Kraig Ware: Hi, Kraig Ware with Christmas Decor of Greater Richmond. We are showing you
how to decorate your home for Christmas using Christmas lights. Now I am going
to show you one of the most dynamic things you can do to decorate your home or
business using C9s. Well, C9s basically outline your roof line, creating an outline
in your fascia and or your ridges of your home. Now the fascia boards are
basically the boards that are facing forward to the street. They are on their gables,
your gutters are attached to them, that's your fascia board. To get a really 3-
dimensional feel you can also go along your ridges. When you are doing your
roofing I would ask you, just take precautions, and have a friend or someone who
is really competent in ladder and roof work because sometimes it can be a little
tricky up on the roof.
Now one of the big things about a C9 is nice is you can actually customize the
bulb. I have got a clear bulb in my hand but you can use blue, green, red, there are
myriad of colors out there and to prepare it what we are going today, we are going
to use a clip called a shingle tab and a shingle tab is a smock plastic fastener. You
don't have to have screws or nails into your home, into your roof line that's just
not going to be a good thing for your house in the long run. But all I am going to
do is put this clip right here and then screw in this bulb. Like so, and now that
bulb is ready to be seated in between the shingles and one of the great things
about a C9 or incandescent bulb is you can actually custom cut them to your
structure or to your home. Now I will show you how to do that here briefly.
To custom cut these, all you are going to need is some needle-nose pliers. They
are standard everyday household item. Just make sure the power is unplugged
before you cut them and we are just going to cut the wire. Just like so. And now
we have got a cut here at end of the bulb. One of the big things I want to give you
a word of caution when you do make this cut make sure you go back, it doesn't
matter which side of the that wire you cut back, but make sure you go back and
take a small maybe a quarter of eighth inch cut off of it. And what that is going to
do is make sure you can see that that's just a little bit shorter than the other side.
What that's going to do once we put our connector on, it's going to make sure that
these two open end pieces of copper don't touch one another because if they do
especially when they get wet that's going to cause a short and your lighting
system is going to fail. So I have made my cut we are going to plug in. So I am
going to make a custom plug.
Now you can get these fasteners just about anywhere, this is a male, this is a plug
and basically what it is going to do is basically come on to this empty wire right
here and we are going to make it into receptacle that you can actually plug in. So I
am going to take this wire, now what you do have to make sure when you do one
of these manual receptacle plugs is that you make sure your polarity is right. Just
read on your device that you are using how the polarity works. Basically in this
case I have got the positive side which has some ribs running along the wire here,
it's just a ribbed surface. The other side is typically smooth, it has some white
rodding out that would be your neutral side. So in this case my positive or my hot
is on to the right hand side of this channel. I am going to slide it down on this
channel like so, I am just going to force it down there, then I am just going to
crush it down. There are two teeth in here. And these teeth are bodied in to this
wire and that creates our connections. Now once I have got it smashed down like
so, nice and straight I am going to take the lid to these male zip plug and I am just
going to slide it on. It's that simple to make an alteration to your C9 wires.
Another application for modifying your C9 strands, let's say the same dormer that
we have before, let's say that we are going to put wreath up there and we needed
to place the plug in. Instead of stretching the extension cord all the way up the
great thing about a C9 strand is you can actually use this as an extension cord of
power again following the power rules recommended by the manufacturer. But
basically what I will do is I will take this female end line supplies and you only
use females on end lines because they are open ended. What I can do now, now
this is up in my dormer I can simply place this on again making sure my polarity
is correct and I can crush it on to this wire, the same thing we did before, there are
two small teeth that are going to bite into the wire, then I take my cap and I slide
it right on.
What that is going to allow me do, is plug in my wreath right here instead of
having to run an extension cord all the way up to my dormer. Now once you have
got your system or your C9s are actually cut the way you want them cut and
modified the way you want to modify them. Next we have to secure them to the
structure. Now what I would always suggest is using a plastic fastener like this.
This is a simple what's called a shingle tab. And what is going to is our two
shingles are, it's simply going to slide in between the shingle. At the end of the
season when you are done with it, all you are going to do is slider right back out,
it causes no damage to the roof structure as long as you put them on properly and
that also helps you not use nails or screws or staples like some folks want to use
it. You don't need them. The force of this plastic going on between the shingles
would greatly hold it and place for the rest of the season. If you do get a strong
windstorm simply go back up, push them right back in place and they are good to
go.
Now if you don't have shingles a lot of homes and a lot of boards that you will be
doing, the fascia board will have gutters on them. One way to handle a gutter and
there are several clips out there, this is the all-in-one clip. Now the all-in-one clip
is fantastic for just about anything you need. It will secure into a shingle just like
we do with the shingle tab but it will also clip on to a gutter. We will take this top
part up here and we will actually just clip in the place now. A little tip that I will
give you, on the C9 socket, there is a small clip and some people just clip that
right on to the gutter. I wouldn't recommend that either. It is too close to the metal
and that's bad news at this bulb side of the break, but put the clip inside of that
and that's going to give you a lot more stream come up, snow or wind or ice or
water we have in our area. So now once we have got this on now I can take this
and it is from my gutter of simply just lock that right on to my gutter, and that's
how a bulb is going to standout just like that.
And that gives you really nice crisp clean straight line and that's one thing it's very
important as you putting these things up, make sure that they chord in between the
next socket is nice and tight and snug. Not too tight, we need a little bit of playing
it, but we don't want to have a whole lot of business with cords hanging around.
We showed you how to actually prepare these C9s, we have shown you how to
custom cut and how to secure them to your structure to make your home look
very dynamic. Next we are going to talk about roofs again, but we are going to
show you how to do with icicles.