Holy Mary Mother of God...Ebay link

[lordkenmore]

Interesting piece on C7 & C9 lights. A quote:

-C7 lights are cool-burning, at 5 watts each. They do not get hot and they are no more dangerous on your tree than the little twinkle lights or LED lights.
-They are also energy efficient. For example, you have a six-foot tree. Fifty C7 lights will make your tree look bright and festive. They burn at 5 watts each, so you use a total of 250 watts with the C7 lights. To achieve the same effect with the little lights, you would need to use at least 500 little lights. They burn at 1 watt each, so that's a total of 500 watts; double the wattage you would use with C7 lights. You save energy with C7 lights.

http://www.christmascentral.com/t-Hints-And-Technical-C7-and-C9-Christmas-Lights.aspx

From memory, I'd say C7 does run hot enough to be more of a risk than mini-lights. But how much more of a fire risk? Plus it can be argued that NO light would be the safest.

And I can imagine that it takes a huge number of mini lights to equal a strand of C7 lights.

 

[artcurus]

I think I'm having chest pains..$520 for Buy It Now!?!?! http://www.ebay.com/itm/Vintage-Pin...914980?hash=item1c5e7698e4:g:WDcAAOSwHPlWdMfs

 

[norgeway]

THREW AWAY C-7 BULBS!!!!

Good grief I hope Donald doesent see that, he will have a stroke!! He has a building full of nothing but vintage Christmas lighting, and that's ALL we allow in the house!!!.All are run on dimmers, except the 1946 Sylvania flourescents.

 

[combo52]

Hi Hans, I think that I found another box of C-9 bulbs if Donald wants them, they are old, they were used in a pine tree in front of our house for years.

 

The pine tree was as tall as the house and We would climb to the top of the tree and cover it with C-7 and C-9 strings of lights. It got so that it took two circuits just to power the tree, I wired a timer and added a relay to turn on the 2nd circuit so it would go on and off all at once. You could see the tree all lit up from the Capital Beltway a mile away, LOL.

 

My Dad would not let em run them later than about 11PM except on Christmas Eve, even back in the late 60s this added $30 to the power bill in December.

 

I guess it is no wounder that we have Climate Change with warmer temperatures world wide today.

 

Happy Holidays Everyone,

 

John L.

 

[tomturbomatic]

We used to have an artificial Scotch Pine that we covered in C7 bulbs. We shut both heat registers in the living room and had one of those heavy gauge extension cord going up the tree to supply power for the top half which was on its own circuit. I was so glad when we went back to a real tree. We covered it with ornaments and had two spotlights on it. My father said we could have just built a chicken wire frame and covered it with ornaments and had the same look.

 

[lordkenmore]

>I guess it is no wounder that we have Climate Change with warmer temperatures world wide today.

I would suspect that Christmas lights have a relatively small impact...

 

[lordkenmore]

>My father said we could have just built a chicken wire frame and covered it with ornaments and had the same look.

Yes, the look of a tree can be duplicated more or less. I don't know how convincing a fake tree really is--but even the one my grandmother had (1980s or older) looked fairly convincing at a distance.

But...one loses the scent. (Unless one brings in some product to scent the air. Said product is probably loaded with chemicals that aren't good for one.) And there the experience of tree shopping each year, finding the right tree, and possibly each year's tree having unique quirks.

 

[circlew]

When we got an artificial tree in '73, we kept the C-7 lights, but we switched out the ceramic coated ones and used GE Cool Bright lamps instead. I have never liked mini-lights, especially outdoors.