Christmas light trouble shooting

soz : those new LED's are supposed to be great ; they use little electricity and are inexpensive to buy .
last weekend our local hydro gave them away for a set of "old-fashioned ones " to encourage energy-saving .
sorry you were not here ! :wink:
hbg

Oh wow, me too! :-)

I'll look into buying LED replacements tho...

looking at the "canadian tire store" flyer :
100 indoor/outdoor LED lights CAN $ 16.99 - 90 % energy savings !
can you pass up such a bargain ?
head across the border quickly ! (you might be back by christmas )
hbg

On the female end of the string is a small compartment containing two fuses. You can pry the compartment open with a small screwdriver. Many light sets come with extra fuses packed in cellophane, much like the extra lights you found.

I would replace both fuses. I wouldn't hold my breath however. Most lights--such as your webbed design--will likely only give you a year or two of service before the entire thing will need to be tossed.

I remember as a kid replacing each light bulb until the set would relight. A special challenge would occur if two bulbs happened to be burned out. But that is not what's plaguing your set. Modern Christmas lights are designed to burn regardless of missing or burnt out lights. I suspect the middle portion of your string will never glow again.

This is a throw away world we live in.

The older strings {I was appointed bad bulb seeker in my youth...Uggg!!} were a true series circuit...one bulb dies, they all die. The newer ones are still wired in series, though a bit better. I still have my old 1980, handy dandy Radio Shack christmas bulb tester....still works.



String Faults

The most common problem with these strings is that a bulb can burn out. Most strings come with a couple of replacement bulbs which may be enough for a few weeks of operation. But if we want to keep a string running for years, we are well advised to purchase an additional identical string simply to provide replacement bulbs.

It is interesting to note that each year the bulb bases seem to differ, and typically it is impossible to get direct replacements another year. Probably we could remove the bad bulb from its base, and re-use that base with a new bulb. But using a bulb from a different set often has sad consequences.

These lights are designed to be wired in series, and so drop the 120V line voltage to typically 2.4V (120V/50bulbs=2.4V/bulb) without using an expensive transformer. As a result, any single bulb failure could darken an entire circuit. To avoid this, each bulb has a "shunt" of several turns of tiny wire inside the bulb near the bead. The shunt is intended to conduct current when the filament fails, but the shunts often do not work.

When a shunt does operate, it takes on a low resistance. As a result, each bulb in the rest of that circuit takes slightly more voltage, gets slightly brighter, and lasts less long. So it is important to replace bad lights promptly.

Beyond bad bulbs, some socket connections may become intermittent (especially outside). Even less commonly, a fuse in the plug may also become intermittent. But it is very common to overload the fuses.


http://www.ciphersbyritter.com/RADELECT/LITES/XMSLITES.HTM

Thanks all!

My extremely low-tech fix:

I have a bunch of regular strings -- not webs -- of similar lights. I just plugged one into the end of the faulty web and then went back and covered the area. <shrug>

Looks fine -- it's on a big bushy boxwood and covers the cords pretty well. The grid isn't as nice and even as the rest of the webbing if you look closely, but the general "twinkly sparkly hedge WITHOUT a black spot" effect is maintained at zero extra cost and very little extra effort.

"...at zero extra cost ...'

let's hear it for thrifty soz !
hbg

Are those LED lights for both indoor and outdoor use? Hadn't heard of them before reading your post, Hambugie. Just Googled it and looked at a couple places but they didn't specify outdoor use.

Any links available?

Thanks!

~Tooterfly :wink:

here in the "cold north" the LED lights are being advertised as indoor-outdoor lights , local example : home depot .
hbg

I've been looking around and there seem to be a couple of different versions. Indoor only, and indoor/outdoor. The indoor/outdoor ones I saw were in colors that I didn't want, haven't seen any plain white ones yet.

"The indoor/outdoor ones I saw were in colors that I didn't want, haven't seen any plain white ones yet. "

now we are even getting fussy with the colours . what''s santa to do , accept special orders ? the old fellow is frazzled enough already .
hbg

If you're still having trouble shooting the Christmas lights, I suggest you talk to cjhsa and get a recommendation on a bigger gun!

Fussy fussy fussy! :-)

My neighbors do the multicolor thing and for some reason I think it looks better to have a plain white-light house next to a multicolor house. Blame my art-major years!

"Blame my art-major years! "

time to take an "up-to-date" arts course . one that specialises in phsycedelic colours :wink: .
hbg

Here you go, Soz! Have yourself a very neon holiday!

Hmmm...

Meanwhile, of course this would happen but I'm still happy about it, after I did the plug-in-a-new-string-at-the-end-of-the-faulty-net thing, the net suddenly perked up and worked. There is one (ONE) dead bulb in the middle of it all, but the formerly dark section is working. Yay!

half of my external lights are working and half are not, any suggestions?

get yourself a very big mirror

Don't knock prying that little box open and replacing the fuses. I had a string of dead lights and lo and behold, once I replaced the fuses, it worked!