Outdoor Christmas lights

Here's how I'm going to spend the "off-season"...

I'm going to buy a boat load of these:

I'll never have to worry about half-lit strings or short sections of strings going out again.

If I do 8 or 9 a day, I should be ready by next Thanksgiving.

Whatever you buy, just get enough to do what the guy on the right did:

Use 4' fluorescent tubes instead - less than 50c/foot and far less components to worry about. Wrap electrical tape around the tubes to mask off the bits you don't want visible to give that "lots of small bulbs" effect.

Why don't you buy a voltmeter (multimeter) and a book on how to use a voltmeter?

Hi, I use some light ropes and sparkling tiny LED strings. Sparkling type LED has crystal like hard lens and very tough to crack or break. And power usage is minimal. 2 Watts per 25 LED string.

Most, if not all, of the "miniature" incandescent Christmas lights marketed these days are wired in SERIES. The bulbs are supposed to be designed to short themselves out if anything happens to the filament, so the rest of the bulbs remain lit and it's obvious which one went bad.

These lights are cheaply made, and the "failsafe" in the bulbs often doesn't work. One goes out, they all go out because the circuit is broken.

Another way they like to fail is a loose connection in one of the sockets. When that happens you just throw the lights away and buy new ones.

The ones that have sections go out are probably the longer 100- and

The only type of lights that won't go out when you remove a bulb are ones wired in PARALLEL. Old incandescent C5, C7, and C9 style lights (larger bulbs) are wired in PARALLEL. It's tough to find these nowadays.

You will NEVER find the strings with tiny bulbs wired in parallel. The tiny bulbs are low-voltage (1 to 3 Volts, depending on how long the string is) and will blow when exposed to 110V, so they hook them together in series. There isn't enough room in the tiny bulb to contain a 110V filament.

It's easy to tell the difference. Just look at the sockets.

1. If there are 2 wires going into all of the sockets, the string is wired in series.
2. If there are 4 wires going into all of the sockets, the string is wired in parallel.

The simple solution is to buy quality strings of lights. However, there is no such thing. ALL the lights are now made in China to the lowest possible quality standard. You can't buy a quality set of lights at any price. You only pay more for the same cheap crap.

LED strings are wired in series, but LEDs tend to be more reliable than incandescent bulbs. They usually don't fail unless visibly damaged, so it's easy to tell where the problem is.

Have you ever used a voltmeter to troubleshoot a string of lights? Even on a short 35-light string you could be at it for HOURS. My time is worth more than a $2 string of lights. Don't know about yours.

re: "Wrap electrical tape around the tubes to mask off the bits you don't want visible"

When I was a Loran C technician in the Coast Guard back in the 70's, we used to take 4' fluorescent tubes and slowly approach the transmitting tower until the tube lit up.

Then we'd hold one end and slide our other hand up the tube. The tube would only light above our hand, so we could essentially "slide" the light up and down the tube by moving our hand.

We always made sure we didn't get any closer to the tower than necessary to get the tube to glow. A megawatt would hurt if the signal decided you were a good path the ground.

You were a little too close if you got the fluorescent light to glow!!!!!

Actually, if we were a little too close, I wouldn't be able to tell the story!

Do what I do. No lights outside. Save lots of headaches and time. Put a candle in the window.

gcotterl wrote the following:

Yes.

I decorate the front door so it looks like a Christmas package and flood it with a red spotlight. I'm too old to climb ladders anymore, unless it's a necessity for repairs or gutter cleaning.. Besides, I would have to compete with the "Griswalds" across the street, and I have about 30 years on him.

Buy C-7's or C-9's ...You can still get them...We are replacing our minilights with them as money allows....LED's are nice too...But I know nothing about them as to reliability or how the lights burn out...pricey too...HTH...

Holy crud, they were way too close! One of my old radar instructors used to tell us about how a few sailors decided to use a fire control radar (1 megawatt peak, maybe ~50KW average power) to "sterilize" themselves before going on leave for the weekend. Easy to do, just stand in front of the dish when it is operating. They figured that way their "dates" would not get pregnant. When you are exposed to microwave radiation, do you know what body parts warm up first? Anything small that sticks out, such as ears, nose, lips, fingers, and...other body parts. They sterilized themselves, all right. Permanently. They should have received some sort of Darwin award for that stunt.

If I was close enough to any of my dishes for a flourescent tube to light, I'd probably wet myself.

That has been the standard for many years so unless your existing strings are pretty old they are likely already the kind where if one bulb burns out the rest stays lit.

Where this doesn't help you is if one bulb is making a bad connection or is missing entirely. Then the whole string (or section) does go out. I think you will have trouble finding new strings that are any better in this respect. Bulbs can burn out, but they cannot be missing or loose. LEDs might not have this issue, but that is all I would buy anyway for other reasons.

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I can believe that. Many years ago; driving down a street in traffic sloping towards the harbour here my vehicle radio was tuned to a local AM band station at 640 kilohertz kilocycles!).That's 640,000 oscillations per second.

A NATO warship was moored at the harbour side about a quarter mile ahead Its large radar antenna was rotating. Each time it pointed in my direction there as a momentary 'swish' or click on my radio.

"Wow"; I thought, "What kind power at what frequency is that thing putting about?", to be able to block my radio (just an on ordinary cheap auto-radio) like that.

Radars (Am open to correction here by those more expert) operate at many millions of oscillation per second. Some as high as 12,000 million per second!

Calendar related ........... best wishes for the next year.

Sounds like the OP is using series string lights? AIUI those are usually less waterproof and less rugged than lighting strings intended for outdoor use and where more commonly, each bulb is attched to both the hot and neutral wires. i.e. each bulb is operating at 115 volts etc. BTW what we usually do is to reduce the voltage on our strings of lights by some form of step-down transformer or by puttinng two strings of lights in series. This is epecially a good idea on lights on a indoor Christmas tree. So bulbs are less hot and last much longer.