Christmas lights... fighting a losing battle

[woodchucker]

as the title says.. I feel beaten... I've had an area of the tree (fake) that doesn't light. I have replaced every bulb in the string, and still could not get it to light, now I have another section of the tree, that was lit last year, and is not lit. I figured it has to be one bulb that's loose, but I can't find it. about 60-70 bulbs on the top... I have a few bulbs from the bottom that light, so they should help locate the dead bulb(s) up top... but the tree is winning. Barb wanted to go out and get a new tree, so we went out and she doesn't like anything we've seen.

So any of you have a secret ... ... I wonder if my power sensor will pick it up... you know the type you hold near an outlet to see if its powered...
looking for opinions while I go try that idea.

 

[mmcmdl]

No comment . I think my wife reads my posts on here .

 

[woodchucker]

well those sensors must work on magnetic flux, because even the branches (metal cored) without lights show as being powered...

 

[woodchucker]

No comment . I think my wife reads my posts on here .

your no help as usual..

 

[matthewsx]

Just wrap another string of lights on it and call it good.

 

[silence dogood]

 

[benmychree]

Best not to comment!

 

[tq60]

Typical is series bulbs to allow for led or low voltage.

You can start at the power source and with one side of voltmeter stuck in one side of your outlet check the connections in the socket.

One side should be zero (same side as other voltmeter lead) and other side should be line voltage as it is first bulb.

Count bulbs in string, divide line by that = volts per bulb, some strings are multiples, these have 3 wires so math different.

Divide and concur...after first bulb go 1/2 way or skip a few and check again.

Soon as voltage goes away it was between last and there.

Sent from my SM-G781V using Tapatalk

 

[mmcmdl]

your no help as usual..

Believe me . Better safe than sorry . I have half of the front of the house lit up . God knows I have 1000s of yards of extension cords but of course , can't find them when I need them . I'll finish up tomorrow as the wind is howling tonight . My plan for tomorrow is to go thru all the containers and pull out all the camping crap which is probably where the x cords are . Dogood said it best .

 

[RJSakowski]

Ah, the trials and tribulations of strings of Christmas tree lights. I fought that battle for decades, literally. The strings of miniature incandescent lights are series connected so that if one breaks the circuit, they all go out. The bulbs are designed with a wire wrapped around the two leads so if the filament burns out, the entire line voltage id across the leads which burns through the insulation, restoring the connection. The problem that arises is that if two or more go, the voltage is shared among them and isnt sufficient to burn through the insulation. An additional problem arises in that the voltage is now distributed among the remaining good bulbs which stresses them increasing the failure rate.

By the time you get around to diagnosing the bad string, it becomes a statistical nightmare. The only solution is to pull all the ulbs a nd replace them with new. Once the string is lit again, you can substitute the old bulbs, one at a time to find the bad bulbs.

Even more insidious were the early LED strings. They were also series wired to distribute the line voltage to the low voltage LED's. When one of them went, the whole string went, period. Our first strings had permanently installed LED's and the only way to diagnose the string was to cut it in half. One half would be bad and the other good. Then, cut the bad half in half again and repeat. I ended up with lots of short strings of LED lights.

The newer strings are parallel wired with a low voltage driver. Now if one goes the remainder remain lit. Much less stress at Christmas time. I made this "tree in 2001. We went to the UK for Christmas so we couldn't have a real tree. The frame consists of a large ring ant the bottom and a small ring at the top, joined by a six ft. section of 1/4" black pipe. This is the third iteration of lights. Over 1,000 LED's all wired in parallel.