HUGE Light Christmas Tree

The desire was to make a BIG lighted Christmas tree to celebrate the holiday season. So after Christmas last year, we went to Walmart and bought up all the lights that were on super SALE. I think that we paid about 1.99 a piece for the lights. And then they sat in the basement for about 11 and 1/2 months.....

The lighted section of the lights was 23 feet. So that was the hypotenuse of the triangle. I figured the angle of the tree would be about 70 degrees, so I did some math to see what the other sides would be. With the angles, the center of the tree should be about 21 feet 7 inches. So I built the center of the tree with 6 2X4 studs 8 feet long.
I laid them out 8 8 8 and then backed them with 4 8 8 4 as you can see in the drawing. Initially I put them back to back, but they were too wobbly, so i put them together in a "T".

I added two 1x4 sections with a "U" cut out in the top to lay the lights in. See photo. This created two "valleys" for the light strings to go through.

When I had the 24 foot pole put together, i dug about a 3 foot hole, and put the pole in it.

The base was a 12 sided polygon, which meant that every interior angle was 150 degrees, or 15 degrees per side.

That being said, I need 12 four foot pieces of 2x4. Each one was cut 15 degrees on each end (photo).

I put the polygon together around the main vertical post of the tree and centered it. I then marked out every 15 inches around the outside, this would space the 32 sets of lights around the tree.

With the pole in the ground, and the base on the ground around it, it was time to put the lights up. I used a long pole, and put the lights over the top, two strings at a time.

When 32 sets, 16 strings (two connected together) were put over the top, it was a dance around the maypole to get them untangled.

We attached the strings to the base with a staple gun...

We plugged them in and HUZZA, a tree.


Done!!!