If you're planning on hanging those commercial-grade outdoor patio string lights, it's best to use a hanging kit vs. draping them directly from place to place. I was hanging about 125 feet of string lights, so this kit was great, as it provides you with all of the tools to do this right. The instructions were fairly easy to follow, and with just me doing the work, it took me about 5 hours to hang everything. Now let's get to the wire. It came tightly wound on a spool and it does the trick as far as tension goes. The spool is 250 feet, so imagine having to pull all that wire through each of these tiny crimping loop sleeves (to create the loops you need for hanging, so you're really doing it twice), and doing this multiple times for each hanging section. Because the wire was tightly spooled, it kept twisting up and kinking as I was pulling it through the loop sleeves, so I spent a ton of time trying to straighten it out every few pulls! While I understand this is what wire does, I thought you should be aware because you may discover a whole new vocabulary of curse words. A couple of tips: 1. The kit comes with twist ties to secure the lights to the wire. They looked a little flimsy, and because the light string was pretty heavy, I used small black zip ties instead so the lights would attach more securely. 2. Wear a thick work glove on the hand holding the crimpling loop sleeves when you're pulling the wire through it. The sleeves are made of aluminum, and the friction from the wire heats the metal so it gets pretty hot.
