With the holidays upon us, getting your home ready with nice lights and decorations can be a task to some. What makes the seasons holidays feel like the holidays is getting the warm feeling when everything around the house is festive. After speaking to our roofing contractors in Guilderland about safety and techniques for setting up holiday decorations, we have some information to give you.

Like in the movie “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation”, Clark had a difficult time setting up the Christmas decorations, stapling the lights all over the roof without checking if the lights were in working condition. Throughout the movie, Clark can be seen struggling stapling the lights to the drip edge and at one point he staples his gloves making for a hilarious scene. Take this movie as a lesson, don’t do what he does but have some help setting up your lights because it can become dangerous situation. Having a spotter on the ground to make sure the ladder is straight and upright is extremely helpful. Making sure that all your Christmas lights work will prevent from a big headache, especially after your done installing them. Simple things like making sure you have all the proper equipment like staples and extension cords will help out tremendously. Also, if you do attempt to add lights to your roof make sure you wear good grippy shoes or boats to prevent you from slipping and hurting yourself. After talking with our roofing contractors in Guilderland, they told us one of the most important things to do is to check the surroundings and make sure that there is at least one other person with you while you hang up the lights. It’s important to have another person present just in case anything happens like an injury or accident.

When people hang up Christmas lights they have a tendency of using a lot of power to withstand the large amount of lights. In the movie, Clark has a lot of power cords connecting to one outlet and it makes the lights in the house go out every time he tries to turn on the Christmas lights on. Now days you can have an extension cord with multiple outlet spots to prevent the clutter but it will still shut off the breakers if too much power is being used. So, what our roofing contractors in Guilderland say that, the less cords used the better in order to prevent people tripping over cords and using up more outlet space.

When in the process of picking out a tree make sure that you check how much space you have for the tree before purchasing. A lot of the times when someone buys a tree they are left with trimming the tree just to make it fit in the space that they needed. In the movie, Clark picks a huge tree and wraps it, he then places the tree inside the house and rips the strings holding the tree together. The branches on the tree were so long that they pressed against the windows and broke them. Now we all know that might have been a stretch in the movie, but it’s still a good thing to measure how much space you can work with when setting up the tree. Make sure that when you have a spot ready for your tree that you water it daily so that it doesn’t dry out.

Accidents can happen and the best way to avoid them is to keep safety always on your mind, no matter where your setting up the decorations. If you’re going to be placing some kind of decoration on the roof other than lights, make sure you can keep it securely on the roof. Wind and other weather related issues can arise and blow off whatever’s on the roof. These things can happen and it can hurt someone who is walking by your home, it can become a very expensive lawsuit. Setting up lights in and around your home can become a task as well, like we said before have one extra person with you to help with the decorations. Make sure you keep all the cords and wires away from walk ways and sidewalks to prevent people from tripping and hurting themselves. If there is a way that you can avoid using staples do so. Sometimes using staples can damage the wires and prevent some of the lights from lighting up. It can also make a short and even set off a fire. If you can, install hooks so that you don’t have to pinch the wires. Candles can be very pretty for the holidays as well but may become a fire hazard. A study was done where they left a candle stand with a few lit candles, over a short time the candles melted and one of the candles leaned over to the curtains and started a fire. Be very careful and place candles in a good spot where it won’t ignite any other objects nearby.

According to The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, there were an estimated 14,000 people injured while setting up Christmas decorations in the months of November and December of 2015. There were six fatalities during those months, so be careful when setting up the Christmas decorations. Make sure that you check the wires for cuts to make sure that it wouldn’t start a fire on the tree. There have been times where a tree will ignite due to a short in the wiring. After looking at a study, 2 trees were used, one watered daily and the other tree was not. The test played out, A few wires were shorted and shot sparks igniting the first tree that was watered every day. The tree slowly but gradually grew a flame in the span of 20 seconds. The second test was with the tree that wasn’t watered at all. It took the tree barely five seconds to light up the whole tree. Ten seconds later the house was on fire, make sure that you check all your electrical decorations during the installs to prevent these things from happening to you.

It’s always nice to have the family over during the holidays, but it’s not always pretty to have a leak during all the festivities. Getting your house in order before the family comes over is always the plan to have. We understand that getting all this done may be a huge task, that’s why you should hire a roofing, siding, and window replacement contractor in your area. These companies will take care of all you home improvement needs, evens sometimes take care of placing your Christmas lights up for an extra fee. When temperatures drop during the winter season be sure to have insulation in the attic to make sure that the warmth stays trapped inside your home and not escaping through the attic. To wrap this short post, we at Home Evolution would like to say happy holidays to you and your loved ones.