December 8th, 2007
LEDs last longer for a few reasons. There’s the bulb itself: “If you think of an incandescent,” Toomey says, “they have these tiny little wire filaments, so if you drop them they snap. LEDs [where light is produced with a semiconductor rather than a filament] are far more rugged, and can stand vibration and shock far better.” They’re encased in thick plastic instead of delicate glass, meaning they’re harder to break from the outside as well. And while some new-tech lighting fares poorly outside in the winter (Compact Fluorescent Lights for instance), LEDs “will laugh at freezing weather; LEDs could care less.” (Toomey’s group maintains an LED resource page detailing plenty of uses beyond seasonal decor.)
A well-constructed string of LEDs has other ways of resisting the elements, although not all products share these virtues. Travis Fremming, the owner of Seasonal Impressions and its offshoot LED Holiday Lighting, points out that “there are LED products out there that are a ‘Two Piece’ construction, meaning the lights can be switched out like they can on incandescent bulbs. Two Piece construction has a tendency to corrode: water seeps into the sockets. Then there is the ‘One Piece’ construction where all the bulbs are fused into place, this does not allow for the corrosion to take place.” Needless to say, Fremming sells the One Piece design.
To customers looking for further justification of LED’s higher initial cost (though costs are dropping rapidly year by year), Fremming recalls a lighting job he did using a commercial grade product that allows as many as 125 strands to connect end-to-end: “I decorated a large part of downtown Des Moines this year. I put up over 72,000 LED lights. I did not pop/burn out one fuse on any of those lights or any of the city’s electrical boxes.”
Consumer-grade light strands are typically made of less hearty wire; the ones Fremming sells are rated for a maximum of six strung end-to-end. He cautions shoppers to think twice about low-priced items at big-box retailers, saying “you want a higher gauge wire, e.g. 20 gauge vs. 22 gauge. The better the wire, the longer the strand will last.”
That’s something to watch as LEDs creep into the mainstream. Wal-Mart, which has made noise this year by pushing compact fluorescents, may not be quite as aggressive in this arena, but they know which way things are headed. According to Tara Raddohl, a senior communications manager for the company, “we carry LED Christmas lights in a majority of our stores, and increased our offering substantially from last season.”
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