Faulty Christmas lights can be the cause of deadly fires.
Every holiday season homes and businesses all over North America light up with hundreds of billions of beautiful Christmas lights of nearly every color imaginable. They joyfully light up the beach condo’s of Los Angeles all the way to the snow-covered homes of Toronto. Often people come out in droves to see homes, neighborhoods and special locations that have particularly stunning displays.
Amazing Christmas light displays across North America.
Niagara Falls, Ontario has one of the largest and most stunning displays of lights in Canada, the Opryland Hotel in Nashville, Tennessee has an unbelievable indoor display and the The Luberto Home in Boston, Massachusetts has over 10,000 dollars worth of lights on a single house. Most of us are not going to go to these kind of extremes with our Christmas decorations, but one thing that we must remember is how dangerous Christmas lights can be. Christmas lights use electricity and there are a surprising number of dangerous fires caused by these lights every single year in North America. There are an average of roughly 60 fires caused by Christmas lights and decorations in Canada and the United States every year.
Here are some tips on how to help avoid becoming a house fire statistic
- Measure the places on your home that you plan on decorating with lights and plan accordingly. If you have a good idea of how much space you have you will have a very clear idea of how many lights you will need. So don’t buy too many or too few. Measure!
- When buying lights, make sure that you go with low-wattage Christmas lights. These lights are great for three reasons; they use much less electricity (about 75-80% less) than standard lights, they are far less likely to cause a circuit overload or blow a fuse and they are just as beautiful and versatile as standard lights.
- Inspect all of your lights carefully when you remove them from their storage and even if you bought them brand new. Look for broken bulbs and any wiring defects, like fraying or splits. If they do have fraying or exposed wiring you can usually repair them with electrical tape, but make certain that you cover them correctly. We would advise discarding frayed lights in favor of new.
- Always test your lights in a controlled place like an open floor away from anything flammable.
- If possible, plug your lights into surge-protected power strips. These are very useful in helping to protect your plugs from becoming over-loaded and blowing a fuse.
- It is usually best to distribute the electricity to your lights into different plugs around your home to help keep a single plug from becoming over-loaded.
We hope these tips will help you to have a safer decorated home this holiday season. www.waterdamagerestorationtoronto.com in Toronto has a plethora of tips, thoughts and suggestions on home improvement that we would love to share with you. We wish you and your family a wonderful and happy holiday season!