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Today is my birthday! I decided that with a window, it is best to go with 2.5 inch spaced lights. Yes, these strands are more expensive, but lights spaced 4" apart or 6" waste a lot of window space. So, a 2.5" spaced line of 50 lights is 10.7 feet long, or 126 inches. My window is 44" x 35". As with all LOR projects, it is necessary to calculate power. First, we need to calculate the number of 50 light strings I will be using. I have 9 gridlines of Red, 9 gridlines of green, 8 gridlines of blue, and 6 gridlines of yellow. These numbers came from the to scale drawing of my window in a previous post. So, here you go: - Red = (3 gridlines per channel)(44inches/gridline)+8inch overhead (4 inches between each row times 2 rows = 8) = 140". Each string is 126 inches, so 2 strings. Times 3 for 3 red channels = 6 strings of red.
- Green = (9 gridlines per channel)(44inches/gridline)+32inch overhead (4 inches between each row times 8 rows=32) = 428". Each string is 126", so 4 strings.
- Blue = (4 gridlines per channel)(35 inches/gridline)+ 18 overhead (6 inches between each row times 3 rows = 18) = 158". Each string is 126", so 2 strings. Times 2 for 2 blue channels = 4 strings of blue lights.
- Yellow = (6 gridlines)(35 inches/gridline) + 39" overhead (6 inches between each row times 6 rows PLUS 3 inch pane overhead = 39") = 249". Each string is 126", so 2 strings.
TOTALS: - 6 Red
- 4Green
- 4 Blue
- 2 Yellow/amber
WASTE: - 112" of red lights from top channel (9.3 feet)
- 112" of red lights from middle channel (9.3 feet)
- 112" of red lights from bottom channel (9.3 feet)
- 76" of green lights (6.3 feet)
- 94" of blue lights on left side (7.8 feet)
- 94" of blue lights on right side (7.8 feet)
- 3" of yellow lights (.25 feet)
- = Total waste of 50.25 feet, or 4.76 strings of light!
So, 16 strings of lights at 0.17 amps each = 2.72 amps. Even though I share my circuit with other people, 3 amps is only 20% capacity on the circuit, so I should be OK. This is how the initial diagram and calculations came out. I may try to reorganize the grid to waste less. Saving 4 strings of lights will help reduce cost.
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