gym: how many lumens per square foot ?

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Stevenfyeager

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United States, Indiana
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electrical contractor
existing gym 65 X 100, 23' high ceiling, church gym for sports. Existing fluorescent lights, 20 years old. Requesting LED replacements. How many lumens per square foot is needed ? Any advice ? Thank you.
 
Stevenfyeager said:
existing gym 65 X 100, 23' high ceiling, church gym for sports. Existing fluorescent lights, 20 years old. Requesting LED replacements. How many lumens per square foot is needed ? Any advice ? Thank you.
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About 30-50 is generally advised. I recommend UFO type LED fixtures. Many are cord and plug and simply mount onto a hook.

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Say you try to light the gym from one side. You would have horizontal ft candles (or Lux) but insufficient vertical ft candles.
Shadows would be cast if you went to the side opposite the lighting.
Correct vertical lighting (ft candles or Lux) would stop the shadows.
 
Stevenfyeager said:
Thank you for this link. Can you explain the meaning of vertical versus horizontal foot candles ?
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Horizontal Foot Candles: Light level reading at a horizontal surface or height. Typically, for hallways, gymnasium, storage spaces i just take my FC reading from the floor height. In offices spaces, schools, pharmaceutical prep for example, they need specific light levels present at their working surface, so FC readings need to be captured at working surface height.

Vertical Foot Candles: Light level reading on a vertical surface. Typically always means light levels on a vertical wall. For your application this is to ensure lighting level readings on all the vertical walls of the gym are sufficient for the events.

Not sure how you model lights but all you need to do is add another set of calc points to each wall surface. Don't forget to adjust the reflectance characteristics before running calcs. Reflectance values are defaulted to carpet like levels, gym floors are high gloss. When in doubt error on the side of caution for light levels. Give them a little more light if needed and tone it back with dimmers vs short your self on lumen output and need more light after install.
 
DrSparks said:
About 30-50 is generally advised. I recommend UFO type LED fixtures. Many are cord and plug and simply mount onto a hook.

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Solid advice.

Steven can you provide a sketch of the existing layout? I presume you’ll want to do a 1-for-1 swap in place of existing fixtures.

I’m really partial lately to Nicor UFO’s for their price/performance value. They have a nice layout tool on their website. I don’t mind helping if you can make a simple sketch of the existing layout to see which fixture would provide the lumens needed in place of the fluorescent. Or go to their website and try it out.


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