Electrical engineer’s Christmas house lighting brings crowds for charity

For the last 17 years 30-year old Alex Goodhind, who owns and runs an electrical and audio/visual company in Melksham, Wiltshire called Kanconnections, has been putting up the lights - which takes around five weeks to complete. 

 

He uses the money raised from the many people who come to see the display for charity. So far, over £15,000 has been gathered, which goes to the local hospice that cared for his mother.

 

The lighting system costs around £1,000 extra on Alex’s electricity bill, but with his neighbours’ goodwill and all the visitors, this fantastic display raises very welcome funds for the hospice, which is called Dorothy House.

 

Some 1,900ft of electric cable is installed for the lighting display (which is now mainly LED to reduce the running and maintenance costs). In addition, there are about 70 waterproof connection boxes, 2,000 cable ties and 650ft of steel restraining wire. Alex has also had to get his local provider to install ‘industrial cable’ to his home – at considerable expense - so as to handle the extra electrical load.

 

Alex started his display when very young, having been amazed and enthused by the (by the standards of today) comparatively small and restrained display at a local house. This featured illuminated figures of Santas and snowmen, plus a waving and moving Father Christmas on the roof, icicle lights and moving reindeer. “All of these”, he says, “were completely unheard of in the UK in the early nineties.”

 

So, at the age of 11 and having a keen interest in electrics from an early age (Alex says he was ‘more interested in wires and plugs at three years old than he was with toys’) and being inspired by this and other displays, he set out to put a few lights up on the outside of his parents house for Christmas 1995. 

 

This first display comprised five strings of low voltage lights draped across the house, plus a couple in the trees, along with coloured lanterns his father had bought years earlier. These, Alex placed in a tree in the garden. The required cables passed through an open window and plugged in to a extension lead – perhaps not the safest arrangement, that was then, and here we are now with a properly installed system.

 

However, it is reported that this year’s Christmas display might be the last, as it takes so much time – apparently Alex has to take a lot off time off work to do it all. He says that despite sometimes coachloads of visitors, most of his neighbours are supportive of his display. 

 

 

This sort of over-the-top domestic Christmas lighting display – often in aid of charity – seems to be a growing phenomenon. To take just one recent example, a Denton couple have decked their house out with Christmas lights in aid of a local Children's Hospice, and just around the corner from where Voltimum managing editor James Hunt lives, in Hove, East Sussex, there’s another extraordinary example. The photos of this (shown with this news story) were taken in daylight, but Voltimum users – if they are lucky – may see an update with photos taken at night….keep a weather eye open! This one too raises money for charity.

 

 

However, there are those who find such displays ostentatious and in bad taste, not to mention hardly very ‘green’. For example – and away from the purely domestic - Crawley Borough Council has come under fire for spending almost £17,000 of taxpayers' money on an hour-long event to turn on the Christmas lights.

 

And while there’s little doubt that many of the domestic displays are intended to merely ‘outshine’ the neighbours, others really do provide funds for charities over and above the energy costs of running the lighting. So, let’s be charitable in more ways than one; let's not be a Scrooge; let's recognise instead such displays for their (admittedly often very kitsch) beauty.