Smoke

[lboucher]

Hi All

So here is the deal.
It has rained a lot in the northeast this year.

Had 3 good days of rain a week or so ago, caused 6 to show issues.
Fixed 4, other 2 stopped showing problems and I wasn't sure which they were.

Last night it was really windy, then it rained all day, pretty hard.

Get home from work early, and actually watch my show start up.
Couple nodes showing color, ohh well no biggy worry about it later.
Walk up to it, and see a nice billow of smoke coming from the top of my tree.

Race to unplug it.  (See pics)

I assume power is flowing thru the waterlogged string I used, to ground.
would paracord do better than string. (AKA not become waterlogged?)

These were dipped in plastidip, but i think nice strong wind and rain just works the joints loose.

I think my plan is to spend a couple hours and put a really heavy coat of liquid electrical tape on them all this weekend.

How is everyone else doing?

[inzeos]

Ouch, UL would have a field day with that not to mentioned your insurance company if it caught your house on fire...

[lboucher]

Makes me happy its 15' from my house, and my power supply is also outside.
Come to think of it, might move that a bit farther from the house.

[lboucher]

Well, i guess i did somethin dumb.
A couple days ago, I had a bad ethernet cord.
Replaced it, but in all the running around i left the bad one in place and still plugged into  the hub.
Was current going to ground or was it somehow finding its way all the way back to that cord end....

[RJ]

See how the wires are twisted on the burnt node. The wires got twisted and pulled in the wind. Then the outside wire is got farther to go around so it gets tight before the rest. This makes it carry all the load and fail at the solder connection. Then it touchs the ground and you have a short. The problem I have is that to pull enough current to get really hot the fuse should have blown on your hub? You do not have them jumpered or something do you? This is why we put them in they to protect from such things going wrong and so i would expected it to blow and protect you from the damage.

RJ

[lboucher]

Ahh, makes more sense. Now that ya say it.

And na, fuses are in and looked good.
(But i am waitin till tomorrow to get a good look and fire up the mega tree again.)

How fast would you expect the fuse to blow?
I have never used that type before.
I was literally standing right there, so i probably caught it within say 15 seconds.

[lboucher]

Also FYI, they are zipped every 8 or 10 or 12 nodes. So not a ton of weight on them, but I do pull them a bit say they don't sag.
All that said I have not really bothered to purposely untwist them.

[RJ]

Well you could get them hot for a while if the short was just enough. A fuse takes a amount of time to blow. If you have  5amp fuse at 5.1 amp is will be a while. at 7 amps it could be say for just the point as this is not correct. 45 seconds. 10 amps might be 15 seconds 12 amps might be a second and 15 amps might be a tenth of a second. So they can run a while at just above their rated power.

RJ

[lboucher]

Makes sense.

[keitha43]

I also had bad luck with rain. Many nodes causing problems either wrong color or worse it turns sections of the string white and stays that way even between songs. I had 2 catch on fire the next day after the rain. I watched one smoke and burn the ribbon cable in two. The other I didn't see at the top of the tree and when the whole string didn't come on I tried different ports to troubleshoot and was blowing the small fuses on the hub card without realizing it until too late. Ordered more so I will replace this weekend as yet another rainstorm is supposed to be here for a few days.

[RickeyS]

I too have a string that I put on a wreath that the rain got to. I have yet had time to take it down and see where the problem is, but the first part of string acts normal, second part stays all white and last part of string isn't lit at all. I used plastic dip (full strength to cover back half of each pixnel node) to try to water proof, (guess that sure didn't work). I love the way these strings look and work, WHEN THEY WORK, but this rain/waterproofing thing is a pain in the ***. I also blew one of the little fuses.

Rick

[keitha43]

I was dumb in my troubleshooting and blew 9 fuses. I thought the below freezing temp in the morning was making the string not come on. More rain expected for the next 3 days. Good time to repair all those fuses. Seriously considering taking all nodes down and keeping them in my garage during the storms. Need a megatree raincoat.

[inzeos]

I wonder if the popularity and volume increases if Ray can get a better process put together for the strings.

[RickeyS]

Got home tonight and was ready to take my wreath down to work on it, but turned it on and it worked.

RickeyS

[caretaker]

Here in Michigan we have had 3 days of Rain so I have kept all my controllers turned off (when I shut down my show I power down controllers and computer). Today is the first sunny day we have had so I am going to do a test run tonight and cross my fingers that everything is OK.

UPDATE:
Fired up everything tonight and I have one SS controller crap out, I have 3 or 4 strings with bad pixels (all or most of the string stays on all the time) I hope I can get it fixed on Saturday OR I will have to go back the the old incandescent Mega tree sigh... 

More Updates:

Well after a lot of thought about this I am taking down my Pixel strings and putting up my old incandescents up for this year till I can figure a way to better seal the pixel strings from moisture. With the $800 plus I spent on pixel strings I don't want to end up with all of them dead so I am going to work on building a mold that I can stick the lights in to better seal the ends (yep I'll post photos if it works) I am disappointed but at least I can still put on a show this year.