Oh No!

[johno123]

We had 57 MPH winds at our house in SW Washington last night, looks like it took down our Mega tree and three controllers.  Still assessing damage, but it appears that the pip caused the cases for two of the expresses to warp and might have let some rain in.  Drying them out now and will start looking for replacement galvanized pipe..... grr!!!  Ripped the guywires out and everything!  Right before X-mas!
 

[kylec]

That stinks man!    Wind is not the Christmas light guy's friend!    I am up north of you a little ways.  We've had the wind too.  Luckily it hasn't affected the display yet.  Good luck getting back up and running.

Kyle   

[Rainlover]

You must live near the river. The gorge winds were howling yesterday.
We lived in Troutdale for 17 years so we know what you are talking about. We moved to Sandy and we don't miss the wind at all.
Sorry about your troubles. Hope you get everything straightened out.
Good luck.

John

[meman]

Rain is annoying, but I HATE WIND!
Even in Florida it was howling last week and trashed a lot of my display. Finally got things back together for this weekend.

Mike E.

[jnealand]

The last two years I have had a mega tree blow over.  So far this year, knock on wood, it has not happened.  But I didn't feel confident enough in this years pole to put all the lights on it.  I've already accumulated most of the parts needed to build a JUMP pole for the tree.  I'm hoping to finish the build and test it before I tear down for the season.  One thing I have learned is that you can not have too strong of guy wires and also the higher your pole the better you will be if you also have guy wires going to the middle or 2/3 point of the pole.

[tbone321]

The higher your guy wires, the better off you will be.  Mounting them to the top of the tree will provide the strongest means of support but that is not always practical depending on the construction of the tree.  Either way, they should ALWAYS be above the highest pipe union on the tree.

[castortiu]

Sorry to hear that, I’m on king county, my mega also crashed badly one week before thanksgiving because of the wind, I fixed and now it has 4 steel wires instead 2 about 3/4 of the high of the galvanized pipe, in my case the union was what failed, I replaced the threaded couple with a nipple.

I hope you can fix it soon.

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Cas.

[johno123]

Thanks all!

Turns out it was not nearly as bad as I thought.  Dried out the controllers, replaced a few bulbs, reconnected and the lights ended up working fine except for our star that was pretty heavily damaged electrically - but not bent.

The Galvanized pipe broke off at the union, sounds just like you Cas.  Replaced the coupler and the short piece of pipe below it going into the ground and it looks like we're back in business!  I'm REALLY glad that the two Express controllers booted up just fine after the nasty fall AND the slighty open boxes.  I guess RJ knows how to make a tough controller!