We gave up trying to fix them, opting instead for LED Chrismas lights. They are cheaper to run and no repairs. OTOH, the OP is low on funds so my preferred method was changing one light bulb at a time. Most mini light sets come with a couple replacement bulbs. With any luck, he can troubleshoot enough to get the strand going.
I love the LED Christmas lights. They are a lot cheaper to operate too! We replace a few strands last year and will replace more this year. We will be using LED lights outside too. If we can get the look we want using less electricity, why not! Two of our strands are programmable for different flashes. We don't put lights on our tree as it is fiber optic and uses one halogen bulb.
| Do they not make old style Christmas lights where there are sockets | to screw in bulbs?
Sure. Both classic sizes (C7 & C9) are readily available. They also have miniature bulbs with covers to make them look like C7, so you have to be a little careful.
| It sounds like the issue isn't that the bulbs are in series, that's merely | a slow process to find the dead bulb, but that they are no longer socketed.
All the miniature lamps I've seen are still socketed; however, the sockets and the connection wires to the bulbs are not exactly robust. Even if you use a binary search as proposed by another poster to minimize the number of bulbs that you have to remove and re-install, it isn't entirely unlikely that you will break or at least deform the contacts on a good bulb in the process of searching for a bad one. That gives you a moving (and growing) target...
| That would make them far more throwaway than the old style Christmas | lights. On the other hand, from the flyers I see one can get them pretty | cheap, so maybe nowadays people toss out the Christmas tree with the lights | still on it.
They are pretty cheap to begin with, and it is fairly easy to hit the 75% off sale point after Christmas so you can stock up for the next year. A couple of years ago I found a 90% off sale, though there wasn't a huge variety left. At those prices there just isn't a huge incentive to repair dead strings, though I don't discard good ones.
Dan Lanciani ddl@danlan.*com
Why not just leave it up year round? A woman at work kept a tree up all year, but changed the decorations to match the holidays/seasons. But that would defeat the purpose of your idea, no matter how cute it was.
LOL
-Jane
I buy mine after Christmas when they go on sale for 75% off. I've never paid more than $0.75 for a box of lights.
--Jane
There's no such thing as a string of 100. (bulbs in series, that is) Those strings would be 2-strings of 50, or 5 strings of 20. But your method is sound. Here's another for strings of 50 or 100 with 2.4 volt bulbs:
Cut off a 1- piece length of 10 sockets/ lamps from a set you're disposing of anyway. Also remove 2 additional lamps and bases from that set, and take those
2 lamps out of their bases.Strip the wire at each end of the 10 string and divide in two so it forks slightly, and thread both ends of the 10-socket length through a lamp base, same way you'd change a bad bulb.
From a working string, remove the 1st, 2nd, 9th and 10th lamp and replace the
1st and 10th lamp with your test string. If it lights along with the rest of the 50 lamps, the test string is good.On a non working string of 50, or the half non working string of 100, remove the 1st, and 10th lamp. Plug one side of the test string into the 1st and the other into the 10th. If the set doesn't light, remove the test from the 1st, replace the lamp and swing it over to the 20th. Continue until you've got the set lit and isolated the section with only 9 suspect lamps, then, switch the test lamps with the suspect lamps until you've found the little bastard.
Noma and GE are both marketing "Sta-Lit" sets. Even if you yank a bulb, the set remains lit. (Shunts located in lamps AND the sockets)
LED light sets do not contain either blue or white (clear) lamps.
snipped-for-privacy@aol.com
if it were a computer program, you would call it a binary search i believe.
randy
This will only work if there is only one failed bulb. All bets are off if there are two or more failures My experience is that most bad lights are caused from rough handling (dropping on to the floor) and are usually restricted to broken bulbs. A truely bad bulb will usually be restricted to one per chain. THere are actually two filaments in each bulb. The light producing filament and a shunt filament. If the light producing filament burns out, the shunt filament will allow enough current to flow to light the other lights to light but at reduced voltage. it is only when both filaments burnout that the string dies.
IF still a no go, go to local home center and buy a bad bulb detector for $3. get the type where you insert the bulb into a hole. It seems to work better than the type where you just touch the bulb. I suggest this as a last resort because they don't work too well but they have their place.
I bought a "waterless" tree about eight years ago. For the money, it's probably one of the best Christmas decorations on the market now.
Bill
Most if not all of the lights today have bulbs with shunts so when they burn out the rest of the string does not go out.
The lights are in a series. Sometimes two series to a string.
Lamps today have a shunt in them so they may go out and the rest of the lamps stay on. That works only if the light burns out, as often as not they don't burn out but they come loose and that will kill the rest of the series.
Note, often they include one clear lamp, usually near the plug. It acts as a fuse and it will cause the rest of them to go out if it burns out.
Watch National Lampoon's Christmas. Learn from Chevy Chase. Staple gun is your friend.
WoW! Shunt. Do you know how they do that?
Must be a fuse of sorts or what?
Joel
What. Its just a resistor of about the same resistance as the filament, which doesnt light up with the normal current thru it.
OK resistor and bulb in parallel and each unit in series with every other unit.
I think the Christmas bulb sets in parallel are cheaper.
I think the Dollar Store has them.
Joel
I got so tired of messing with those series wired lights that I bought all the old style lights with the 5 watt bulbs (or are they 7w, I forget). They are the same bulbs used in night lights except colored. Sometimes OLD is better !!! All I do now is replace dead bulbs.
I learned all this from my now deceased father. I remember one Christmas when these series lights got him so mad that he opened the front door and threw all the lights and even the tree out the door into the snow. Later he went and bought all new lights and brought the tree back in, and started over. This eventually became a family joke and we still laugh about the Christmas when that dad threw the tree out the door..... Actually I miss those days now!
T-Pot
wrote
I don't want no COLORED bulbs around here!
I think I saw one of these at Home Depot or Lowes a week or so back. Here's the website:
I found
This discussion has me thinking. Perhaps one could wire a BBQ ignitor, also a piezo device, to the string of lights and that too would send a pulse out to the lights. However, what I don't understand and perhaps somebody can explain, is why (following the Lightkeeper's instructions) they make you remove one bulb from each set of lights prior to plugging the light string into the device. I mean that way there's no continuity to the shunt. Maybe I'm missing something.
This is true. You could cook your turkey and get the Christmas tree all decorated all in one shot.
UNLESS you deep-fry the turkey instead of BBQ it .....
Or like that TURDunkin' stuff.
HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.