Kraig Ware: Hello! I am Kraig Ware with Christmas Decor of Greater Richmond. We are
going to showing you how to decorate your home or business using Christmas
lighting. Now we are going to show you a technique with Icicles on the roof. The
biggest difference between a icicle and a C9 is that a Icicle is a mini light and the
C9 is a individual bulb and what that means is two things. One you need to work
with icicles while it's on. That way you know all the shorts are out of it and again
like a mini light it may plug in and be fine but as you move it around there my be
a short within a strand. You need to make sure that it doesn't have any shorts, so
work with them well. Secondly with an icicle your power runs with your cords.
What I mean by that is just like the small bulb or mini lights that we have, this is
just the bulb or mini light if you want to look at it that way and they have a certain
power capacity and if you will look right by your plug when you pull it out you
are going to see a little tag and it's going say you can do three in a row or you can
do four in a row whatever that is, follow those rules. So wherever you start an
icicle point, you are going to have to have an extension cord right there to plug
that extension cord in with by the length of that icicle as it runs along your house.
As soon as you get to that three rule or that four rule of end to end connections
you are going to have an another extension cord waiting there to plug in for
power. Icicles can make a very dramatic effect to your roof line. The biggest point
I would point out, if you have an option in your light bulb I would sway you
towards the C9 and the reason why as you have storms or any wind, these icicles
are going to get blown around and they are not going to look as pretty as they do
right now. But if you do want to use icicles I would definitely recommend that
you make sure that you take them out of the box when you get to the store and
make sure they have got some really nice drops.
A lot of times you will get them in the store and they will be about this long and
they will all be crinkled up and when they hang they are going to be a crinkled up.
Now the sun will relax them a little bit, but you need to make sure you have got
some really long strands. This particular strand that I am using is a commercial
grade icicle, most of your lower ends icicles need to watch out for they only have
six and eight inch drops. And they are just going to crinkle up , they will never
give you the dramatic effect of icicles done right.
Another big difference between a C9 and icicles is that icicles are only going to
be able to the face of the boards that are facing out or the boards that actually
have gutters attached to. So there is a limitation so that is why you are not going
to be able to do the ridges like you can with the C9. In addition when you secure
these you are not going to use a shingle tab. You are going to use a clip lock, the
all-in-one and you are going to literally fasten it to the gutter and gently stretch
out that mini light as you hang it back down and stretch it. Now you can't alter a
mini light. You can't alter an icicle in other words so you are not going to be able
to cut it, custom cut to length of your house. So what you are going to need to do
is when you get to the end of the icicle run and you have a little bit of strand left
over you are going to have make sure that you just double that back up and run
back the other way with it. In that way you can use all the cord. So those are some
tips about icicles. Next we are going to talk about Ground Lighting.