Bill Quinn: Hi! I am Bill Quinn. We are talking about how to select the perfect artificial
Christmas tree. Right now, we are going to talk about the end of the season and
how to properly take down that new Artificial Christmas tree, to take care of it, to
preserve the life of your investment.
The first thing that we want to do, is we want to inspect the lights on the top
section of the tree. It's better now to look for burned out lights and go through and
replace them now, rather than have to worry about it when we take the tree out
next year.
So, I am going to go through right now and inspect the lights, and I am going to
unfluff the top section of the tree. What I mean by that is taking the branches and
bending them back towards the center pole, just like we did. Remember the top
section doesn't have hinges; it's a little bit different. And so we are getting all of
the branches pointed back to the same direction because we don't want to rip off
one of pine cones or damage one of the light bulbs.
So now we have got this all squished up we will set that down for use in just a
moment. The next section we will turn the lights back on, and we would go round
and we will inspect all the bulbs, make sure that none of them are burned out, and
again now we are going to go through and unfluff this portion of the tree that has
the movable branches. So we will start from the outer side, remember when we
fluffed it we started from the inside. We want to do this exactly opposite.
And we squish that back from being a starfish, squish it back towards the center,
the main piece of the branch, and again we are doing this to protect the bulbs and
to protect the branch. So I am going to unfluff the tree, get everything together so
it's all squished up. Then I am also going to shut off the lights, unplug this section,
section B from section C, and then I will be right back with you.
So we have checked this section to make sure that all the balls are working
properly, and we have unfluffed this section so we will be able to compress it
down and to help take care of the tree. Now we are going to take this section, this
is section B, off from the section C. Now we turn it upside down, and as we turn it
upside down, it’s, like an umbrella, and we will lay this down, put away in a
moment. Now we have got section C, we are going to turn the lights back on. Go
through and inspect all the lights, all the bulbs, make sure they are all working. It
looks like they are. Now we are going to go through and shut off the power. We
have got the section C, we have got it unfluffed.
When we went through and unfluffed it, we did have a sub-branch that we had to
bend the branch back to the main branch, to take care of that. We have unplugged
this section from the bottom section. Now, this is sometimes tricky, you might
want to twist it a little bit to try to make sure that section B doesn't come along
with section C. Flip it upside down, all the branches are seating back into their
hinges just the way that we want them to. Now we will go ahead and lay this
down. One section to go, again we turn the lights back on and inspect. And now
it's very easy to see that all the bulbs are on properly. Now we will go through and
unfluff the bottom section. Last section unfluffed, Christmas is about to be done
for this year. I have got to unplug the tree, reach down we have got an eye hook
down here that we want to unscrew.
Now we have got it unscrewed, lift it out of the stand, and again turn it upside
down. Bring the cord up. Now we just want to place it into the box, place it into
the storage bag. It's okay to squish, just not real hard; we want to get all the
branches, so we feel confident with the -- branches are going to stay where we put
them. Grab the next section that was section C. Now I have got section B. Again I
am not pushing down very hard, trying to be gentle. Lastly section A and the
stand. Zip it u, we don't want to push too hard, we don't want to damage the tree,
we don't want to damage any of the bulbs.
One point, it's a big point. We want to store this and set in -- store so our tree in
something that's designed to store Christmas trees. I really don't want to store it in
the box. The reason why it is that the cardboard box that it comes in is going to
deteriorate over time, dust is going to settle on your tree, that dust will probably
attach itself to that tree, plus the bats love to chew on boxes and once they get
inside the box, they love to live inside the artificial Christmas tree.
So you really want something that's a very durable device and this one -- what's
great about this one? We have wheels. Now next, let's talk about how to fix
Christmas lights that are not working properly.