How to Fix Broken Christmas Lights

Bill Clin: Hi, my name is Bill Clin with ChristmasTreeForMe. Today we are talking about how to select the perfect Artificial Christmas tree.

Even after you have to select that perfect Artificial Christmas tree, if you buy the standard pre-lit lights, you may run into a situation where the bulbs are not working on the tree.

So with that, first case. We have a bulb that's not working; obviously the other bulbs in this strand are working just fine. So what we will do is we will, I am using my fingernail, you can use a very small screw driver. If you do use a small screw driver, obviously make sure you are wearing gloves, you don't hurt yourself. And I am just going to use my thumbnail and gently pull around the bulb, all the way round until I get it sufficiently loose. And now it slides out and I will replace it with another bulb. Hope for a good bulb, so it's working properly. And what I want to do is I just simply want to line it up, it's rectangular in shape and inside the socket it is also rectangular in shape, it doesn't matter which way you put it in just as long as it fits in. Gently slide it back in, in tight and as you can see now this bulb is working and the, all the bulbs, remaining bulbs are working as well.

Now we are ready for our second scenario. We have got an entire light strand that is out, you can see the, this band here, the lights are out. Now the question is how we are going to determine, how to fix this? Well, the Christmas mini light strings are what's called the Simple Circuit which basically means the current starts from one end and it has to go through the string. So, what ends up happening is if you have a bulb that is cracked, pulled out of the plug, shorted out or some other way the bulb is damaged, then what we have to do is we have to figure out which of those bulbs is the problem bulb.

Now, there are many different types of tools that you can use. We are going to demonstrate one today. And what we are able to do with this is we can press the button on the top of this device, pointed at the individual bulbs. And for good bulbs, it's going to emit a beeping noise. Well, it will also emit a beeping noise for those bulbs that are getting current to the bulb. So what I am doing is I am shooting this and it doesn't work. So the first thing that I am going to do in this particular scenario, is basically take a bulb that I know is good, I will remove this one, insert the bulb that works and well ah! All of my bulbs now come on and again it's because of this device pointing at the good bulbs and it emits the noise and then when we get to the bulb that doesn't have good current, look at the socket I should say, it doesn't work.

Now we are going to talk about the third scenario where we have got a strand that's out. It's a band of lights is out on our tree. And in this scenario, what has happened is the bulb has developed the problem that can actually be fixed. What has happened? These bulbs or if one bulb burns out, the rest they lit. However, if the bulb is pulled out of the socket, it is broken, it is cracked or it is shorted, the entire string will go out. Now the shorting piece, we can actually fix that. We can fix if the bulb has been shorted out. How would it become shorted? Well on these bulbs, there is the filament and if the filament breaks, there is a backup piece which is called the Shunt. And the shunt allows the electricity to flow through the bulb even if that bulb is burned out. However, that shunt can often times develop oxidation and that oxidation will short out the shunt which will also short out the bulb. So what we are going to do today? We are going to talk about one of the advance features of this tool. What we are going to do? We are going to pull out a bulb in the string and we are going to plug the string into this hole. And then we are going to click it and that's going to send electricity through and hopefully it's going to burn the oxidation off of whichever bulb is the bulb causing the problem. So we are going to pull the bulb out. And then we take the socket and plug it in. Now we are going to unplug this and we will put our bulb back in. And now all of our lights worked again. With that I hope that we have helped you select the perfect Artificial Christmas tree for your home and have a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.