Holiday Lighting Installation in Fort Worth
Fort Worth Decembers aren't reliably cold. They're unreliable. A front drops you thirty degrees in an afternoon, freezing rain shows up on a Tuesday, and a frosted roof isn't something you walk. That's a bad week to find out the outlet by the front porch has never been live. We measure your roof in October, build the runs to fit it, hang them in November so you're lit before Thanksgiving, and take the whole thing back down in January.
How we do it
We don't hang store-bought strands. We measure every run on your roof in feet, then build the line for that roof: bulk SPT-2 wire cut to length, C9 sockets pressed onto it at 12-inch spacing, vampire plugs terminating each end. The socket has to match the wire, and an SPT-1 socket won't seat on SPT-2, so a run gets built from one gauge start to finish. The light stops exactly where the fascia stops, with no dangling tail looped behind the downspout. Bulbs are warm white LED pulled from a single production lot, because warm white varies between lots and from the curb you'll read one gable warm and the next one blue-white. Everything hangs on all-in-one clips that slide under a shingle course or hook the front lip of the gutter. No staples, no nails, nothing driven into your fascia. On the electrical side, a C9 LED bulb draws under a watt, so a roofline is a light load and you don't get the far-end dimming that a long incandescent run gives you. The limits that actually bind are the 5-amp fuse in the plug and the manufacturer's stated maximum connected run, and we stay inside both. Circuit capacity only becomes the question when inflatables and incandescent accents are sharing the same outlet, so we ask what else is going on the front of the house before we decide where the feeds land. Every connection gets a drip loop and a weatherproof cover, and the display runs on a timer that tracks sunset instead of a dial you reset every few weeks.
The visit, step by step
- 1
We walk the house and measure, in October
Every roofline run measured in feet. Every peak, dormer, and gable return counted. Every exterior outlet found and tested, because GFCI protection outdoors wasn't required by code until 1973 and Fort Worth has a lot of houses older than that. October is a much better time to learn an outlet is dead than install day. We also settle which elevations actually read from the street, because lighting the back of the house does nothing for you.
- 2
We build the runs on the bench
Not on a ladder, and not in the cold. Everything gets cut, socketed, bulbed, and lit up flat on a table first, then tagged for the elevation it belongs to. Nothing gets improvised at twenty feet.
- 3
Install day, in November
Clips go on, connections get made and covered, the timer gets set to your sunset. Then we plug it in and stand at the curb with you before we leave, because that's the only angle that counts.
- 4
Through the season
If a section goes dark, call us. It's almost always the fuse in the plug or one bad socket, and from the ground those look identical to the whole display failing. You shouldn't be the one on a ladder in December finding out which. What in-season service the quote covers is written into it before you book, so there's nothing to sort out in the moment.
- 5
Takedown in January
Clips off the roof, runs coiled and labeled by the elevation they came from, boxed and handed back. Nothing stays up into March, and nothing goes back in the attic as a knot.
Why it matters here
The two ways a DIY roofline costs you money are the staple gun and the ladder. A staple through SPT wire pierces the insulation, and the first freezing rain tracks water straight into it. Staples and nails in fascia and shingle leave holes that sit open all year, and DFW hail season, which runs March into June and peaks in April and May, finds every one of them. The ladder is the worse problem. The Consumer Product Safety Commission counts around 15,000 emergency room visits a year for holiday decorating injuries, and falls are the single biggest category at about four in ten. Asphalt shingles go brittle below about 40 degrees and crack under a boot, which is exactly what a cold front or a frosted Saturday morning hands you. The ground you're footing that ladder in is expansive clay that's been shrinking and cracking since July, and there's a flowerbed and a sprinkler head in the way. Then there's what nine months of storage does. A Fort Worth attic runs past 140 degrees in August, and PVC-jacketed wire and cheap sockets don't come back out of that the way they went in.
Signs it's time
- ✦Half of last year's strand lights up and the other half doesn't, and you've already swapped the fuse in the plug.
- ✦There's a dark gap over the garage because store-bought strands come in fixed lengths and yours ran out three feet short.
- ✦One gable glows warm and the other glows blue-white, because the replacement box came from a different production run.
- ✦You're looking at a two-story roofline and the only way to reach it is an extension ladder footed in a flowerbed, next to a sprinkler head, on clay that's been moving all summer.
- ✦There are staples still in your fascia board from three seasons ago and the paint under them is lifting.
What it costs
Holiday lighting starts at $400, and most homes price between $400 and $1,200. A single-story ranch in Benbrook with one clean roofline run sits near the bottom. A two-story Southlake house with three gables, dormers, wrapped porch columns, and a pair of live oaks sits near the top. What moves the number is measured footage, how many stories, how many separate peaks, and whether trees and columns go on top of the roofline. You get the number in writing before anything is cut or ordered, because once the wire is cut to your roof it isn't going on anyone else's.
Questions
Is holiday lighting included in The Homestead Plan?
No. It sits outside the plan, quoted on its own, from $400. December's plan visit is a front-of-house detail to get the entry guest-ready. It has never included lights, on any version of the calendar.
When do I need to book it?
October. Installs run early to mid November so the house is lit before Thanksgiving. Waiting costs you twice. December in DFW swings hard, and freezing rain or a frosted roof takes a working day off the board with no notice.
Will the clips damage my roof or my gutters?
No staples and no nails go into your house. All-in-one clips either slide under the edge of a shingle course or hook over the front lip of the gutter, and both come off in January leaving nothing behind. If you have gutter guards, tell us when we measure. Guards change which clip works, and finding out on install day costs you an hour.
Do you take them down, and who keeps the lights?
Takedown in January is part of the job. It's on the pricing page and it's in the quote. The lights are yours. They're cut to your measured footage and built for your rooflines, so they're worth keeping. We coil them, label each run by the elevation it came off, and hand them back, and the same set goes up clean the next year instead of leaving gaps.