The Dangers Of Christmas Lights

electrician-south-london

With Christmas around the corner, we find ourselves in the dusty old corners of our homes where our holiday decorations sit dormant for 11 months of the year. While decorating your home and putting lights on trees is fun, they can be dangerous.

Christmas lights look pretty and give your tree that lovely glow, but they can cost you the safety and comfort of your own home. All light (even LED) gives off heat. When you buy cheap lights in a hurry or you’re not that bothered, they give out even more heat and the little bulbs can get quite hot. At best, the lights can melt a few green bits on your artificial tree or just singe some of your real tree, at worst, it can set the whole tree alight and set fire to your home. That said, you don’t have to throw away all your nice Christmas lights just yet. Just take a few precautions.

The best prevention is to never leave your house or go to bed without switching off the Christmas lights. If you are at home, if the tree did catch on fire, you can take immediate action by switching off your power supply and placing a fire blanket or water over the tree. If the fire has taken hold, evacuate and call 999.

Another problem with Christmas lights is they can short circuit, especially cheap or older ones. This could affect the electricity in your whole home requiring you to call an electrician. To help prevent this, you can buy an inexpensive electrical surge protector which will monitor electrical power and automatically kill the lights if there seems to be a problem, protecting the rest of your home.

While dangers of Christmas lights can be very real, by taking a few easy and simple precautions, you can have a really beautiful Christmas tree that is safe.

Back to Latest