Re: Shop lights
Posted: Fri Nov 25, 2022 3:46 pm
Laying all jokes aside, lighting has always been a sore spot with me. Over the past 30 years, every year there has been a new flavor. Just install this one and you will save $$$$ in electricity. High Pressure sodium was the first big push. What the sales personal did not say was that in the first 2 years of operation the bulbs lost 1/2 of the lumens output. Then came T12 fluorescent push then to T8, then to T5. With each push came a calculated payback, while nothing was said about the color spectrum. Now the push is to LED. I feel that changing to LED may be worth looking at.
An old standard was the 60 and 100 watt light bulb rated at 800 and 1600 lumens, and a color spectrum of 2700K and 2870K respectively. In the 70's only grow lights and very special bulbs would deviate from off the shelf spectrums. Even the high pressure sodium lamps and mercury vapor bulbs were very consistent in staying below 3000k. Most lighting changes in late 90's to 2010 required rewiring complete areas, changing fixture placement and creating a lot of headaches for limited gain. (my rant) The energy payback often came at a cost and driven by government rebates in Ontario.
The problem now is what to chose when wattage is no longer the method for making a fixture choice. There are two factors that need to be looked at, intensity and color. The intensity is measured in Lumens and the color is rated in Kelvin. Lumens are the amount of light needed for comfortable viewing. As one ages the amount of lumen's needed increases. Kelvin is usually between 3000K to 5000K and now up to 6500K. 3000K is known as warm and has a yellowish glow where the 65000K is referred to as cool and is closer to natural sunlight.
Fast forward to 2021. Led fixtures are now available in configurations to directly replace old fixture layouts without rewiring or reconfiguring lamp layout.
My mothers home has 12 fluorescent dual 4 foot lamps hidden in a recessed celling that was installed in 1980. They all had their original ballast and were in very poor condition. In March while visiting her, all of the ballast were pulled out of the fixtures, feeds to one end of the tombstones were removed, and the other end of tombstones was supplied with 110V AC. For $14.00 per fixture and 20 minutes of time the lighting was upgraded to 4200K, 20 Watt Led lamps. This was the lamp of chose after testing 5000K LED lamps because they kept the lighting color and contrast near the level of the 1970 configuration.
The 120v T12, 8, and 5 LED conversion bulbs are not available in Canada due to shock hazards. When converting a US fixture to 120V LED lamps one end of the fixture gets 120 volt powered tombstone's. When a tombstone breaks during bulb replacement a serious hazard occurs. Canadian code require LED retrofit lamps to be driven with existing fluorescent ballast, defeating the the energy savings on retrofitting old fixtures. Often the fluorescent ballast is the energy consumer in old lighting.
Well even I can rant sometimes, Its best not to get me started.
An old standard was the 60 and 100 watt light bulb rated at 800 and 1600 lumens, and a color spectrum of 2700K and 2870K respectively. In the 70's only grow lights and very special bulbs would deviate from off the shelf spectrums. Even the high pressure sodium lamps and mercury vapor bulbs were very consistent in staying below 3000k. Most lighting changes in late 90's to 2010 required rewiring complete areas, changing fixture placement and creating a lot of headaches for limited gain. (my rant) The energy payback often came at a cost and driven by government rebates in Ontario.
The problem now is what to chose when wattage is no longer the method for making a fixture choice. There are two factors that need to be looked at, intensity and color. The intensity is measured in Lumens and the color is rated in Kelvin. Lumens are the amount of light needed for comfortable viewing. As one ages the amount of lumen's needed increases. Kelvin is usually between 3000K to 5000K and now up to 6500K. 3000K is known as warm and has a yellowish glow where the 65000K is referred to as cool and is closer to natural sunlight.
Fast forward to 2021. Led fixtures are now available in configurations to directly replace old fixture layouts without rewiring or reconfiguring lamp layout.
My mothers home has 12 fluorescent dual 4 foot lamps hidden in a recessed celling that was installed in 1980. They all had their original ballast and were in very poor condition. In March while visiting her, all of the ballast were pulled out of the fixtures, feeds to one end of the tombstones were removed, and the other end of tombstones was supplied with 110V AC. For $14.00 per fixture and 20 minutes of time the lighting was upgraded to 4200K, 20 Watt Led lamps. This was the lamp of chose after testing 5000K LED lamps because they kept the lighting color and contrast near the level of the 1970 configuration.
The 120v T12, 8, and 5 LED conversion bulbs are not available in Canada due to shock hazards. When converting a US fixture to 120V LED lamps one end of the fixture gets 120 volt powered tombstone's. When a tombstone breaks during bulb replacement a serious hazard occurs. Canadian code require LED retrofit lamps to be driven with existing fluorescent ballast, defeating the the energy savings on retrofitting old fixtures. Often the fluorescent ballast is the energy consumer in old lighting.
Well even I can rant sometimes, Its best not to get me started.