Ideal Emergency Lighting Design

[WA_Sparky]

Question for you all.
As you all know egress lighting is very common on projects. I've personally stuck with selecting fixtures with battery backup cause its quicker on the design side.

From a contractors standpoint, is it more ideal from a labor and materials standpoint to use integrated battery back up options or specify remote battery pack/inverters similar to bodine products?

If remote battery pack is preferred over integrated packs, would you recommend still using remote if the fixture has battery backup option on cutsheet?

If integrated backup power was not available, would you recommend individual packs/inverters or a one large one?

 

[tom baker]

The least expensive is a bug eye light, initially and perhaps long term. Every 4 years the battery has to be replaced. A common inverter requires dedicated conduit to each location.
With the bug eye, just run a circuit from ahead of any switches

 

[WA_Sparky]

Good to know. Ill keep that in mind!

 

[d0nut]

Inverters can greatly reduce the maintenance costs associated with the required testing of the emergency egress lighting.

 

[tortuga]

Inverters can greatly reduce the maintenance costs associated with the required testing of the emergency egress lighting.

Agreed when maintaining a even moderate sized commercial building with LED you can get away with a 3kW inverter for a reasonable cost, and cover many many fixtures.

 

[gadfly56]

Agreed when maintaining a even moderate sized commercial building with LED you can get away with a 3kW inverter for a reasonable cost, and cover many many fixtures.

Not familiar with inverters for emergency lighting, I only ever dealt with unit fixtures. With a total blackout all the lights will go on, but what happens if only a floor, or part of a floor drops out? Do you zone the inverter somehow? With unit fixtures, you can power them on the lighting circuit for an area ahead of the switch so if you lose lighting power in that area the e-lights for that area will come on.