Christmas lights! from C7's to LED's

[Cybrvanr]

It's getting to be that time of year again! This year, I'm gonna be putting even more lights up around the house! What type of lights do you have and where do you decorate them?

I've got 5 strings that take the candalabra, or nite-lite 120 volt bulbs. I think these are called C7. They were what I remember having on the tree as a kid growing up in the seventies and eighties. The neat thing about these strings is that they are parallel wired. I've got twinkle-brite bulbs in them, and what makes them so interesting is that each bulb blinks INDIVIUALLY With all 5 strings going on the tree at the same time, the tree becomes very animated with all sorts of flashing colors and stuff...quite a neat effect!

On the outside of the house, I put some icecicle lights around the front porch of the house. I also have some 3-candle candalabras that I put in the windows with orange bulbs in them. I also put some multi-colored lights in some of the bushes and stuff, and an artificial christmas tree on the front porch. As far as non-lit exterior decorations go, I put wreaths on the front windows, and some green garland around the porch railings.

One of the neat things I think that's coming of age this year are LED christmas lights. At the end of last year, I bought several strings of christmas lights from Target. Oddly enough, I guess people didn't want the white and blue only strings. These are typically the most expensive LED's made. I was able to buy six strings of 60 lights each for $5 each. This year however, I have seen LED light strings sold for around $8 with the same amount of LED's in them. Last year, the non-sale price was about $15. Now, the odd thing I've noticed about the LED lights is that the price is the same no matter what color the strings are, or if they are multi-colored. The interesting thing is that it's actually cheaper to buy a string of 60 blue or white LED christmas lights at a discount store than it is to buy bare LED's out of an electronics supply catalogue!

The look of LED christmas lights is absloutely amazing. The colors are so vivid! The problem I have with the old incandescant miniature bulbs is that the heat eventually "burns" the colored paint off the bulbs, and reds become pink, while blues become a sort of aqua, and overall the colors become dull after using them just 1 season either indoors or out. LED christmas light strings also seem to be significantly more efficient! My Watts up meter tested the 50 light incandescent strings at about 24 watts, while a 60 light LED string came in at only 4.3 watts!

LED's also have some definite advantages when using dimmers or animating your christmas lights. The biggest advantage is that they don't change their color when they are dimmed. The second is that their life is not shortened through on/off power cycles like that which occur when using animation controllers and stuff. The life of LED's is actually extended when it's switched on and off frequently!

Now, still with that being said, the life of LED's is still not gonna take you to the advertised 100,000 hours on the box. This is because of the nature of the beast. LED's, unlike diodes in power supplies (which are designed to) do not like being "reversed biased". A diode, be it an LED or a power diode is a one-way electrical valve, and because you connect up a LED christmas light string to AC current, half of their operational life is spend being reversed biased! The manufacturers of christmas lights obviously don't put any sort of sophisticated power supply on their lights, just a current-limiting resistor.

What I want to do is make a sort of power conditioner for them. This would have a half-wave rectifier, and a filter capacitor in them to absorb surges. A full-wave rectifier would create about 170 volts DC, where a half-wave makes about 85 or so (120 volt AC house current is the RMS rating...the peak voltage is at the aforementioned 170). This would both reduce the voltage and eliminate reverse-biasing the light strings. While I may only get a few years out of the LED light strings before the wiring falls apart, at the end of the light string's life, I want to be able to recover the LED's and use them for other uses.

For now, the only thing I gotta decide on is what to decorate with my new light strings My "grand illumination" is usually on the Sunday after Thanksgiving!

 

[58limited]

I use regular miniture lights on the outside of the house. I use icicle lights on the eves and window sills and colored lights around the windows, doors, and landscaping. The problem with these Christmas lights is that, eventhough they are supposed to stay lit when a bulb goes out, half my strings quit when I take them down them after the holidays. I bought a repair tool at Lowe's that successfully fixed my light strings, but it is still a pain to deal with. I think I'll look into the LED lights this year. I live on the intercoastal canal and I also decorate the back of the house for the sailors on the passing ships. Here is the house last year. After I took this pic, I wrapped the tree to look like a candy cane, and I used white net lights at the base to look like snow. I forgot to take a pic after I did this

 

[jonv112]

With that amount of lights, you BETTER look into some LEDs! I got mine from Costco. Around $15.00CA for 2 sets of 70 C7 multi-coloured LEDs. Try looking around. You may get them at a discount if you trade in your old lights or something.

 

[tomturbomatic]

Steven, the best C7 and C9 bulbs sold in the 50s and early 60s, had enamel inside the glass. It was very easy to tell on the large bulbs that were sort of sculpted to look swirled. We had some absolutely beautiful GE C7 bulbs of this construction, but smooth, that looked sort of salmon colored when they were off, but when on, they glowed the deepest, most beautiful red, not the harsh cheap shades of painted colors. The other colors of those bulbs were beautiful on or off also and nothing damaged the color. I'm sorry we did not have time to go through that stuff before we took it all to the thrift store when we were trying to clean out the house.

Last Christmas I saw some houses and the trees inside them strung with bulbs that looked like C7 size and they had purple bulbs mixed in with the other more traditional colors. I like the older bulbs, C6 bulbs included, as well as the old bubble lights better than the stuff that is marketed now.

I remember the candelabra in the windows. One friend had the long ones with 6 or 8 green series bulbs in them in every front window of her house. Other friends used the 3 light or one light size with blue in them. Those were especially beautiful when draperies with a white lining were closed behind them and the room was dark. One night a friend and I put a single twinkle light in one in his window and went outside to look at it, but it was just some random flashing light; not at all special. Maybe 3 twinkle bulbs might have been better or weirder.

David, your house looks beautiful. You should take a picture of the back of it, too. Very considerate of you to decorate it for the sailors in the waterway. Did you put the minature lights in garland around the windows and doors? It gives a much more substantial illumination. Great idea.

I could never understand how some people had such poorly decorated trees when they clearly had money to do a better job. Was it no taste or no spirit?

Thanks to all of you for sharing your love of all the different lights with all of us who love them, too.
Tom

 

[sudsmaster]

I've been using LED X-mas lights for about five years now, and the C-7 equivalents from Costco are the best yet that I've found. In fact the Coscto here generally sells out of them pretty quick each season.

Just for the fun of it I bought a set of clear standard C-7 lights last winter. I am planning on installing them somewhere in the back yard for occasional party use. But I'm sure they are big time energy wasters - they just look nice.