Some of the casings around the lights just shattered while I was in stringing them… by the time I threw the 5th strand in the garbage bag, it was almost comical.
Pro tip: Starting in mid summer, take each string of lights and stretch it out, hang it across a backyard or along a hall or even just put it up around a room. Let the summer heat, soften the plastic and when you take it down and pack it up after the kinks and coils have loosened, carefully coil it in loops that are 12 to 14 inches across. Tie off with cable ties or pieces of ribbon and lay the coils flat in a box. When you go to use them later, you can hang the coil off an arm and just carefully spool the string out as you go. That way, there’s no spinning, unwinding ball of kinked and curled lights to deal with. Just nice loose coils.
Sause: Art director/decorator for a handful of stores with a background as an IA stagehand… (…whose specialty was working with lighting directors…)
LEDs my friend. LEDs.
And if you’re like me and cannot fucking stand the “vibrant” pure blue LEDs, next year check out Vintaglo (https://merryco.com/) or Tru-Tone (https://tru-tone.com/)
Technology Connections has done several videos about Christmas lights and those two seem to be his favorite. Unofficial Christmas light playlist
thanks for the recommendations!
forwarded them to the boss for approval.
Here is our house with the Tru-Tone c7 bulbs around the gutters.
For comparison, this picture without snow was taken last year with traditional incandescent C9s.
Holy moly! Those Tru-tone bulbs… What I’ve been looking for, for at least a decade. SO MUCH THANKS!!!
:)
I got some really neat LED ones that are solar powered. Think they were $15 for 184ft. They work great if there’s enough sun. I’ve been stuck in a fog bank for a week or more that’s expected to stay for a couple more weeks so they’re not kicking full gear but still doing good.
I have 2 50ft strands I bought on clearance of LEDs, they don’t create much heat either. So much so I actually used 40ft of one strand in a Styrofoam cooler that came from a Christmas present (food) as my incubator for chicken eggs. I ran the cord outside the box laid the round part in the box and pulled the end out until I got the temperature I wanted. 40ft of LED’s in the box left me at 100f/37.7c. perfect for the eggs basically. Point being… They have been on for a year now without issue, use little electricity, and even in an insolated box, create fairly minimal heat.
Think I paid $15 on clearance for both sets at Walmart January 3rd or something.
The other I strung up at indoor decor that rarely gets used.
Everything you wanted to know about LED Christmas lights, and a whole lot more:
Be thankful you don’t need to deal with strings of lights wired in series.
My lights are broken…
My lights are broken…
Sorrow, sorrow… sorrow… Sorrow!
