Part of Your Christmas Lights Went Out? What to Check First

By Ben McBurney, It’s A Wonderful Light

You pull into the driveway one evening and half the roofline is dark. It’s frustrating, especially the week family is coming over. If you’re an It’s A Wonderful Light customer, don’t worry about it. Call 630-201-9627 or send a service request. We respond within 48 hours during the season, and a burned-out bulb is replaced at no extra charge. If you put up your own lights, you can check these things from the ground.

Start at the timer

When the whole display is dark, go to the outlet where the cord plugs in. A power outage can throw off a timer’s clock, and then the lights come on at the wrong time or not at all. A timer can also get bumped to off by a snow shovel. Make sure it shows the right time and is set to on.

Check the outdoor outlet

Most outdoor outlets have test and reset buttons in the middle. When water gets into a connection, the outlet shuts off the power to keep you safe. Press reset. If the lights stay on, you’re done.

If it shuts off again within a day, water is probably still getting into a plug on that string. Our customers can just call us. If the lights are yours, leave that string unplugged until you find the wet plug.

Look for a loose plug

A section that goes out after a windy night often has a plug pulled apart where two cords meet. Walk along that string and look for a cord end hanging loose. We tape every connection on our displays, so this doesn’t happen often on ours.

A bad bulb in the mini lights

The mini lights on trees and shrubs are wired in short sections. One bad or loose bulb can take out its whole section. A squirrel or rabbit chewing on a cord can do the same thing.

For our customers, burned-out bulbs are replaced at no extra charge. Animal damage is handled the same way.

Snow, ice and wind

Heavy wet snow can slide off a roof and pull a strand off its clips. Ice can do the same when it melts. One customer wrote in a review after last season: “When the heavy snow dislodged some of the lights along our roof-top, they came out quickly to resolve it for us.”

That kind of fix needs a ladder. Stay inside where it’s warm and let us handle it.

What a service visit covers

Call 630-201-9627, email info@iawlight.com or send the service request form. We respond within 48 hours during the season. We fix burned-out bulbs, weather damage, animal damage and strands that came loose. You lease the lights from us, so the replacements come from us too.

What not to do

Don’t tape up a chewed cord and plug it back in. Don’t add your own string of lights to the same cord, because it can overload it. And don’t climb onto a snowy or icy roof to look at one dark section.