Tree of Lights

Austin has a tradition of having a 155foot tall tree of lights.

I tried various ways to make one of these over the years, but on a much smaller scale.

My neighbor came up with the solution below

In a tall straight tree, at the height you want the tree of lights pound in nails evenly spaced about 1 inch apart. The nails should protrude from the tree about 1-1/2 inches. The lights will loop over the nails

There should be no branches below the tree's height.

Height = h

A Christmas tree is an isosceles triangle with the top angle 30degrees and each base angle 75degrees.

We need to know how big 1/2 the base of three should be. So, we will use 15 degrees and only calculate 1/2 the base using the formula:

base = height * 0.2679

For example

base = 12ft * 0.2679 = 3.2148 ft

12x0.2148 =2.5 inches

of 3ft 2-1/2 inches

I used wire coat hangers to anchor the lights to the ground. I cut a six inch piece of coat hanger and folded it over, so there are about 3 inches on each side. The coat hangers are placed at the marks in the step below.

Use a rope or bit of string to make a loop around a tree. The loop should move easily around the tree. Mark a distance for the base calculated above of 3ft 2-1/2 inches.

Mark a spot and move 12-18 inches and mark the next spot and so on rotating the loop around the tree until you reach the starting point.

String the lights from the nails to the coat hangers.

A 12 foot tall tree uses about 4 strings of C6 200 lights.