History of LEDs
The first Christmas lights we put on our new home back in 2008 were standard Christmas lights purchased from Lowe’s. The net lights on the shrubbery’s are GE LED lights purchased in 2008 and they are still going strong!
After a decade of harsh Minnesota winters the lights started failing on the roof and gutter, but more on that later. The Mini Tree’s I added in 2014 are still working and using good ol’ store bought GE LED lights. Today we have a mixture of the old LED’s and new “sealed socket” LED’s totalling over 4,000 lights. Check the Build – Overview page for more info.
LED’s – The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly
Over time I learned it’s better to purchase sealed socket LED lights. LED’s do not fail like typical light bulbs, the actual light emitting diode can last for 50,000 hours. What does cause LED Christmas lights to fail is water/moisture entering the socket and rusting the connector between the LED and the socket it plugs into. This is what caused me to throw away my store bought GE LEDs after a decade of use, too many sockets rusted out especially on the lights that were outlining the roof. It seems the higher up the lights were on the house the more susceptible they were to rusting sockets. I figure the roof lights had no overhang or protection of any kind from direct wind, rain, and snow.
Best LED Lights
Once I learned about sealed sockets I figured out these are not typically sold in most brick-n-mortar stores (Lowe’s, Home Depot, Walmart, etc.). I found that Holiday-Light-Express.com sells some of the best LEDs around, guarantee the lowest price, and they sell full wave rectified lights (aka flicker free & dimmable which are great for Christmas Light Shows). They also sell light strings from 35, 50, 70, 100 counts in a wide variety of colors. This is perfect for complex lighting projects like Singing Tree’s, but can also be good for wrapping windows, doors, or outlining a house while minimizing waste.
See the other pages in the Build menu to learn more details about each display element or click here to read about the Singing Tree’s.