As the weather warms up and the sunny seasons start to get into full swing, many homeowners might be finding themselves hanging up lights on the outside of their homes to add to the fun summer vibe. This is an exciting part of making the outside of your home more appealing when enjoying the warmer weather outside at night. However, it is important that homeowners are thinking about and considering the power it takes to keep these lights lit. You want to make sure your lights aren’t a danger to your house. Burley Electrical Services is here to talk about how you can determine the number of strings you can plug into each other these spring and summer seasons.
Two Kinds of Lights
When you’re choosing the string lights for your house, you will have two different choices to choose from; LED and incandescent. These two choices are going to require dramatically different wattage to light. LED lights are going to be more costly upfront, but you will find that they don’t require nearly as much power to operate. In fact, LED lights require only 1/10th the amount of power to light when compared to incandescent lights. You can string together 265 feet of strands together and only use 38 watts of power. With incandescent lights, that same number of feet strung together will use 1,925 watts of power. That is a massive difference. While you might save some money upfront on the cost of incandescent lights, you will pay more to keep them lit.
How to Figure Out How Many Strings of Lights You Can Use
You need to take some different factors into consideration when determining how many strings of lights you can use on your house.
– Determine Maximum Load: The first thing you need to do is figure out which circuit you will be plugging your lights into. If you are using a 15 amp circuit, the maximum amount of wattage you can use is 1,400. If you are using a 20 amp circuit, you can use up to 1,920 watts.
– Other Items on the Circuit: Unless you have a circuit that is solely dedicated to lighting your string lights, there are likely going to be other household items that are plugged into that circuit as well. You need to factor in these items when determining what the circuit can handle as far as string lights go.
– Check Tags & Warnings: You can look at the strings of lights and the boxes they come in to find the UL tag which will let you know how many strings of those types of lights can be safely strung together. Make sure you’re heading the warning labels to keep your home safe from electrical problems.
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If you have any electrical concerns in your home, you can turn to Burley Electrical Services to help you get them solved. We will ensure your home has the power it needs to run on a daily basis. Call us today!
