Fixing things - Christmas edition

After an incident with a fox in the garage last year and time taking it's toll, several of the Christmas lights were in-operational when we took them out the loft this December. Not to worry though. I decided to go for the repair option.

Outdoor lights

The outdoor lights were victim of the fox in the garage. Unfortunately from stress it bit through the cable... As it was on the low voltage circuit this was a simple case of stripping back the wires and re-soldering:

And here they are working:

Reindeer

We bought an outdoor reindeer back in 2020 (to add a bit of extra cheer to the Covid year) but almost immediately the LEDs started showing signs of rust. Not so outdoor-friendly unfortunately. It managed to stagger through until last year when several lights failed. So I stripped of the old LEDs and replaced with 2x 5m battery powered LEDs

Leaky Battery

Finally, I accidentally left batteries in one of the indoor lights over the year and they leaked and corroded the spring contact completely. Fortunately this was a standard AA size and a clean and replacement was enough to get the lights working again:

So a great outcome. Fixing three Christmas lights for less than £15 postage and packaging. And of course much less waste that would otherwise have been made.