Our Over-Engineered Xmas Lights

Soon after we moved into our house in 1989 I decided to stop putting the outside lights around the outline of our windows etc, and instead have them swoop away from the house. I put eyescrews in the house's main beams, and figured out a clever hook made from coathangers so I could attach the lights without using a large outside ladder. The lights arc from the house to trees in the front yard. They looked great, but it put alot of strain on the light wires, which I think contributed to the lights having to be replaced every couple of years.

Last year, after throwing away the lights, I decided to figure out a way to have no strain on the light wires. So I bought:

• Lots of "Philips LED Faceted C6 Lights Multi Color" lights -- I really like these because they have 6 colors instead of just 4, and since they've stopped selling them I got lots from eBay
• A 250' spool of 1/16th inch galvanized cable
• 10 2mm 1/16 inch stainless steel wire rope cable clamp fasteners
• 13 S-shaped 75-lb test carabiners (I wanted to use them as hooks, so I needed to be able to remove the gate on one end)
• A small bolt cutter
• Alotta small green cable ties (actually, leftover from last year, I'd used them to attach the lights to our Xmas tree)

It worked like a charm!

How I attached the cable to the clips -- for most of the clips I removed the gate opposite the cable: Ready to begin:
Preparing to hook them to the gutter along the side of the house (extension cord comes out under the back door)
From the gutter to the first eyehook:
Connected to a tree:
To the second eyehook -- I had to hang out the window with a doohickey I contrived to attach the hook (see below):

Attaching to the 3rd eyehook, animated -- a PITA but it works:
Hooked to the 3rd tree:
Finally, comes around the corner of the house to clip to the hook holding one of our Soleri bells

All done, day:


All done, night:



The view from our Ring camera: