Important Points
1. The device used in the video is called a LightKeeper Pro and can be found at any major retailer such as Target, Sears, Home Depot, etc. We do not sell it.
2. Watch out for broken bulbs, you can get cut.
3. Use a light tester
Transcript:
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 Christmas tree.
Replacing a Single Bulb
First case. We have a bulb that’s not working. Obviously the other bulbs in this strand are working just fine. What we will do, I’m using my fingernail, and you can use a very small screw driver. If you do use a screw driver, obviously make sure that you’re wearing gloves so that you don’t hurt yourself. I’m just going to use my thumbnail and gently pull around the bulb, all the way around until I get it sufficiently loose and now it slides out and I will replace it with another bulb. Hopefully I’ll get a bulb that is working properly and what I’m going to do is simply line it up. It’s rectangular in shape and inside the socket 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 tight. And as you can see now this bulb is working and all the remaining bulbs are working as well.
Entire Light Strand is Out
Now we’re ready for our second scenario. We got an entire light strand that is out. You can see this band here, the lights are out. Now the question is, how are we going to determine how to fix this? Well the Christmas mini light strings are what’s called a 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, short it out or if 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.
There are many types of tools that you can use. We’re going to demonstrate one today and what we’re able to do with this is we can press the button on the top of this device, point it at an individual bulbs and for a good bulb 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’m doing is I’m shooting this and it doesn’t work. The first thing that I’m going to do in this particular scenario is basically take a bulb that I know is good. I remove this one, insert the bulb that works and voila! 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 then when we get to the bulb that doesn’t have current or to the socket I should say; it doesn’t work.
Christmas Bulb Short
Now we’re going to talk about the third scenario where we got the strand that’s out. A band of lights are out on our tree and in this scenario what has happened is the bulb has developed a problem that can actually be fixed. What has happened is this bulb is in “if one bulb burns out the rest stay 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”. The shunt allows the electricity to flow through the bulb even 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’re going to do today is we’re going to talk about one of the advanced features of this tool. What we’re going to do is pull out the bulb in the string and we’re going to plug the string into this hole and then we’re 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.
We’re going to pull the bulb out and then we take the socket and plug it in; we’re going to unplug this, and we put our bulb back in and now all our lights work again.
With that I hope that we have helped you select the perfect artificial Christmas tree for your home and have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
