What wattage are the bulbs? Are you using 120V 15A receptacles? You should never plug more than 1500W worth of anything into a single outlet, but you should be able to safely plug 1500W worth into a single outlet without creating a fire hazard. If they're 100W lights, that's 15 strings. Bear in mind what else is on that string, since loading up a receptacle like that means you can have very little else on any other receptacle fed from that breaker.
Watch your extension cords, too- those cheap thin ones can't take the load of that many lights! Nor can most christmas light timers. You'll have to check the label on your lights, too, for the limit on daisy-chaining them; IIRC, the lights we have include 5A fuses and can handle 6 in-line, but it will vary from light to light.
That said, I metered a string of 100 cheap lights last year and found they only drew about 0.3A a string, which surprised me greatly as I was expecting closer to 1A/string. I'll have to test it again this year when we drag the lights out again.
Last edited by SteveFehr; 11/14/07 08:32 AM.
