Rope lights turning brown!

A

ali

New elf
Joined
Oct 21, 2012
Messages
20
Location
Gold Coast
I have just pulled some of my lights out of storage, and found that a number of the motifs now have a brown discolouration to the white rope light areas...
They were fine when I packed them up in January, but now are looking really bad!!

Does anyone know why this has occurred? And/ or how to clean it off?
Thanks!
 
could be a number of different reasons, ranging from condensation inside, oxidisation or just cheap plastic that has clouded after last season.

I have some professional ropelights used for television / entertainment style businesses and even those still had the same effects, some worse then others
 
ali have you powered the lights to see if it makes a difference??? as in most cases it does not and I would not worry about it.
 
I have had lots of rope lights over the years and they all went brown over time. But as YG said, turn them on and at night you won't notice the brown.
I have had a white Xmas tree in the garden for the last two seasons and it is turning yellows/brown also. I have added four more this year which are nice and white compared to old yella. But at night once the lights glow, it's hard to tell a difference.
 
I dare say these were bought cheap from either EBay or somewhere else that sells very cheap lighting. It is caused by the use of lower grade materials used in the construction of the rope that have no UV stabilizing properties
 
No they were actually rather expensive!!
I guess it is probably the intense QLD sun!
 
ali said:
No they were actually rather expensive!!
I guess it is probably the intense QLD sun!
Click to expand...

It's not just the cheap ones that suffer I have some my-t-brites that went very brown, I got 3 years out of them in our QLD Sun.
 
ɟɐsʇǝppʎ said:
I dare say these were bought cheap from either EBay or somewhere else that sells very cheap lighting. It is caused by the use of lower grade materials used in the construction of the rope that have no UV stabilizing properties
Click to expand...


All my Big W ones have gone brown! Mind you that was from pre computer controlled days.
 
I used to have a big static display using rope lights and all of them turned brown after 3 or so seasons. They still work however and it should make very little difference at night when viewed from a distance.

I have never found anything that will clean them and once they start getting like that try not to bend them too much as they start splitting resulting in water ingress and trips.
 
Ive seen this with some of my older rope lights I used in the past, but they were the cheapo ones, the better quality rope didn't show any signs of browning. But then we don't have the Queensland sun.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top