RGB Strips With Moisture in Them

dougd

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Tested my fans yesterday and they worked fine. They are using 12 volt strips. Powered thing up this evening and noticed one part was dimly lit blue. Upon looking at it closer, there was moisture in the strip, it was in the middle not near an end. It hasn't rained here in a week. Is it collecting condensation? This is a bad sign. Is there maybe just a small hole in the covering i cant see? This is very scary. Will update when I know more.
 

AAH

I love blinky lights :)
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We need photos or it hasn't happened doug.
The photos are actually so that I can see what type strip it is that you are referring to.
 

dougd

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I decided to inspect all of my strips and found 2 more cases of moisture inside of strip. In all 3 cases the moisture is real close to a cable tie. Not sure if somehow the cable tie damaged the outer coating or not. I have inspected the strips silicone coating with a magnifying glass and can see no damage. At this point I hopefully can attribute it to that.
 

Charl Marais

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Had a similar problem last year but the "leak" was at the cable end of the tube and moisture simply collected at the points were the cable ties constricted the tube.

A liberal helping of ACID free silicone worked miracles.

PS: Normal silicone as used for sealing around bathrooms etc uses acid as a base and this type of silicone really loves circuit board tracks. If is smells like vinegar it is probably bad for your precious.
 

fasteddy

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Did you find the moisture at the highest point of the strip. The moisture will get in from the ends but may appear on higher sections where the moisture may re-condense. I always add extra silicone to the ends of my strip as the ends are what are the weak points when it comes to whether proofness
There haven't been any previous reports of others suffering from just condensation alone with this strip, usually there is a bad seal on the end that allows moisture to get in.
 

dougd

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So far it has happens on 5 strips. Every time it is near a cable tie and not near the end of the strip. Apparently you can get the cable tie a bit to tight and the strip will leak near that point. What a huge lesson this has been. If it happens at the top of my ray tree I am in deep trouble. So far it has only happened on my fans and spinners which i can carry into the garage and repair.
 

David_AVD

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When putting up my 2811 strips on the weekend I noticed there was a small cut where I had zip tied it to the supporting conduit. I wouldn't have noticed it if I hadn't removed the tie to reposition it.

This was with the silicone tube strip. I'm not sure what the next best way to attach the strips to the conduit now.
 

fasteddy

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Out of the thousands of cable ties ive used to mount this strip over the years I have never seen this issue, You must be doing it up fairly tight which isn't a good thing for a few reasons, You can damage the strip by over stressing the cable ties and kinking the strip and also I have found that with conduit being flexible then this will tend to break the solder joints where the strips join as there is no give if they flex when installing them if the cable ties are done too tight.

The other thing is that there may be some lower quality tube getting around now days that seems to split very easily which isn't a good thing.
 

dougd

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These cable ties were not very tight. Maybe too tight for this type of tubing. They were put on by hand without much pull on them. I spent the afternoon, cutting off the old ties and putting on new ones, they were very loose. Not pulling in the tubing at all.
 
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