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How To Fix Christmas Lights

Christmas lights are a festive addition to your tree, home and your yard. The most frustrating part of Christmas lights is when you take the strands out and find that one strand will not light, or you get a dud bulb. The process of checking one light after another can be quite tedious and nerve racking.

Many a Christmas parody song has been written depicting the frustration felt with dealing with those pesky lights. Her is one way to deal with them quickly and easily.

 

The first thing that needs to be done once it has been determined that you have a bad bulb or need to work on the whole strand is to unplug them. While they are beautiful adornments, they are not worth getting electrocuted over. The next step is to make sure that the bulbs are on a surface where they will not be easily broken. Hardwood floors, cement floors and tile floors can tend to break the bulbs if they get dropped on them, This will cause a danger in the fine shards of glass, and in trying to remove a bulb from a socket that only has the base of the bulb in it.

The next step is kind of a given but it still needs to be stated. Check for missing bulbs. This can be the miscreant that causes the strand to not light, and you will be very upset if you stumble over it halfway though the process. If no bulbs are missing from the strand, the next step is to test the fuse with a multi meter/continuity tester.

If the fuse is not the problem, then we move on to the strand itself. Take the very first bulb out of the strand and test it. There should be a closed circuit with the tester if it is a good bulb. If this is not the problem, try the same thing with the very last bulb in the strand. If one of these two does not show a closed circuit with the tester, then your problem is solved.

The next step is to locate the middle bulb in the strand and test the socket. If it proves to be good, keep trying the middle socket in each section from the middle. When the bad socket is found, replace the bulb and the problem is rectified. Hang the strand and enjoy your holiday lights.