How To Fix Christmas Lights

Clasp some other season out of your strings of lights!

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Time

A few minutes

Introduction

Burned-out holiday lights, even the inexpensive kind, are often fixable with a small investment in time and coin. Here'southward how to diagnose and fix common bug.

Tools Required

Materials Required

  • Light string fuses
  • Replacement calorie-free bulb

Figuring Out How To Prepare Christmas Lights

Nearly of us take experienced the frustration of uncooperative vacation lights. After a yr of storage, Christmas tree lights often need repairs before they're set up for apply. At that place's a simple way to solve the trouble. Here, we'll walk you through how to fix Christmas lights.

Project footstep-past-step (four)

Step ane

How To Fix Christmas Light Fuses

  • Christmas tree low-cal repair is actually really simple.
  • First, slide back the plastic roofing on the plug to check the Christmas low-cal fuse.
    • Pro tip: Some Christmas light strings take more than one fuse, in which example they'll exist next to each other.
  • Replace whatever blown Christmas calorie-free fuses.

christmas lights fuse diagram

Step 2

Detect and Repair Christmas Tree Light Bulbs

  • Examination the Christmas lite bulbs with an inexpensive tester.
  • A Christmas tree calorie-free tester is an essential Christmas light repair tool. Some Christmas calorie-free testers piece of work by sliding each bulb through a hole, similar the epitome shown beneath.
    • Pro tip: Normally, changing a problem seedling (or tightening it) will prepare the entire strand.
  • The Christmas low-cal tester will point which bulbs are bad and need to be replaced. If you're wondering how to set Christmas lights, finding the faulty bulb is often the quickest and simplest fix.
    • Pro tip: For the Christmas light tester to work, the lights must be plugged into the electrical outlet correctly — the narrow "hot" blade into the narrow slot and the wide neutral blade into the wide slot.

christmas tree lights bulb tester

Step three

Christmas Tree Low-cal Tester Pen

  • With other Christmas light testers, like the one shown beneath, you merely touch each seedling. Y'all can examination an unabridged strand in a few minutes.
  • Sometimes you lot have two or more defective bulbs, and then only identifying one bad seedling may not fix the Christmas lights.

christmas tree light bulb tester

Footstep 4

Preclude Broken Christmas Lights: Rubber and Storage

  • Keep in mind that cheap strings of Christmas lights aren't durable. Then at the stop of the holiday season, accept down the lights with care.
    • Pro tip: Don't pull too hard on the wires. A loose bulb, broken socket or frayed wire is sometimes all it takes for the strand to malfunction.
  • After taking downward the lights, plug them in before storing them to make sure they yet work.
  • Then carefully wrap the lights in their original or similar containers, making sure the bulbs don't bang together. Proper storage is key to their continued success.
    • Pro tip: Wadding them up in a coil and stuffing them into a box will almost guarantee they won't work adjacent year.
  • Besides, be aware that well-nigh holiday light bulbs accept curt life expectancies, most 1,000 to 1,500 hours. This means the lights are designed to last i to 3 seasons, depending on your usage.
  • Newer style LED (light-emitting diode) lights are the exception. LED Christmas lights can final 10 times longer than traditional lights.
  • To fix Christmas lights, the merely tool you'll demand is a bulb tester.

Christmas Light Safety and Storage

Originally Published: December 01, 2020