dB Family

Sounds like the same approach I was thinking, except I was going to try it with the water in. If you can't get more than 3 lights to operate together I'm wondering if it might be a controller issue. Hate to suggest it, but swapping for a new one would eliminate that as the source of the issue. Also did you try different combination of lights? Was it always the same 3 that worked or any 3? Another option might be to setup a test bed. If you have some extra wire and a couple of new/extra light sockets you could just connect them up and see how many you could get to work. Then plug and play with old bulbs to see if any of those exhibit problems. Kind of like troubleshooting the Christmas lights. Start with a working string and test every bulb from the bad string one at a time. One other thought regarding the sockets. Even though they may be dry now, if they ever had water in them it could have left a conductive or non-conductive residue that's causing the problem. Corrosion is always a problem with spa chemicals. FYI: I picked up some cheap battery operated lights for my spa at the suggestion of the spa tech. They don't look half bad under water, but they want to float on the surface. I just need to get some suction cups for them. If it's going to cost me $2k re-wire the spa I might be able to live with the cheap battery operated ones... plus they come with a remote.

The power supply looks to be producing 5vDC OK. It was the controller that was questionable. It was putting out some voltage when the load was removed (disconnected from light wiring) but fluctuated when connected to rest of the circuit. Even with all the front and back lights disconnected it still would not produce enough to get any of the remaining lights to come on. The quote we got to have the whole thing rewired included all new lights & sockets including the waterfall light and corner lights; new controller; and re-foam back and sides. Tech indicated that they have to remove most of the foam to get at all the lights so it's just easier to re-foam rather than try to pull it out neatly enough to put back. From what I can tell it's a parallel circuit as opposed to series like Christmas lights. Basically there is the black and red wires which are the power bus and the individual lights have the little gray connectors that tap off of that. you can open up those connectors and disconnect individual lights. What I was thinking of doing was to cut the red & black wires at the corners to be able to isolate each side of the spa. Then start by hooking up only the first 4 or 5 lights on the front (nearest the controller). To see if I could get any lights to light. If lucky then it would be a matter of just adding more lights until circuit failed and then isolate that area. Still a lot of work no matter how you cut it.

New used 2008 Limelight spa owner with the same issue, NO LIGHTS. One light had the face broken off and another had water inside. That's the 2 we could see clearly had issues. We just got a quote to rewire the whole thing, $2200. I don't think they really want to do it based on that number. So I'd be interested to hear how anyone else's troubleshooting efforts go. And please include photos or videos if you can. I'm pretty competent on troubleshooting electric circuits, but pretty sure this is not a simple Christmas light setup. From the descriptions of the issues folks have described it sounds like the circuit fails if it senses a short or fault on the line. Which makes sense, to prevent electric shock conditions. Isolating each of the lights to find the faulty ones could take quite a bit of time. So maybe just rewiring the whole thing is the quicker option. And given what folks say about how long the lights last, it might be proactive to just replace them all anyways. I'd also be interested in knowing how folks replace the light sockets. The bulbs look easy enough from the front, it's the sockets that might be tough to get out and back in water tight.