I have made a bottle tree in my yard from a piece of two inch pipe with ¼ inch by 16 inches long steel rods welded to it to form the tree branches. It has 14 bottles on it. I wanted to put small lights inside each of the bottles. I rewired a string of Christmas lights in parallel and put 5 lights in each bottle for a total of 70 lights. My problem is I can’t find a way to light the lights. I bought a power supply for an outdoor garden light set up. It is 12 volts but doesn’t have enough amperage to do the job. Does anyone have any ideas as to how to power my bottle tree?

use LED rope light instead. your usual 120-150 light incandescent string is two series strings around a common neutral using 2.5 volt lights of about 50 mA each.

five in series is 12.5 volts, ok. 14 of those at 50 mA load is 3/4 amp, or about 8 watts.

if you fold up an LED rope light to hit all 14 bottles (probably take 3 strings) you are going to use 120 volts at maybe 100 mA total current. a much better deal.

never heard of a bottle tree before, and I am not going to crack the expected "redneck renovations" jokes. honest, I won't. might be interesting lit.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: swschrad,

Thanks swschrad for the reply. I wish I could send you a picture of the bottle tree. All of the bottles are whiskey or tequila bottles; therefore the opening at the neck is only about 7/8 of an inch wide. I don’t have room for a rope light and I want each bottle to light up without other lights going down the pole. As I said I rewired the string of 2.5 volt lights in parallel. I don’t know how to figure the total wattage or amperage. I hooked it up to a 6 volt golf cart battery and the lights came on but the ones at the top were very dim. I hooked up a 12 volt battery and the lights were bright but the wires got hot. And yes I can see a little redneck but the lights will make it a work of art.

You can purchase battery operated led Christmas lights to do this job. Check ebay or amazon.