The difference in price and construction between home and professional Christmas lights is huge. But when you see the difference in the construction you realise that there's a lot more work in making the professional ones, and the materials add a lot of expense and weight too.
These are the strings of lights often used on city centre trees, either wrapped round the branches of ordinary trees or strung seasonally on big Christmas trees.
They're also used on the aluminium panels mounted on the sides of lamp posts, either on their own or with rope light outlines, some festoon for brighter points of light or strobes for sparkle and sometimes shoved through industrial grade fire and weather retardant tinsel.
Stuff like this tends to have a rough life, with extreme weather exposure and frequent installation and removal by people who often don't treat them too well and cram them into vans and storage spaces. Cheap home grade lights would be destroyed quickly in a similar application.
The lights are usually available in white, black or green rubber, with black being a preferred choice. The use of a high voltage DC bus allows a lot to be run end to end, but you have to be careful to ensure that the sealing o-rings are in place in the connectors. Lesser installers will often lose the o-rings when they are essential in avoiding plug and socket failure. If possible keep a bag of spare o-rings if you do a lot of work with stuff like this.
In the UK the mains voltage stuff shouldn't be used at ground level where kids can touch it. But certain types of company who use casual labour with dubious electrical credentials will use it because it's cheap. The same companies may use the wrong types of protection or quite often none at all "because it keeps tripping".
It's important to note that if these lights are wrapped round the branches of trees for year-round decoration, they have to be maintained. That involves checking their condition, making sure they're still loose and if necessary, repositioning them onto the tree to prevent bark and light damage as it grows. If just ignored, as often happens with city councils, the trees will literally grow through the lights, forming bark around them and potentially breaking them and exposing live connections.
It's not unusual to see trees with a tiny section left lit, if any, and exposed live wires in amongst the branches. The live wires may not be obvious if the tree is unlit. Never assume the power is actually off.
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