Electric help please

[nirvana]

Story: Putting up my mom's Christmas tree today, we had it all lit up, bright nice 7.5" tree.  About 10 or so minutes later the bottom strand goes out so we spend a good couple of minutes checking the fuses and making sure the bulbs are fine (it's wired in parallel, so why would that matter?).  Replace the fuse with a known good fuse etc etc, no joy.

I finally got a hold of a DVOM and find out the working strands have around 55volts but the dead strand has .15 volts at the first light socket.  I didn't think jumping from the outlet to the first light socket would be a smart idea so I skipped that.

So is there any reason the electricity won't flow through that light strand?  I've verified the plugs are fine.

[DREDIOCK]

When things like that happen and I cant quickly find out whats wrong with the strand.

I just replace the strand with a brand new one.

I'll pay the 10 bucks to not be aggrivated LOL

[storch]

indeed leslie,  that would be the best $10 spent.  my time is worth money to me, my leisure time is of at least equal value to my productive time.  sounds like you performed a competent isolation and trouble shooting test.  I'll bet the connection between the contact and the wire has failed.  do you have an intermittent conection or no?  get someone to hold the leads of the VM to the contact while you jerk the wire a bit.

as a side note, I have heard that all those chrsitmas lights we purchase are assembled in china by political prisoners who are given zero tools to perform their work they clamp the wires to contacts with their teeth.

I heard this story from a chinese pastor who was a political prisoner and thats what he had to do.

[Irwink!]

I  have spent the majority of my working life as an electrician and the first thing I'd say is to take the advice and pony up $10 or whatever for a new string of lights. That said, a digital VOM will give you readings for "ghost voltages" like the 1.5V you saw. In this case the meter doesn't tell you much other than the fact the circuit in the lamp (light bulb) socket is effectively no good. However you could still have 120V present and have lost the neutral (grounded) conductor, in which case your meter will still read 0 or close to 0 in the case of a digital meter. If you really want to check for the presence of voltage find a reliable ground like a copper plumbing line (provided its copper all the way and not PVC somewhere along the line) and use that for one probe of your meter and I could go on and on and still come back to advising that you get off the $$ and trash the flaky string of lights. Do you really want a questionable string of lights adorning a potential candle/torch lacking only the source of ignition? Not me.

[nirvana]

This is one of those fancy prelit trees, not that it's anymore then 5-10 minutes of undoing all the twist ties holding on the strings, just a pain in the ass.  That and I have to find the same lights, which shouldn't be all that hard but you never know.

[DREDIOCK]

Ahhh well in that case the solution is easy.
You go out and buy the exact same  Christams tree.
Take out the new part that works and swap it out with the one that doesnt.
Take the one that doesnt. Put it in the box with the rest of the new tree. Bring it back to the store and tell it it dont work and get your money back.

Problem solved

[Gunslinger]

Originally posted by DREDIOCK
Ahhh well in that case the solution is easy.
You go out and buy the exact same  Christams tree.
Take out the new part that works and swap it out with the one that doesnt.
Take the one that doesnt. Put it in the box with the rest of the new tree. Bring it back to the store and tell it it dont work and get your money back.

Problem solved

Yup I'm in complete agreement with Dred.

Many of times I've bought something and a PART of it didn't work.  Rather than hassle with customer service I just buy a new one and swapp the parts out and take it back looking all nice and new like and say it didn't work I want my money back.

This is especially helpfull if the "product" is outside it's 30 day exchange window and you don't want to deal with the manufacturers warrenty.

Dishonest.....maybe....but so is selling a product that broke in less than a year.

[nirvana]

Yeah I've done that before, I'll let my parents worry about it.

[WhiteHawk]

I know you say oyve checked the fuses, but there is a small fuse in the plug.  That must be what is bad.  Try another fuse and check it for continuity.  Its hard to imagine you have a broken wire.

[Maverick]

If the tree is out of warrantee doing what some have suggested with swapping parts and or tree is simply fraud.

If the tree is under warrantee take the original tree and exchange it.

[nirvana]

We took a fuse from one of the strands that was lighting and put it in the bad strand and it still didn't work.

It's still under warranty, it's a brand new tree.  The thing is, I think it's a discontinued product so they'd try to set us up with some other tree.  Like I said, I'll let my parents deal with it.

[Irwink!]

Originally posted by WhiteHawk
I know you say oyve checked the fuses, but there is a small fuse in the plug.  That must be what is bad.  Try another fuse and check it for continuity.  Its hard to imagine you have a broken wire.

You might be suprised what's possible with defective circuitry. Broken wires/bad-defective terminations are in fact very common even in brand new stuff.