The snowman is about three feet tall and has attached mini-lights. Everything worked fine last year. This year I plug it in and about half of one string of lights is dead, and the inside of each and every dead bulb is blackened. The next night another half string is dead and blacked. Two days later, half of the last string is gone, same symptoms. This is peculiar enough, but the burnt out parts correspond exactly
to pieces of the snowman frame. For instance, the lowest metal frame part consists of two hemispheres which attach, and although they share the same string, only the lights connected to one of the hemispheres died. The second to go corresponded to one half of the middle part, and the last to go was the head, and although it is the same string as the hat, only the head ones died. I did notice that the head lights seemed to glow brighter the night before they died, but that could have been my imagination. What is happening to my snowman?
There are (cheaply made) sets of lights that, rather than using a step-down transformer or similar, just run the lights in series, splitting the electricity over several strings.
On such sets, if one of the 3 strings burns out (and all the lights on the string would go out at once), then the 2 remaining strings would now be getting one and a half times more electricity than intended. They would probably only burn for a few days before one of them is burned out by this. From then on, the remaining string is getting 3 times as much electricity as it’s designed for. That one will burn out very quickly, probably a few hours at most.
That might explain your symptoms. Can you describe the lights & wiring in a bit more detail? In particular, when you say they “share the same string”, does that string consist of 2 or 3 wires? Most likely it’s 3 wires, with 1 common wire and each of the other wires connecting to 1/2 of the lights.
No, the original strings only had two wires. Actually, I haven’t seen lights with only two strings in ages. Everything else you said fits the description perfectly, but with only two wires, does that somehow explain how half of one string can go bad?
As an aside, I have never seen a transformer on lights. Are they hidden in the plug or something?
Is it possible the lights were made to another country’s standard, and American 110 volts fried them. I actually thought most of the world used higher voltage as standard though.
Obliquely, we have a related experience to share. We put away about 12 strands last year, all working. When we pulled them out of the box today, only two strands worked. Sure, the strands fail, but why would such a high fraction of them make it through a winter outdoors, and then die in storage?
We’ve had the same experience. Put away lots of WORKING lights, pulled them out of the undisturbed storage unit and most all the lights are not working.
I’ve pitched out THREE sets of cheap-ass Chinese shite lights this evening. All connected in a single series, all with decent looking bulbs, but not one string working. In rebellion I went to the supermarket and bought some expensive ones. That’ll show them!!!