitable industry. The company grew to 22 employees and grossed nearly a quarter million dollar in sales during its 65 day 2002 season. Trees attributes this growth to the quality of his service and the recognition that the service is available. He said, “Our business grows more and more every year, due to the fact that we retain a high percentage of our customers from year to year and more people find out about our service. Many people don’t even know that such a service exists until they find out about us one way or another.” Trees explains that the residential side of the business is “booming” and that the company is planning a nationwide expansion for 2003. WeHangChristmasLights.com has put together a business opportunities package to help other entrepreneurs in need of additional seasonal income become a part of this highly profitable and fun industry. Trees said “We plan on selling our San Diego market this year so that we can concentrate on expanding this great concept all over the United States.” They are also in the process of manufacturing their own line of commercial grade products, which will be available for the 2003 holiday season. With their extensive training and experience in the industry, they are sure to help others start their own successful Christmas lighting business.
Call 1-866-426-4544 for more information, or visit www. We Hang Christmas Lights.com. |
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How Christmas Lights Work |
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Christmas lights are a big part of the holiday season. As November and December roll around, you see strands of lights everywhere -- on Christmas trees, houses, shrubs, bushes and even the occasional car! Have you ever wondered how these lights work? For example, why is it that if you pull out or break one of the bulbs, the whole strand of lights goes out? And how do they create the lights that sequence in different color patterns? In this edition of How Stuff Works we will look at Christmas lights so that you can understand everything about them! Christmas Past
The one advantage of this arrangement is that a bulb failure has absolutely no impact on the rest of the bulbs. That's because a 120 volt bulb system places the bulbs in parallel, like this:
You can have two or 200 bulbs in a strand that is wired in parallel. The only limit is the amount of current that the two wires can carry. Mini-lights
These bulbs are not much different from any incandescent flashlight bulb. See the flashlight sidebar near the end of the article for details. Given that you are plugging these 2.5-volt mini-lights into a 120-volt outlet, the obvious question is, "how can that work?" The key to using these small, low-voltage bulbs with normal house current is to connect them in series. If you multiply 2.5 volts by 48 you get 120 volts, and originally, that's how many bulbs the strands had. A typical strand today adds two more bulbs so that there are 50 lights in the strand - a nice round number. Adding the two extras dims the set imperceptibly, so it doesn't matter. The lights in a 50-bulb strand are wired like this:
You can now see why mini-light strands are so sensitive to the removal of one bulb. It breaks the circuit, so none of the bulbs can light! When mini-lights were first introduced, any bulb burning out would darken the entire strand. Today, the bulbs can burn out and the strand will stay lit, but if you pop one of the bulbs out of its socket, the whole strand will go dark. The difference in behavior occurs because the new bulbs contain an internal shunt, as shown here:
If you look closely at a bulb you can see the shunt wire wrapped around the two posts inside the bulb. The shunt wire contains a coating that gives it fairly high resistance until the filament fails. Then heat caused by current flowing through the shunt burns off the coating and reduces the shunt's resistance (a typical bulb has a resistance of 7 to 8 ohms through the filament and 2 to 3 ohms through the shunt once the coating burns off. See Patent 5,453,664 for a description of shunting.) Although you can buy simple 50-bulb strands like the one shown above, it is more common to see 100 or 150 bulb strands. These strands are simply two or three 50-bulb stands in parallel, like this:
If you remove one of the bulbs, its 50-bulb strand will go out, but the remaining strands are unaffected. If you look at a strand wired like this, you will see that there is a third wire running along the strand, either from the plug or from the first bulb. This wire provides the parallel connection down the line. The big advantages of mini-bulb strands are the low wattage (about 25 watts per 50-bulb strand) and the low cost (the bulbs, sockets and wire are all much less expensive than a 120-volt parallel system). The big disadvantage is the problem of loose bulbs. Unless there is a shunt in the socket, a loose bulb will cause the whole 50-bulb strand to fail. It's not hard to have a loose bulb because the sockets are pretty flimsy. There are testers on the market now that can help find loose bulbs faster (they cost $3 to $4) (see Question 270 for details on these testers). You point the tester at each bulb and it tells you which bulb is loose. But it is still a pain to test each bulb. C'est la vie... Blinking The crude method involves the installation of a special blinker bulb at any position in the strand. A typical blinker bulb is shown here:
The extra piece of metal at the top is a bi-metallic strip (see How Thermometers Work for details on bi-metallic strips). The current runs from the strip to the post to light the filament. When the filament gets hot, it causes the strip to bend, breaking the current and extinguishing the bulb. As the strip cools it bends back, reconnects the post and re-lights the filament so the cycle repeats. Whenever this blinker bulb is not lit, the rest of the strand is not getting power, so the entire strand blinks in unison. Obviously, these bulbs don't have a shunt (if they did, the rest of the strand would not blink), so when the blinker bulb burns out, the rest of the strand will not light until the blinker bulb is replaced. The more sophisticated light sets now come with 16-function controllers that can run the lights in all sorts of interesting patterns. In these systems, you typically find a controller box that is driving four separate strands of mini-bulbs. The four strands are interleaved rather than being one-after-the-other. If you ever take one of the controller boxes apart, you will find it is very simple. It contains an integrated circuit and four transistors or triacs -- one to drive each strand. The IC simply turns on a triac to light one of the four strands. By sequencing the triacs appropriately, you can create all kinds of effects! Patent #4,215,277 is a good one to read if you want to learn more about sequencers.
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Christmas Directory |
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Please contact your local We hang Christmas lights . com decorator for more information.
