So, my mom pointed us at a device that you can use to help you fix burnt out Christmas light strings. I had to post about it because I would have thought it was a totaly scam if you told me about it, but having seen it work…
Yes, lights are usually cheap enough that you can probably just buy a new set every year and not really empty out your pocketbook, but its really wasteful. Also, for those of us with a fetish for prelit trees, its not always easy (or possible) to restring.
Anyway, its called the Light Keeper Pro. You just plug in the affected string of lights, replace a bulb with the tool, squeeze the trigger a few times, and your light string works again. The burnt out ones are easy to see as they aren’t lit, you replace those, and you’re golden. Supposedly there is a demo video on their site. Still, I don’t think I would have bought it except for watching my mom use it not 2 feet from where I was standing.
This post reads like an infomercial to me, but the tool just blows my mind. I’ve "saved" 4 strings of lights for our main Christmas tree. None of which worked when I pulled them out of storage and plugged them in. I haven’t even gotten to the outside ones
yet…
[Update 12/4: I know I haven't described this well, but the how it works section on their web site does.]
3 Comments
Odd - does your whole string stop working if a light is dead? I just replace the dead bulb on mine.
I love Christmas lights. If I weren’t so lazy, my house might look like that guy on route 53. Who apparently went bankrupt after the internet bust and hasn’t had a 20k/month light display since 2000.
That is what is *supposed* to happen. But the lights are made so cheaply that most of the time the bypass for a dead bulb doesn’t trip. Whatever this devices does, it encourages the bypass to get its shit together and start working. Then we go and replace the dead bulbs.
I wonder if it will fix rope lights. I wrap our 10′ x 6′ balcony in them and every year I always have at least one string that is flakey. I usually just toss it because you can’t replace those bubs since the entire string is in a rubber tube.