History of Display with pictures
of "the beginning"
I, Darren Pieper, started this grand project by simply
outlining the house before we had our large addition, which doubled the
size of our house (the five dormers and the Great Room were not in existence
then.)
In 1991, with somewhere near only 1000 lights outside
started my grand display that it is now. I was only a junior at Hunterdon
Central High school. When I first started, I had no idea that my display
would grow to such a large scale.
In 1992, the dormers were first lit from a series
of outside receptacle plugs that I wired in our new addition.
In 1993, I set out to work on my first icon for our
front lawn, the nine reindeer (each ~4 1/2 feet tall) and the sleigh all
built out of plywood. *** ~3000 lights ***
In 1994, the reindeer & sleigh all received personalized
name tags and detailing. *** ~5000 lights ***
In 1995, I set out to build an 8' long biplane with
a 8 1/2' wingspan. A 3 or 4 year old would find plenty of comfort aboard
this plane. The propeller consists of a cut plywood circle with a chasing
light set wired in a spiral to give it a virtual spinning effect, which
has inspired many who visit. The wired Santa Claus was also an after Christmas
addition this year. With the increase of visitors this year, I built a
sign to display title (Santa's Airport), # of lights, and hours that the
display was lit. The Great Room was first lit. And the Two large trees
out front had a few lights in them that looked almost like lightning when
they flashed. ***~8000 lights ***
In 1996, the front posts were changed in giant candy
canes with lights, and the walkway lanterns were also changed into candy
canes lanterns (in 1997, they were lit with mini lights). The "Winter
Wonderland" was created consisting of some metal poles used for virtual
pine trees and an virtual ice pond with chasing lights set to their fastest
speed before steady lit to give a glitter effect. Two 8' toy soldiers with
trumpets were built and lit. And a challenging job this year was to get
the 180 lbs. of reindeer & sleigh to fly. The airplane also got a lift.
*** ~12,000 lights ***
In 1997, two snowmen were placed skating on the ice
rink (ice pond.) I built a new 'lit' sign displaying the letters with miniature
lights. The task required three ceiling light panels stuck together to
give a holder for the light. Three
12' high skyliners were built with an 18" snowflake in the middle of
each one. I used my 14' trampoline in front of the toy soldiers to represent
a large drum. The main event that gave a new title, Christmas
City, to my display was the 48' long- 12' high bridge and city surrounding
it. This year, with continued efforts, was the first year the "Hunterdon
County Democrat" newspaper came out and took pictures for their paper.
Visit the page of the article. *** 17,329 lights ***
For 1997, I started around Halloween, and spent 150
hours putting up the lights during my 19 credit hours at Rutgers University.
Tear down took only 3 days. There were 4000 lights that lit up the inside
the house in addition to the 17,000 outside.
STATS FOR 1997
Christmas Eve Night ----------between 9:00-11:00------112
cars visited
Christmas Day Night----------between 7:00- 10:00
-----206 cars visited
Thank you for those of you whom donated and left
comments!
In 1998,
Over 400 hours were spent; 97% done by myself, Darren. Myself and
a friend of mine, Tracy Schmid, started in August preparing for painting
and building the new structures. Lights started going up around September
20 on the house, and only the clear lights, because the colored lights
tend to fade to quickly in the sun (a lot of sets from the house last year
were retired to other places due to their faded color). This year
a great deal of time was spent reorganizing the way the lights were put
on the house; About 4000 more lights were put on the house and I
needed to arrange the lights in such away to provide a way to plug in all
the lights. There is ONLY 3 extension cords needed to power the house
lights; The lights on the house are plugged into 16 different plug-in
outlets which were wired in various places and various circuits to avoid
overloads. The lights in the yard, on the other hand,
use an entire box full of extension cords (probably 50 or more).
*** 29,770 lights ***
