![]() The cause of this flicker is in how the LED string is designed: Whether it uses full-wave or half-wave rectification. This is especially noticeable if the light string is moving in the breeze or on a display and can be very distracting or annoying. The bulbs may seem to flicker while you stare at them. They last longer and are less susceptible to vibrations or damage, but you may have noticed something odd (or had a friend who noticed) about the light given off by your new Christmas lights. They’re just lights.LED Christmas lights become more popular every year. I want to say, ‘Hey, so what if you go a year without lights. “They feel a lot of pressure based on what’s going on in their neighborhood. “People get very serious about their lights,” says Rountree. They cost more, but give better illumination, use a lot less electricity, and last longer.īe reasonable. For lights that will last, invest in the new LED lights. (So that’s what they’re for!) The other lights should fire up. Replace it with one of the extra bulbs that come in the pack. Then work your way backward, jiggling each dark light until you find one that flickers. To revive half a strand of dead lights, go to where the darkness starts. Use an all-weather outdoor timer to turn lights on automatically at dusk, and off at bedtime. Once you’re close to the max, find another outdoor plug in a different zone of your house. Most outdoor circuits can handle 15 amps, so you have 10 left. To find the amperage divide 600 by 125 (I have no idea why), in this case roughly 5 amps. ![]() If one string uses 100 watts, and you use six strands to light a tree, that’s 600 watts. If you’ve tossed the box, figure one watt per bulb. Find out how many watts are in one strand of lights. “The biggest mistake people make is not understanding how watts work with the amperage of a circuit.” (Guilty!) If you vacuum while the lights are on and blow a fuse, you’ve overloaded the circuit. It will also tell you how many watts are in each string of lights. It will say how many strands you can piggyback before grounding to an outlet (usually three). Don’t overdo it: If you’re in bed at night, and it looks like noon outside, you’ve gone too far. For the next upgrade, light the top roofline, and maybe add a lighted wreath. For a little more bling, light the lower roofline, too. Start by lighting a focal point in the yard, such as a tree or two, then outline the front doorway. So the sparks won’t fly at your house, Eric Rountree of Colorado Lightscapes offers these DIY outdoor holiday lighting tips.ĭecide what to light. Marni Jameson is a nationally syndicated columnist who lives in the Denver area. He and his helpers had the outdoor lights up, straight, and working in less than two hours with no audible profanity. When he returned from the store again, two of the strands on the tree were already out. He returned in a funereal mood, and started putting the new lights on. Though all the lights worked a year ago, now only two of the 10 strands lit completely. First, he patiently untangled the strands. I didn’t even ask Dan to hang outdoor lights after this year’s indoor-light fiasco. This year he got a call from a woman tired of watching her husband hang lights on the outdoor trees by tying a string of Christmas lights to a tennis ball and lobbing it over the trees. None of this surprises Eric Rountree, owner of Colorado Lightscapes in Englewood. One woman’s husband went so light crazy that she kept having to go to her neighbor’s house to blow-dry her hair because firing up the blow-dryer while the outdoor lights were on meant overloading the circuit. In the third group are the overachieving husbands. “You can always tell a house that has lights done professionally,” one lady laments. In the second camp are women whose husbands do a lousy job with the lights. “I oppose any life-risking behavior on principle,” he says. I could put 20 bikini-clad cheerleaders on the roof, and my husband, Dan, would still rather watch football than scale the eaves to make the season bright. Which just further proves, there is no pleasing women. The ladies’ complaints fall into three categories: husbands who won’t put up outdoor lights husbands who put them up but badly and husbands who go completely over the top and turn the house into something like the Griswolds’ house in the movie “Christmas Vacation.” (I’ve told my daughters, you can learn all you need to know about a man by the way he handles Christmas lights.) The ladies at lunch are dishing about - what else? - husbands.īecause it’s the holiday season, our conversation turns to men and Christmas lights, which is as charged a conversation as people can have and not get arrested. Digital Replica Edition Home Page Close Menu
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