The winter season is coming, and with it, the holiday spirit sweeps through the nation every single year. As they get closer, you’re probably considering putting up your decorations, and there’s no staple as classic as Christmas lights. However, when decorating the outside of your home, you put yourself at risk of injury. Here are four safety tips for installing outdoor Christmas lights.
Know Your Bulbs
It’s incredibly important to know the finer details of your Christmas lights to prevent outages, short circuits, and even fires. The bulbs that seem bigger and brighter are often seven-volt bulbs, and those simply aren’t the best idea. They burn much hotter than other types of lights and are one of the primary causes of Christmas-time fires when they’re placed too close to garlands, wreaths, or gutters filled with dry leaves.
Keep Trees Watered
Another one of the best safety tips for installing outdoor Christmas lights is to keep trees and foliage you use outside well-watered and cared for. As the fire hazard of those larger-bulbed lights suggest, heat and dry plant life is a recipe for disaster if they get too close together—which is typically the case, given that trees decorated with lights are a staple of the holiday.
Mounting the Lights
A key aspect of putting up your lights ensuring they are properly fastened to a mounting surface so that the wires aren’t left hanging around. When trying to accomplish this, however, it can be very dangerous to use staples or nails because you may puncture the wire insulation, causing shorts and breaks that are difficult to spot. This presents yet another fire risk and is why it’s strongly encouraged you rely upon a professional decorating service, such as our Christmas decorators in Orange County.
Installing Your Lights Correctly
To further elaborate on why hiring a professional decorating service is recommended, know that hanging outdoor Christmas lights can be difficult and dangerous when you’re working alone. The most common injury that occurs is from people losing their balance and falling from ladders or roofs, which really puts a damper on the holiday spirit, to say the least. If you’re adamant about doing your own decorations, make sure you have a second person to act as your spotter and keep your ladder stabilized. The ladder should be one foot away from the wall for every four feet the ladder reaches up to ensure it remains stable.
