a peek inside the fishbowl

Back in late November/early December I received a friendly email from a PR firm representing Canadian Tire, asking me if I wanted to try something from their 2008 Christmas Décor catalogue.

There was one thing which caught my eye: NOMA solar-powered Christmas lights. A neat idea whose time has come. I was willing to give it a go, even more so because I have never been 100% happy with our current strings of outdoor LEDs. Our current lights are gaudy. They remind me of something you’d see framing windows in the red light district. I wonder who decided to throw so many orange bulbs into the mix. It’s not even a CHRISTMAS COLOUR fer cryin’ out loud. 

LEDs are often sold as “super bright.” I’d take “warm and cozy” any day.

Our current LEDs lack warmth and twinkle, and I wonder if new LEDs will ever match old incandescents. I secretly wish we had never replaced ours, and as we walk down our neighborhood streets I wonder if our children will grow up with outdoor Christmas lights that are about as cheerful as the fluorescent tube lighting at the dentist’s office.

ANYWAY, I set my sights on the white strings that were shown in the catalogue. I made my request and awaited the response. As I mentioned, it was early December. As it turned out there were no white solars to be had. I wasn’t really surprised. People are koo-koo crazy for Christmas lights. Do you remember the “icicle light” shortage of 1997? The revolutionary Christmas lighting trend that was so big there was nary a package to be found? Anywhere?

So it was multicolour or nothing. And I was interested enough in this product to agree to the multicolour.

Here’s the description from the catalogue:

Solar powered Christmas items are unique, effective and long lasting. These lights use a brand new “amorphous” solar panel technology, which is designed for a Canadian winter and will even charge on a cloudy day. As dusk falls, they light up automatically and run for 6 hours before automatically shutting off (to save energy for the next night).

I was pretty excited to get our package. I was expecting four strings of multicolour lights and some decorative solar lawn stakes as well (“Place anywhere without the hassle of extension cords. Available in four colours: red, blue, green, and amber”) but those never showed up.

I want to state, for the record, that we’ve given these a diligent try and have been observing them in action for several weeks. But I don’t think the technology (whatever “amorphous” means) is quite up to snuff for Ottawa winter months.

The front of our house faces East, the back faces West, and the side of our house has a unobstructed southern exposure.

The catalogue description doesn’t mention anything about the solar panel having to be in direct sunlight. We figured that if they can charge on a cloudy day that a sunny easterly-facing exposure wouldn’t matter. At first Mark wound some of the lights around a tall hedge and placed the panel in such a way that it faced East, but then we realized that they weren’t charging, and the printed instructions that came with the lights suggested the panel be positioned due south. So Mark rearranged the panel so it was more southerly and put three of the four strings on a tree at the back of our yard. I can see them clearly from our kitchen window. The three strings don’t seem to light up at the same time and it takes a full day of total sun to give them a good charging up. This past month has been incredibly overcast, and sunshine has been hard to come by. Sometimes one or two of the strings don’t light up at all.

Oh well. Let’s break it down this way, shall we?

PROS:

• Gives you the ability to decorate places far removed from any electrical outlet. I bet rural Canadians will appreciate this the most, although anyone who hates dealing with miles of tangled extention cords would benefit just as much.
• Easy to set up
• No need to fuss with timers or having to tromp around outdoors to plug/unplug
• This is the ultimate environmentally-friendly way to decorate with lights (though not as much as not decorating at all) LEDs are less expensive to run over the long term (some say 95% cheaper than regular incandescents), and cost pennies a day to operate. Solar-powered lights are even cheaper than that.  
• The colour was a notch better than our older LEDs

CONS:

• They aren’t as bright as regular plug-in LEDs.
• The lights don’t stay lit as long as described. Even on the sunniest days, “six hours” was a bit of a stretch. I would check them at 8:30/9:00 p.m. and they’d already be turned off. And I could be wrong, but I think the part about them turning off “to save energy for the next night” isn’t exactly true. I don’t think there’s a timer in there. I think the units just run out of juice and need to recharge again the next day.
• The strings don’t come with clips to attach to a roof-line, although they do come with an attachment you can nail into your exterior wall (but who would do that?) and plastic spikes (to drive into frozen soil? Snow banks?)  which brings me to …
• … the fact that I have to check the panel regularly to make sure it’s not covered (or buried) in snow. I scraped a layer of snow and ice off the backyard panel yesterday.

So. I bet you’re wondering if I plan on using these next year? I will. In fact, I just might leave them where they are all year ’round. Despite the issues they still work okay wound around our back tree. I don’t really care that they’re not as bright or don’t stay lit past 9:30. Mark was going to take them down this weekend, but I asked him to leave them. It gives us some lighting where none existed before.

So there it is. Take from it what you will. I wonder if this product would work better for people a few degrees south of Ottawa. I wish I could have given it a more glowing review (get it, glowing? Ha!) but I have to be honest.  Otherwise I’m not worth my salt.

Thanks Canadian Tire, for giving me the opportunity to give these a try!