Frequently Asked Questions

Lots of people have extreme hobbies. Some people spend thousands of dollars decking out their cars with sound systems and graphics.

Some spend hundreds of hours setting up model trains and planes.

Others spend hundreds of hours sewing quilts or creating needle point projects.

No, not yet anyway. I never asked Newmarket Hydro for a rebate. I got myself into this mess, I will pay for it. Besides, it's not that much anyway. However, if they want to volunteer, that would be very nice. Nudge, nudge, wink, wink…..or was that just the lights blinking?

I did go and see them to tell them what I was doing and to tell them to put a special note in my file. You see, I didn't want the police showing up at my door in January thinking I started up a “Grow Op” since my hydro consumption jumped. I did use their LED light exchange too. I received my LED strands when I was there. I put them up on the boulevard tree. Thanks Newmarket Hydro, they look very nice.

I calculated around 18,000 watts when everything is on and running at full power. This includes the lights, computer system, sound system (400 watts) and other security features. Each circuit was individually tested with an amp meter to make sure I'm within safe limits for each one. If you add it all up, the lighting grid alone draws 110AMPS!

It should only cost $200 over and above my monthly hydro bill (we will see) to run it.

Since the lights are always blinking and are not all on at once very often, it draws a lot less power this way.

It sure does when they are all on. I look at the meter and think …“ahhhh, that can't be good for the hydro bill.”

They sure do! That's why Hydro is pushing them so much. I have started converting the display to LED lights, but it's costly. I added 48 boxes of LED lights this year alone.

Example: In 1995 I used 32 boxes of the 5watt bulbs in my display.

Regular bulbs => 5watts x 25 lights x 32 strands = 4,000 watts using 800 lights.

LED lights => 0.064 watts x 70 lights x 48 strands = 215 watts using 3,360 lights.

I'm saving 3,785 watts per hour and I have 2,560 more pretty lights to look at!

Eleven years ago, I thought it would be a neat idea to put out a donation box for a charity. I thought to myself, “What charity can help the most people in my area?”. Well, York Region is a real big area and all of us may need a hospital at some point our lives.

The Southlake foundation told me this area has grown in size over the years, and the hospital now services over a 1,000,000 people. Wow, that's a lot of people to take care of in one facility!

In 2006, I started in mid-September. This year, I had to build a lot of from scratch and redo a lot of things because I didn't do it for 11 years.

This year took 45 days @ 5 hours a day (16 hour days on the weekend) to get the lights up and running by December 2nd. I'm still putting in lots of hours in tweaking a few things here and there. Making this website, taking video, pictures, and counting the donations.

This year I basically did 99.99 % of the outside work myself. I didn't want to inconvenience anyone by asking for help putting up lights in the cold, in the dark, in the rain etc. At times, it's not fun at all (I hate putting up the lights when it's minus 5 out and your fingers are frozen). I couldn't bring myself to ask anyone to experience that kind of pain. Besides, it's not easy to figure out what goes where, how many strands etc. At least if something is done incorrectly - only I'm to blame and there is no liability against my friends or neighbours. My wife and kids helped out 2 nights in a row replacing light bulbs. It took over 10 hours to replace over 4,000 peeling or burnt out light bulbs! I also needed to change the colour in a lot of the strands (e.g. change a red\green\red\green strand to all red bulbs).

However, I did get lots of help in other areas. Website design, video, communications, sponsors etc. See the THANKS TO section. Thank you everyone.

The "Festival of Lights" can be seen from 6:00PM to 10:30PM from December 2nd to early January, at 123 Rutledge Ave.

See the HOW IT WORKS section.

I wish it was automatic, but it's not. Not having a musical background, it takes me 16 solid hours to program each song using 60 channels. In 2006, I'm running three different songs. I am getting faster at it. It helps to set up the computer to use 2 monitors and put the monitor on its side so I can squeeze all the channels on one screen at a time.