Step aside, Christmas light weekend warriors doing your best Clark Griswold impersonation.
The set-up at Richard B. Taylor's Kennesaw home, in the 1500 block of Ben King Road, rivals many of Atlanta's other displays of yuletide cheer.
According to his calculations, he has 275,000 lights drawing 571 amps, all flickering to Christmas music.
Taylor, an accountant, said he’s set up the display for more than 20 years and it’s grown every year.
It started with putting some lights on a three-foot holly hedge. Now, each holly bush is about 12 or 15 feet tall and supports more than 1,000 lights.
Credit: Richard B. Taylor
Credit: Richard B. Taylor
One tree is 90 feet tall and sports 18,000 lights. The yard has 20 trees in all.
But he ran into a wall four years ago.
He maxed out 46 circuits meant to handle 20 amps by drawing 721 amps of power in total.
But he switched to LED lights, and he’s always aware of his neighbors.
“I am fortunate to have a road frontage of around 650 feet. We put almost all of the lights close to the street as the house is about 300 feet off of the road,” Taylor said.
As for the music, that took some creativity, too.
He created his own radio station, 99.1 FM, that has a range of 1,000 feet.
"It plays our music and does not broadcast from a public station,” he said.
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