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Artificial Prelit Christmas Trees
Storage of Artificial Prelit Christmas Trees
By Bill Quinn
1st - Lights
It is critical to locate lights which are not working. The more lights which are not working on a light string, the more electricity the working lights have to consume. For example, if you have a 50 light set, each light consumes 1/50th of the electricity in the string. If 10 lights are not working, the 40 lights which are working are forced to take 20% more electricity. If this situation continues, the light string is permanently damaged. The lights will not work and each of the lights have a brown tinge. Light manufactures do not cover this type of damage in their warranty.
The goal is to locate and replace any burned out lights. Turn on the lights on the tree. Starting at the top, trace the wire for the light string and make sure each light is functioning. If you find a non-working light, immediately replace the bulb. If you run out of bulbs, then mark the non-working light with brightly color string or tape for replacement when you get more bulbs.
2nd - Compress Tree
The goal is to compress the branches of the tree in an orderly fashion to preserve the lights, needles and branches. To help understand what we are working with, look at the bottom row of branches on the tree. For a 7.5??tree, there is usually 6-8 main branches attached to the center pole. Each of these main branches have baby branches attached. Below, we discuss how to fold the baby branches back to the main branch. This is why we call it un-fluffing. When you put the tree up, you fluffed or styled the tree to make it full and pretty. Now we want to make it skinny.
Starting at the outer, top of the tree, carefully fold the baby branches toward the larger main branches. Work your way around the top branches and then move down to the next row of branches until the entire tree is un-fluffed.
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