Outdoor Christmas Tree With Lights Not In Series?

[Gary Brown]

Hi and Happy Holidays,

I've had it with series Christmas lights. Are there outdoor trees
with lights not in series?

For clarification, when lights are in series if one goes out they all
go out. I want some where only the burned out bulb goes out.

Thanks,
Gary

 

[gfretwell]

Hi and Happy Holidays,

I've had it with series Christmas lights. Are there outdoor trees
with lights not in series?

For clarification, when lights are in series if one goes out they all
go out. I want some where only the burned out bulb goes out.

Thanks,
Gary

You can use the C-7 or C-9 strings

 

[roger61611]

You mean parallel. All the ones sold now (IMO) are parallel.

 

[maradcliff]

Hi and Happy Holidays,

I've had it with series Christmas lights. Are there outdoor trees
with lights not in series?

For clarification, when lights are in series if one goes out they all
go out. I want some where only the burned out bulb goes out.

Thanks,
Gary

You make it sounds like your trees should include lights.
THEY DONT.....
You have to add the lights....
(unless you are talking about pre-lighted plastic trees).

If you want parallel wired lights, use the old C9 strings. Those are
the traditional outdoor lights that have been around since the 1950s
(or maybe the 40's). The disadvantage of these, they use lots of
power. The 9 means 9 watts. Ten bulbs in 90W, so 100 would be 900W.
Thst could cost you several bucks a day to operate.

The C7 (7 watt) types are made for indoor use only (or at least used
ot be). Maybe there is an outdoor variety (not sure). There are also
some 5 watt ones, but I believe they are also called C7 (I think).
The latest thing are the LED lights. I have not tried them, but I
have seen em in stores and they look like the mini bulbs without all
the hassles. Unless you cut or break a wire or a dog chews them up,
they should last forever, and they wont eat huge watts of power....

Just a guess, (maybe someone can give an exact figure), but 100 LEDs
probably use 10 watts at most......
At that rate you could leave them on 24/7 for the whole month of
December and only add a few dollars to your electric bill.

This is the year I will probably buy a few strings of them.

Mark

 

[Don Klipstein]

That was just discussed here. They use 7 watts.


6A (720W).


And those bulbs have to be replaced a lot.


I haven't seen any "indoor only" in a long time. C7 lights can be used
outside, and consume 5 watts. So do G40 (globe shaped).


All C7 are 5 watt.

I can surely purchase C7 bulbs that consume 7 watts as well as going as
low as 4 watts. I think that 6 to 7 watts is most common for C7 (bulb
diameter 7/8 inch).
As for C9 - it was a fair number of years back when I checked
specifications to extent of actual power consumption, but when I did the
power consumption was 10 watts.

Here's a picture
(http://notstupid.laughingsquid.com/graphics/xmas2005k.jpg) of some I
had last year. They're all over the big bush. I had some red, green,
blue, and yellow. The yellow didn't look very good. I guess others
thought so too, since I didn't see any for sale this year. The other
bushes have regular miniature lights.

I should have some pictures of this year's lights online soon. They
will be at http://notstupid.laughingsquid.com/winter.html .


I measure about .015A (<2 watts) for a string of 70 LEDs. Ten of these
strings (700 lights) use .15A (18W), about the same as ONE string of
35 miniature lights.


I expect a significantly lower electric bill this December, even
though I'm still using some incandescent lights.

It would take 200 70-light strings (14,000 lights) to use 3 amps (the
fuse rating).

Keep in mind that most LED strings have a low power factor, due to high
ratio of RMS amps to watts/volts. Most ameters read the "average" amps
(typically a bit less than watts/volts). Many LED strings have ratio of
RMS current to average current in the range of 1.5-2. The fuse is
sensitive to RMS rather than average current, and so is wire heating.

However, I do advocate LED strings to greatly reduce power consumption
and to greatly reduce bulb burnouts! Keep in mind that some colors
will be different! (with LED green being either a dim yucky dimmish
chartreuse-olive shade or a too-bright-to-be-emerald "kelly green" shade,
and blue being an eye-catching "deep turquoise" shade, and yellow looking
dim compared to orange, red, and the brighter non-yellowish version of
green) I advise seeing the string working before purchase, and Target
largely/somewhat provides that!

Good. BTW, one Wal-Mart I know has LED icicle lights. I put those on
the sides of the house.

I saw plenty of various good LED strings at Target! Even down to a few
various bulb cover styles and color schemes!

- Don Klipstein ([email protected])

 

[Don Klipstein]

I know someone who had that problem with miniature lights a couple of
years ago. He hasn't put them on his roof since.

Some strings of miniature incandescents have bulbs failing short rather
than open due to add-on devices. When failures not responded to by bulb
replacements accumulate to the point of rapid cascade failure, you only
then blow all bulbs or the fuse. If you insist on incandescent
rather than LED, look for strings that have and boast about this feature.

- Don Klipstein ([email protected])

 

[gfretwell]

Some strings of miniature incandescents have bulbs failing short rather
than open due to add-on devices.

Usually these things fail because of a bad connection in the socket.
All that fail/short stuff doesn't help then.

 

[Art Todesco]

Usually these things fail because of a bad connection in the socket.
All that fail/short stuff doesn't help then.

Actually, not my experience at all, in
recent years, anyway. Most of the failures
have been caused by lamp failures where
shunts not shorting out to keep the
entire string going.

 

[gfretwell]

Actually, not my experience at all, in
recent years, anyway. Most of the failures
have been caused by lamp failures where
shunts not shorting out to keep the
entire string going.

Then why does straightening out the leads on the lamp and replugging
the lamp in the socket fix it?

 

[Art Todesco]

Then why does straightening out the leads on the lamp and replugging
the lamp in the socket fix it?

Just giggling the lamp and socket can
"activate" the shunt. Once the shunt
burns through, it will usually stay that
way. Yesterday, I installed icicle lights
on the house. There are 12 strings,
each with 3 series circuits of 35 lamps.
Out of the 36 series circuit, about 10
didn't light, initially. Most of those did
light when the string was shaken. And,
most importantly, never failed after
continuing to shake the string, looking
for a "bad connection". Only conclusion,
the lamp shunt. BTW, some didn't come
back to life when shaken. I did
use a high voltage unit (Lightkeeper) to
zap the shunt. I replace about 5 or 6
lamps in each of the 12 strings. I
know, it's cheaper to dump them ............
I have seen bad connections, however,
most are in very old strings. The new
stuff is cheaper and better as far as
connection issues are concerned. As
usually, your results may be different.

 

[Don Klipstein]

Every one I've measured (both old and use) used close to 5W.

With what? And if they all measured the same, did the bulbs all state
the same consumed wattage among the ones that stated that? If all with
wattage statements stated 7 watts and you have a wattmeter reading them
all as 5 watts, especially if the wattmeter is good for a thousand watts
or more, I suspect the explanation is that the wattmeter reads loads in
the ballpark of 7 watts low by 2 watts.

I suppose the made them like that once. People always want things that
save energy.

I don't see much in claims of "new improved more-energy-efficient
version" or anything similar in the area of colored C7's and less than
that in the area of C9's. I see that more for series strings and
especially LEDs.

I just checked that on one LED string, and got about .6

Maybe not much out of the ballpark - I figure that if the LEDs have any
conduction at all half the time then the power factor should be close to
..7. The relationship is roughly a square root one - power factor in a
resistive-current-limited LED string without capacitors is roughly square
root of fraction of a cycle that has current flowing. Accordingly, .6
translates to conducting 36% of the time - ROUGH BALLPARK! I consider
this roughly true.
However, I would rather allow for .5 or maybe .4 power factor when it
comes to not blowing fuses or overheating wires.

And I forgot about the loading not being a pure sine wave.

Main reason for RMS amps to exceed ratio of volts to watts in most LED
holiday light strings. Harmonic content in the current waveform does
mainly heat wiring and fuse elements and little else when the voltage
waveform is a sinewave or close to a sinewave.