Festive/Christmas Lighting

[JohnW2]

Hmmmm - something is going wrong. It's there before I post it!

 

[JohnW2]

Third time lucky? ....

Kind Regards, John

 

[winston1]

The fuse bulb is relatively recent. They certainly didn't have them when I were a lad. They didn't have bulbs that went short circuit on failure either. It was my job to sit under the tree with a battery testing each lamp in turn.

 

[JohnW2]

The fuse bulb is relatively recent. They certainly didn't have them when I were a lad. They didn't have bulbs that went short circuit on failure either. It was my job to sit under the tree with a battery testing each lamp in turn.

I don't know when you were a lad, but many of those bulbs I just illustrated are at least 30 years old. I know that since most of them originated from sets I bought a fair while before I moved into my current house, a bit over 30 years ago.

There were, as you say, some sets of lights in the past whose bulbs did not go short-circuit on failure, but they obviously did not have (or need) a fuse bulb, since each bulb acted as a fuse.

Kind Regards, John

 

[ban-all-sheds]

However, in a 240 V series string a 12 V lamp cannot be considered to be operating on ELV.

Well - if it is a 12V lamp and it has 12V across it I don't see how it can be considered to be operating on anything other than 12V.

Surely the whole set-up must be considered and that is operating on 240 V, which is LV.

The item as a whole is not ELV, in the same way that a 12V downlighter is not ELV if you include its power supply.

 

[SimonH2]

I don't know when you were a lad, but many of those bulbs I just illustrated are at least 30 years old. I know that since most of them originated from sets I bought a fair while before I moved into my current house, a bit over 30 years ago.

I too was under the impression that they are a relatively new "invention". Though I suppose there's a bit of "cheap lamps didn't need a fuse bulb, so they weren't used" - and it's only relatively recently that consumer pressure forced manufacturers down the short-circuiting bulbs and fuse bulb route.

There were, as you say, some sets of lights in the past whose bulbs did not go short-circuit on failure, but they obviously did not have (or need) a fuse bulb, since each bulb acted as a fuse.

And I also remember the annual ritual of getting the lights out and getting them working

We had almost no failures in our tree lights because we didn't run them at full voltage. Must be something like 30-40 years ago I remember dad had a couple of industrial panel indicators wired in series, later swapped with an auto-transformer in a box with several sockets on the top for the light sets.

As to aesthetics, I find many (well most) LED sets "unpleasant" compared with the old incandescent fairy lights. In parts that's because so many of them have such tiny pin-pricks of very bright light. We had to shop for new lights this year, and found some sets with "berry" sized LEDs which seem OK - SWMBO is happy with them We did see a few sets of incandescent lights on sale, but I'd say it must be something in excess of 90% LED now.

 

[ban-all-sheds]

When I wanted to get some spare lamps for my tree lights, about 14 months ago (mirabile dictu I for once did something in a timely fashion) I found I could only get them online. And that a whole single-string 40-lamp set cost very little more than a pack of 10 lamps.

 

[ban-all-sheds]

View attachment 132859

(Not the ones I bought spares for last year)