Christmas Lights

It figures that the year my outdoor display turns on me that my street has the honor of being part of the CATA Bus Holiday Light Tour. It seems every day there was some part of the display giving me grief. I like to think that is is my display that attracted the holiday bus this year and having it randomly go half-dead was vexing, to say the least..

Here's a shot of the train display:

It took approximately 1865 watts of power to attract the bus and this is for a modest display. The sold out buses brought about 160 people a night for 7 nights so I guess I invested about a watt/person. I hate to think how much power gets consumed by those large displays.

But now for the grumbling and grief this year's attempt created:

In the background of the last picture you won't see the display I intended which is a blue spot-lit backdrop of my bushes. It came out more white than blue due to the lousy blue-colored GE spotlights I used.

I will say this. I will never use the blue GE spot lights again. I've gone thru about 6 or 7 bulbs over the last 2 holiday seasons. Mostly the blue paint peels right off the lamp! This happens usually in the first few hours of operation. Instead of a nice blue backdrop I get a mostly white- washed out blue. Ugh.

Not only does the paint fleck right off but they have a miserable operation life. Two of them blew out within the first hour of operation, one even burned out as I was installing it! None of the red or green GE spotlights have been as much of a problem. Lowes has been pretty good about replacing them but the PIA factor makes it not worth it. As an experiment I replaced one blue GE with a blue spotlight from Philips. Right out of the box I could see the coloration of the glass was of a much higher quality. This one has gone the entire display season with nary a problem. I'm forced to conclude that blue GE spot lights are just plain junk. Maybe they hold up better out of the weather but then they should not be marketed as outdoor quality.

Let's not even talk about the fixtures. Hopefully the ones I switched to this year will last longer. The high-brightness bulbs on the train are also nearing end-of-life. I cleaned out the entire stock of replacement bulbs at Target to keep the train running on time this year.

I continue to be impressed by the brightness, color, and clarity of the LED lights I am slowly switching in to the display. While the LEDs themselves are holding up well with good light output I am still concerned about the quality of the sockets and wires, especially for outdoor displays. I think the old corrosion problems are still there and the sockets will rot out long before the bulbs fail. Given the price premium we have to pay I hope I break even. LED lights have been on the market long enough for the price to start dropping but so far the manufacturers are holding the line.

It is time for the volume discounts to kick in rather than trying to make lots of $$ riding the green trend. Oops I forgot-- this is America. I could drop my power consumption quite dramatically by replacing the remaining strings will all-LED. I'm also in search of good quality outdoor-capable LED or CFL colored spotlights. A high-brightness blue LED spotlight would solve a lot of problems!