SECRETS of the Christmas Light Industry - It's all About the Connections - Males/Females/Inlines

this may look like a random mess but this is  absolutely purposeful to teach you how to make   connections hello and welcome back to lawn and  light today we have a special guest and a special   instructional video I know don't tune out when  I say instructional but this is all about the   connection of the Christmas lights if you watch  the last video the expert level video we're gonna   take you back through that process of how all the  lines are connected so super interesting stuff   it's stuff that we really haven't covered in depth  yet how to put on the the males and females how to   connect them how to do an inline in a total job  to scale right here in our shop taking you from   Zero to Hero Memphis this is my son Memphis he's  how old are you Memphis I'm 11. he's gonna join us   today and walk through this process he's never  done this before so if we can teach an 11 year   old how to do this then we can teach you a dog's  never too old to learn new tricks is that how that   goes I have no idea if you haven't ordered your  lights yet you can order those in custom kits   from our website lawn and light.com our first  video teaches you how to measure your home and   how to know what you need to order to get your  home looking like a professional did it you'll   have all your neighbors asking you who'd you hire  to do to your house and what will they say yeah   they'll say hey I did it and I I can teach you  how to do it so here we go let's get started   all right welcome to the shop and we have drawn  out with painters tape the exact is 100 to scale   I'm kidding it probably isn't even close but at  least it looks similar the house that we did in   the last video the expert level house so we're  going to do here is make all the connections but   we have a helper who's going to ask questions  Mr Memphis is with us Round of Applause what's   your job to ask questions and you will not be  the only one learning so the first thing that   you want to do at your house and in this example  is find where your power is coming from so when   you find where your power is coming from then  you're going to take your lamp wire to connect   to power at the end of your wire and split it  cutting into the wires make sure you don't do   that we've got a decent little split there I'll  roll it back so you can see because inside of here   if you can see in the middle down there it's  going to split the wires so that they don't have   a chance to touch so then you feed it down in two  and this works for the male and the female plugs   you feed it down in there and you fold you fold  over the your this is called a vampire plug then   if you're back and the side with the tab on it  goes on the side that the wire is coming out so   you're going to slide that on and then press it  until it's all the way closed now if you can't   get that with your hand you can  always take a pair of channel locks   and close it like that we're going to put  the female end on before we put plug this   in now you can you can plug it in and then  put the female on but if you touch the end   of it it's going to shock you so it slides in  that back side yeah push it all the way down   and then fold it over now push that down as  hard as you can you're probably going to need   the channel locks so we're going to go ahead  and plug this into Power where you plug that   into power over there please what materials will  you need for this job and where can you find them   a hardware store these are just some Cutters  those are called channel locks there's one   other thing that I really like to have work pouch  you can put your bulbs your Clips your tools in   here as you're on the roof you're not going to  have enough room to carry these things with you   in your pocket you could but it's a lot of  stuff to put in your pockets now as far as   your Christmas light materials go you're going  to need to before you order with us if you go   to London light the ordering process is on there  but before you order with us you'll need to know   how many what What's this called um that's a  male female and a male you need to know how   many of those that you'll need so need to know how  much lamp cord that you need and then you'll need   to know how many bulbs and clips and wire that  you need this is a house this is the Ridgeline   coming all the way across gutters are running down here so in order to understand what we're  talking about we're gonna only say two terms trim   and ridges trim is basically where gutters are or  where the shingles end on the bottom ridges are   everything on top Memphis wants to give them an  indication of where line One's Gonna Go number one and take our line regular house and lay it out  on one I'm gonna leave a little bit of slack   here to show you guys some stuff so we're gonna  go ahead we would lay this out and cut this okay   again this is where we'd be starting from  so we're going to take this side here   cut our little pass at the end of it for our   vampire plug is this going to be a male or a  female Memphis that's going to be a man yep   we're gonna take our mail which  means this should be a female here slides all the way down in in there  so that it separates the end of those   the back plate on I'm sure that that's  fully closed and we'll wait to plug it   in until we get a female on that side  make sure you get right in the middle   of where the Cutters are there you  go I'm gonna be careful not to cut   through to the wire when you're cutting  the end of those wires push down real hard pull back and then you take your tab and you put   your the one side with the tap on  the back and then you can take your   channel locks or your hands if they're  strong enough and close that we have power   but when I'm starting this Ridge right here I'm  going to put this bulb 15 inches this spacing is   15 inches okay so I'm going to put this bulb 15  inches from the corner because when we finish our   gutter out from the other side coming to here my  last bulb is going to be on this corner right here   but the way it's done is you're going to actually  count your bulbs going up or pull pull your line   all the way up to this top corner and place a  bulb on that Peak and then work your way back down   using a little bit of slack if necessary to make  this bowl be 15 inches from this corner same thing   up here we're pulling all the way across if we  need to use a little bit of slack to get a bulb on   this corner we're going to do the same thing and  then this one as well because we're coming back   on the gutter line here we want this bulb to be  15 inches from this corner in order for it to look   professional you want the spacing to be spaced  out consistently across your whole job line two   is from here all the way down to here a number two  how are we going to connect one two because this   is something we hadn't done before we're gonna  make an inline female okay all you have to do   is pop that little cutout out out okay now we're going to put it in line we're  going to take this line right here lay this in   and as you're doing this another tip  is you're polarized the bigger plug   your polarized on male and female are going to hit  your are going to be on your line with the white   riding on it that keeps everything consistent  so remember the bigger side of the plug male   and female find where the vampire poker is on that  side find where the vampire poker is on that side   put your line that has the rotting on it on that  side so there we go we got that lined up correctly and then you're going to slide your back plate on from the the tab needs to go on the side that  you didn't break out for the inline female   these plugs are made in a way where they count it to work that way okay now you got an inline female  it's another thing you want to check your bulbs   this one was flickering as you're putting them  up so you don't get all the way through a job and   have to go back up and and tighten four or five  bulbs usually if a bulb's not working correctly   it's usually because it's just not tightened  always remember female has the power what   does that even mean female I mean I for me I just  know females always don't have to be plugged into   something or not be protected something has to  be plugged into them that female is carrying the   power yeah so that you can actually plug in now  here's another good tip so we would plug in there   come around here and then down to the corner  here again make sure you're spacing there   and here is consistent do not plug  this in and before you get this cut   if we cut that rotten if we plug this in right  now and cut this it'll short everything out now if you've looked at the job  plan what Memphis is doing right now   putting a female right there there's not  any there's nothing else is going to tie   into that but you want to end with a female  so it's just capped off line three comes   from here all the way over to here how do we  connect this right here we are gonna need a   female in line it's called an inline female so  he's taking the tab out see which one's the bigger   plug that's the Polar outside and then we're going  to put it on the wire with the white rotting you   want to make sure that this end line goes in  right at the place that you'll need it at this   peak right here so we'll take line three we're  going to cut it off even here split it at the end push it down in there good and put a back  plate on it now we're going to run that one over and down and cut yeah Memphis is going to  work on that and the next one we're going to get   into is line four while he's working on that  I'll go ahead and get an inline female ready   to move from or to connect from line three to  line four if you're doing this at night then you you're putting it in there and you're pushing it  down good now we're gonna do line four we would   actually have a bulb right here at this peak and  then we would put it in line either on this side   or this side real close four talk to me about  spacing why is that important yeah consistency   that's right you want consistency to make it  look professional four is going to run from here   down into this corner we actually are going to  tie line six into line four right here Memphis   is picking this up real quick once you kind  of have it down it's pretty easy to learn it's   easier if you can plan your job out before you  do it if you've never done it before now once   you have done five or ten houses um you can start  just throwing the lights up and have the plan in   your head as long as your helpers know what the  plan is you need to communicate that with them   all our Dormers we're just going to put one bulb  on each Dormer just to kind of give you the idea   of what we're doing so we're going to go ahead  and cut those if you measure your Dormers and   you know how many bulbs are going on them you can  pre-cut I normally don't just to make sure that   you have enough so why don't you go ahead and  put a male and female on both those ends there   and right now it doesn't matter does it it doesn't  because the cool thing about these clips is you   can just spin them so if you put a male on one  side and a female on the other you can always just   spin it around if you need to move it because you  can spin the clips all right this is a number five   these are the Dormers we have Dormer or say  Dormer one Dormer two Memphis made these up   for us oh and the males on that side and Dormer  three there's several ways you can get power to   a dormer just go with the closest way  so right now on this job the closest   feed to a dormer is here sometimes we have  to go from the top of the roof sometimes   we have to go from the gutter line whatever  the shortest feet is the shortest distance   take that first thing we're going to do is  get power from here with an inline female so we have our inline female and Memphitz asked me  if he if we wanted to get power from over here you   can but for ease of taking them down and keeping  the line as one wherever you feed your power from   just run all three Dormers with it that was a  great question what we're gonna have to do is   build a jumper from here to here from here to here  and from here to here now it is possible to shock   yourself by putting two males on the line and I've  done it before and you may think that sounds like   idiotic and it is but sometimes you get to where  you're not paying attention to how the lines are   run and you may have 12 lines on a house and you  forgot that you put a mill on that side and that   you're getting power from one side when you're  actually getting it from the other but you'll   find out real quick if you put a mill on a hotline  it sucked the mess out of you this one will not be   connected to anyone it's just a capital number  six all the way down that one way down there down there all right so Memphis city cut  this too short and you really that is true   um but you can still kind of fold that over and  get this on here now if you pull too hard on that   it'll start pulling that wire out of the socket  and it'll lose connection there we'll find out in   just a second when we plug it in remember when  we talked about spacing on the first one as we   come back and finish this gutter you want to kind  of play with your spacing just a little bit don't   do overdo each bulb just do a tiny bit to each  bolt to get your spacing to where it needs to be   so this you want this one ending on the corner  here that's why we started this one 15 inches   up hey don't forget to hit that like share  subscribe smash those buttons at the bottom   if you want to see more content like this  in the future always remember others and   let your let your work show your reflect your  good enough we'll catch you on the next one [Music]

Channel: Lawn & Light

Views: 151,926

Keywords: lawn and light, christmas lights, how to install christmas lights, holiday lights, professional christmas lights, lighting installation, diy christmas lights, professional christmas lighting, how to hang christmas lights, How to Hang Christmas Lights Like a Pro, christmas lights installation, christmas light business, Expert Level Christmas Light Install, www.lawnandlight.com, install christmas lights, install christmas lights on roof, hang christmas lights on roof

Id: jrt3r2f0zWA

Length: 15min 21sec (921 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 18 2022