Ownership
A proper C9 set is not disposable. It is a system of parts, each one replaceable, and looked after properly it should see out a decade of Christmases. Here is how to install, run, and store yours so it does.
Start Here
Most damage to a light set happens in the first hour it is out of the box, not over the years that follow. Five minutes of planning prevents nearly all of it.
Every set is 25 bulbs on a 25 foot (7.62 metre) harness, with sockets spaced 12 inches apart. Measure your intended run before you start, and work outward from the power point rather than hoping the cable reaches.
Every set includes its own power supply. Run each set from its own adapter for the fullest, brightest glow. Or connect up to three sets to a single adapter for one continuous run from one power point. The light softens as you add sets; a gentler, more candle-like glow across the whole length.
Do not join more than three sets to one power supply. If you want the full length at full brightness from a single power point, run an outdoor-rated extension lead or powerboard along the run and keep each set on its own adapter.
Plug the run in and test it on the ground before a single clip goes up. A bulb seated poorly in its socket is a two second fix at waist height and a ladder trip once it is on a gutter line.
25 bulbs on a 25 foot harness, sockets spaced 12 inches apart.
Three joined sets is the limit, and the glow softens as you add them.
The SELV supply steps mains down before anything reaches the harness.
Standard C9 socket spacing, the same as commercial strands.
Installation
The single most common way a light set dies is mechanical, not electrical. Something pulls on a socket until the contact inside it loosens, and one bulb starts flickering whenever the wind picks up.
Take the weight on the cable between the sockets, never on the sockets themselves and never on the bulbs. Use clips sized for the cable, spaced closely enough that the run is carried rather than hanging in long swags.
Never drive a nail, staple or hook through the cord. It is quick, it feels secure, and it puts a permanent breach in the insulation at the exact point where the cable will flex for the rest of its life. If you take one thing from this page, take that.
Leave a little slack in each span. Cable contracts as the temperature drops overnight, and a run installed drum tight in the afternoon spends every night pulling against its own connections.
Seat each bulb finger tight and stop there. It should turn until it meets resistance and no further. Over tightening distorts the contact at the base of the socket, which is the one part of the system you cannot replace on its own.
Moisture
Our current sets are rated for indoor use. The wiring harness is weather-resistant, but the power supply should be kept clear of direct rain. That means mantles, staircases, trees and windows indoors, or genuinely sheltered positions outside such as a covered veranda or a well protected eave.
Even under cover, moisture travels further than people expect. Wind driven rain reaches a surprising way back under an eave, and overnight condensation forms on cold surfaces and metal regardless of whether it has rained at all. A few habits make the difference between contacts that stay bright and contacts that green over.
Mind which way the socket faces. Hang the run so bulbs point downward or sit horizontally. A socket left facing upward is a cup: water collects around the base of the bulb, sits against the contact, and corrodes it from the inside where you cannot see it happening.
Give every connector a drip loop. Let the cable dip below each joint rather than running straight into it. Water follows the cable, reaches the bottom of the loop, and falls off there instead of tracking along the sheath and into the connection.
Keep the supply and the joins off the ground. Pooling water after a storm finds anything lying on a path or in a garden bed. The power supply in particular belongs indoors or inside a weatherproof enclosure, never sitting out where it can be rained on or splashed. Keep it somewhere shaded and well ventilated too, out of direct sunlight, and not sealed inside an enclosed box.
If a set does get wet, unplug it at the wall first and let it dry completely before it goes anywhere near power again. Drying it out is usually all that is needed. Powering it up damp is what causes the damage.
Colour
Two things dull a coloured bulb over time: ultraviolet light and heat. The original incandescent C9s suffered badly from both, because a bulb hot enough to be uncomfortable to touch was quietly baking its own coloured coating from the inside every night it ran.
That half of the problem is largely gone. Ours run close to ambient temperature, so the coating is no longer being cooked by the light source it surrounds.
Ultraviolet is the half that remains, and it comes from the sun rather than from the bulb. Months of direct Australian sun will dull pigment on any coloured material, and a light set is no exception.
The practical answer is simply to take them down at the end of the season rather than leaving a run up all year. Lights left permanently in place spend eleven months being bleached for the sake of saving one afternoon of work.
Where part of a run catches hard afternoon sun and the rest sits in shade, expect that stretch to go first. Because every bulb unscrews individually, rotating bulbs between sunny and sheltered positions each year evens out the wear across the set instead of concentrating it in the same six globes.
End of Season
A set spends about one month of the year lit and eleven months in a box. Where that box lives does more to determine how long the set lasts than anything that happens while it is switched on.
Unplug at the wall before you touch anything. Release each clip by hand and lift the run down; never pull it free by the cable, which undoes in one motion all the care taken during installation.
Wipe the run down and let it dry completely before it is boxed. Sealing away even slightly damp cable for eleven months is the ideal way to grow corrosion on contacts that were perfectly healthy in December.
Coil in loose loops rather than folding. A fold creases the insulation at one fixed point, and that point becomes the weak spot when the cable is flexed again next year. If bulbs come out for storage, put them back in the padded packaging they arrived in.
Do not store them in the roof cavity. An Australian roof space routinely passes 50 degrees on a summer afternoon, which is hot enough over successive summers to soften plastics and age cable insulation. A garage floor is the other place to avoid, because it is where damp collects. A cupboard inside the house is unglamorous and far better than either.
An interior cupboard beats a roof space or garage every time.
Any moisture sealed in will still be there in eleven months.
Loose loops. A crease becomes next year's failure point.
Back into the packaging they came in, not loose in a tub.
Upkeep
Unplug at the wall before cleaning anything. A dry, soft cloth handles a season of dust. If something needs more, a barely damp cloth is as far as it should go, and the set must be completely dry before it is powered again.
Keep solvents, alcohol and abrasive cleaners well away from the bulbs. Ours are plastic rather than glass, which is what stops them shattering when one hits a tiled floor, but it also means they react to chemicals in a way glass never would. Solvents fog and craze a plastic shell, abrasives scratch the gloss off it, and neither is recoverable. What looks like a stubborn mark is rarely worth the risk.
When a bulb does fail, it is a bulb, not a set. Ours are standard C9 (E17) screw base. Unplug the run, unscrew the failed globe, screw in a replacement, and carry on. There is no sealed string to throw away and no soldering involved.
Keeping a few spares on hand is worth it, because the one time you want a replacement is the evening you are putting the run up. Spare bulbs, power supplies and wiring harnesses are all sold separately.
If an entire run goes dark rather than a single globe, start at the power supply and work along the connections before suspecting the bulbs. Email us at info@yeoldechristmaslights.com.au and we will help you narrow it down.
Built to Be Kept
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