possible fix for big box LED issues

[LENNY RUEL]

Possible but time consumng fix for issues some have seen with a lot of the LED sets we have bought at big box stores....

I'm sure some have noticed how corroded the contacts are with their LEDs if you ever had to change a bulb and I'm sure some have also already done this so it's more pointed to the newer group on here. I've seen threads where members have gone to test the lights before they put them up and they didn't work. The main cause is the corrosion that takes place between the bulb wires that come in contact with the metal tabs in each socket. Best thing to do before you put them in service is to pull each bulb and put a dab of die-electric grease on each wire and put them back in. On incandescent sets all of this is copper so we don't see this problem, but on LED sets the tabs are still copper but the wires from the lights are not. The difference causes rust because most of these big box sets are not sealed. You often times will already see it on brand new sets. I use quite a few in the static portion of my display after making the switch last year and bought quite a few after the season last year. These have been stored in my garage all summer and after hearing of this in another forum decided to check in to it. I found moderate corrosion on about 25% of my wires on the new sets. I expect much worse on the sets I had out last year.I'm just hoping they still work as once the corrosion gets to a point the bulbs end up fused in the sockets and you end up having to toss them.

This isn't meant as an advertisement for the good, sealed LED sets as they are out of some peoples price ranges, although I will buy them for controller use because of the fading and other effects that may not look the best on the cheaper LEDs. It also isn't meant as a bash on the big box stores either. It's just a public service to hopefully help with some frustrations people will have. My guess is the expensive sets are made the same way, but with being completely sealed the moisture can't get in there and rust everything together.

You should have seen the guy at Home Depot yesterday when I was telling him why I was looking for die-electric grease as he had never heard of it and wondered what it was used for. He stated that he had bought quite a few LED last year and asked if it meant they won't work. I told him not exactly, that this was preventitive. Some get really bad and some don't depending on how they are made. But that I had thousands of lights and could no way keep up with replacing them if they started to go bad. But he asked what had to be done and how long it takes and made sure he wrote down the information.

Lenny

[Steven]

Lenny, I have a question: I don't happen to have any dielectric grease in my garage right now, but I do have some lithium grease. Would that work? What's the difference between dielectric grease and regular grease?

In the past I used silicone sealant. Would that work?

[LENNY RUEL]

Steven:
Not sure what would work other than the die-electric. It has to pretty much conduct electricity like not having anything coating the connection. I know the die-electric is supposed to prevent galvanic corrosion which is what I believe is going on. Two different metals having an accelerated rate of corrosion. The directions on the container should tell you about the conductivity of each product. If it does not mention it I'm thinking it may not be a good thing to use. Also some products might eventually destroy the plastic sockets or bulbs. I know the die-electric won't do this because I had always coated the threads on all of my C-7's I ran the roof lines with for two reasons. 1) was to make them easier to change if I had to replace burned out ones. I had no sticky bulbs in the sometimes very cold weather. 2) was to displace water that would seep into the socket. In Wisconsin we can have a cold rain that gets everything soaked and the temperature can drop 20+ degrees in a couple hours once the cold front drops through. Besides turning the rain over to snow it freezes everything pretty quickly. I've had strings of minis go out and in checking found the part of the bulb that plugged in to the socket was coated with a film of ice. With the C-7's on the roof and pretty hard to maintain once we had snow on the roof I wanted to insure I had as few, if any problems. I know the die-electric did this for me with no damage to the plastic. The clear is more expensive than the gray by the way but is much less messy. I just leave the string plugged in and do one bulb at a time along the entire length.

Lenny

[TGabriel]

Dow Corning DC4

Electrical Insulating Compound

(dielectric moisture barrier for electrical equipment)

[Max-Paul]

Also goes by the trade name of NO-OX. Tell the guy in the electrical dept of a supply house the grease that is put on a copper / AL electrical connection. The stufff is thick and I would put it between my legs to warm up before using. Warning you can get hand cramps from squeezing it to long. Just a dab will do. I squeezed it into the socket then inserted the lamp base. You know you got enough when just a small amount comes out the back..

[LENNY RUEL]

Yep:
No-ox is what I picked up at the Lowes here in town. And the wife picked up another brand at Menards. But I do the same thing, put a dab on each wire and plug them back in to the socket. A side note...this stuff actually isn't conductive. It gets pushed out of the way where the little wires make contact with the tabs in the sockets but completely seals off the connection from moisture then. It's some extra work but we all have the same thoughts on hoping we don't have to fix to many strings of lights during the season. The colder climate gang, myself included has that much more reason. The fingers go numb in a couple of minutes in below zero windchill.

Anyway reality is setting in. It's only about six weeks now before I want everything up and test out my sequences live to make any tweaks, which is close to mid Novenber. And they are calling for frost tonight in most of our area and the extended forecast is calling for flurries the latter half of next week. Quite a bit to do but am comfortable where I'm at. Going to start on the roof C7's this weekend.
Lenny

[iresq]

LENNY RUEL wrote:

And they are calling for frost tonight in most of our area and the extended forecast is calling for flurries the latter half of next week.

OT

Gotta love Appleton. I've been there twice to buy fire engines and both times was in the dead of winter. It sure is cold up there.

[LENNY RUEL]

Dave:
Must be buying Pierce. A customer of ours. We supply any Hydraulic fittings and also the cable assemblies for the ladder trucks. Plus do all the sling and hoist inspections. And yep, it can get cold. Then they make the other brand in Clintonville which is about 45 minutes from us.

Lenny

[stanward]

I have a lot of new LED strings I plan on using this year from the big box stores. Shux, I was afraid of needing to use dielectric grease, although I have 2 big tubes of it.

That will take me forever to do this preventative maintenance.

[LENNY RUEL]

Stan:
Never been to the Islands but plan to some day. Don't know much about your weather but I'd think being in the middle of the ocean it is humid? I know brand new boxes of lights I picked up last year from Fleet Farm here that I just checked had corrosion on about 1/3 of the bulb leads. That and some threads I saw earlier I think on PC made me decide to check. Heck they may have been that way already when I bought them. They say the problem is such low current draw for the LED's that it doesn't take much corrosion to kill them. I dread looking at the C7's I had outlining the roof line though last year. Might be interesting even trying to get them apart if the corrosion is really bad. At least with the thicker wires on the LED's they aren't as fragile as the ones on regular incandescent bulbs. But, that is one thing I plan to start this weekend as well as starting to get them up. Luckily I only have about 1000 LED bulbs and they are on the static side of my display. Everything on animation is regular minis.

Lenny

[stanward]

I am on the east side of the Big Island, where it is one of the most rainiest places in the state.

I think I will have to do the dielectric grease trick, as I was contemplating that all year.

[stanward]

Sorry to awaken a dead thread.

I noticed a lot of the Big Box store light sets come with a warranty. My question is, has anyone had any success with returning the light strings because of the rust issue?

I noticed a company called Toyo International Group that makes almost all of the lights from Home Depot as well as my LED icicle lights from Sears.

I didn't have enough time to put dielectric grease on all of my LED lights, so a lot of them rusted out within 1-2 weeks of being installed! The rust is so bad, when I take the lights out of the sockets, the LED leads fall apart.

[Robin]

I bought some LED lights last year for a box store and they fade fine. Or at least they did when I tried them out last year.

[stanward]

All of the cheap LED sets I bought from WalMart/Home Depot/Sears fade fine.

It's the rusting out due to the dissimilar metals in each socket that causes them to rust like crazy.

[brownjm74]

I finished taking down my lights on the roof last weekend and I had the rusting problem going on. This was my first year using some LED's and I am convinced now more than ever I will NOT buy any more LED's. I don't have the extra time to grease each one and the extra cost to boot. I will just stick to the MINI's from now on.

[ErnieHorning]

Typically silicone grease is used for antennas so they’ll slide easily or lithium if it could get really cold. Dielectric grease is slightly thicker than that of petroleum grease. Being thick, it stays put whereas silicone will tend to flow on the surface over time.



By the way, you can get dielectric grease at any auto store. It’s used to lubricate spark plug wire boots. It makes it much easier to remove the wires after they’ve be wrapped around a screaming hot spark plug for several years.



You only need to use enough grease to cover the wire; a small amount goes a long way.

[stanward]

And the dielectric grease is a water repellent (not a good idea to have moisture in the spark plug boot).

I used dielectric grease in most of my cheapy LEDs and a lot of the grease was gone in a few weeks. Of course, it is because of the weather here in Hawaii, suns a lot and rains a lot at night.

If you compare the cost of the professional sets, it's not worth it to waterproof the cheapy sets that will fail.