Christmas lights are an essential part of the holiday season. The main purpose of these festive and colorful lights are to add a dash of color to homes and trees to create a fun holiday spirit in the air. However, as the holiday season comes to an end and many are taking down their decorations, Christmas lights can be easily broken during storage and can make the holiday season very difficult and frustrating for many.
These are some tips for repairing Christmas lights before throwing them away and storing them until the next holiday season.
- Half the strand is on but the other half isn’t
In this situation, the best thing to do is trying to find a loose bulb or one with a faulty shunt. A shunt is a mechanism inside the bulb, that when the bulb burns out the shunt still allows current to pass through. To fix this, wiggle each light bulb around and if the strand flickers on a certain bulb, then that is the problem. For faulty shunts, a light tester tool can detect current and can tell the user where the actual fault is.
2. The entire strand won’t light up
The easiest fix for this would be to check the fuse of the light strand. The fuses are located in the socket itself and are easily replaceable with most light strands coming with extra fuses in a tiny plastic bag. Replacing these fuses most likely will fix the problem. Also, check for cuts in the wire from wildlife that can be replaced by stripping the wires, splicing the wire together and then using heat shrink to repair the broken connection
3. All of the light bulbs are burnt out
If a black, carbon soot is inside almost all of the light bulbs, that means all of the bulbs are junk and burnt out. This is where throwing away the strand makes economic sense as it’d cost a lot more time and effort to replace each bulb. The bulbs burning out could have been caused by an increase in current due to overtime more and more bulbs burning out in the set. Make sure to recycle the sets of lights instead of throwing them away!
4. Buy LEDs
If a set is completely broken beyond repair, the next best thing would be to purchase an LED Christmas light now while prices are cheap. LED Christmas lights run for a tenth of the cost and can last ten times longer than traditional incandescent bulbs.
For storing to prevent sets breaking during the summer, use the original box and tightly wind up the light strand with a rubber band or something of the sort to keep them close together. Refrain from dropping or giving the lights abuse as that can cause bulbs to smash or shunts to break.
