As the season lights up with holiday cheer, we hope you will be safe and will enjoy the best the season has to offer.
Following are some safety tips for decorating with holiday lights.- Only purchase holiday lights that have been certified by a standards laboratory, such as Underwriters Laboratory (UL), Factory Mutual (FM), Electronic Testing Lab (ETL), or Canadian Standards Association (CSA).
- Whether using last year’s or new light strands, inspect them for broken sockets, damaged plugs, and worn wires with frayed insulation. Replace defective strands.
- Never use electric lights on artificial trees with metallic needles, leaves, or branches.
- Follow the manufacturer’s limits on the number of light strands that can be safely connected together.
- Unplug Christmas tree lights and holiday lighting when going to bed or leaving the house.
- For outdoor lighting only use light strands specified for outdoor use and connect them to a circuit having a ground fault circuit interrupter (GFCI).
- Avoid stringing lights in contact with metal, such as attaching them with staples, winding strands around nails, or stringing lights on chain link fences or metal rain gutters.
- If using an extension cord outdoors, make sure that it is rated for outdoor use. Wrap the connection between the cord and light strand with electrical tape to keep it dry.
- Before stringing lights outdoors on trees, make sure tree branches are not close to or touching overhead power lines.
- If you are using a ladder to string lights outdoors, keep more than ten feet away from power lines.
Be sure to use energy-efficient holiday lights:Switch your holiday lighting from strands of traditional incandescent bulbs to newer mini bulbs or LED (light emitting diode) bulbs to reduce lighting costs.
For example, a 100-bulb strand of traditional C7 incandescent bulbs uses as much as 500 watts, while a similar strand of mini-bulbs uses only about 33 to 34 watts. And a 100-bulb strand of the newer LED-type lights only uses about 4 watts.
You can operate a strand of LED lights all Christmas season using less than a dollar’s worth of electricity!
