Choreographed light show on display

With the warm weather we're having, it's perhaps the perfect time to go outside and set up the Christmas lights and decorations in your yard. But before you do make sure everything is wired properly to keep your family safe this holiday season.

Lots of homeowners are decorating their entire property in lights, but before you try to be the next Clark Griswold, you need to make sure that all of those lights aren't a fire risk.

Paul Ricks has been decorating his house for Christmas for 8 years now. He says the decorations keep evolving each year as he feels he needs to do more than the last year. This year, he's gone above and beyond with a choreographed light show set to music.

"One time we counted.  It was roughly around 25,000 lights altogether. Now they're all LED's and stuff. The whole yard dances and sings with the music and stuff. I’ve got it programmed this year to sing with the faces. I have like four songs. One of them is wizard in wonderland so it doesn’t actually have singing on it, but the lights dance with the music and stuff", said Ricks.

Ricks knows with all of those lights it can be a fire hazard, but he says he has all of the proper wiring and took extra precautions to be safe.

"I don't use anything this year, and last year partly, that ain't LED's. Plus, if you read the little instruction things, which probably most people don't, it tells you how many lights you can put on a circuit and stuff. With the program I’m running, I only run a few lights on each circuit so that way it can be more than that. Otherwise it overloads the circuits."

Grand Junction fire officials also warn people about the risks of holiday fires. They say there’s a quick and easy way to know if you've overloaded your outlets.

"Each time that you set up a system with Christmas lights, if you'll just turn everything on that's going to be on that extension cord and then check to see if that wire's hot. If it is hot, you're running the risk of a fire", explained Mike Page, Public Information Officer for the Grand Junction Fire Department.

If you'd like to see the light show at Paul Rick's house, it's on 22 Road between I and R Roads. You can’t miss it. The songs will play every half hour until 10pm, and you could even tune in to 87.9 FM to hear the music in your car while watching the lights.