Lighting job thoughts

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GerryB

Senior Member
Location
woodbridge, ct. USA
I do a lot of work for a property owner who has a lot of properties, mostly residential but also some commercial. One property used to be a school and now it is apartments. The hallway lighting consists of florescent fixtures on each side in the corner where the wall meets the ceiling and they extend the entire length of the wall, almost like indirect or soffit lighting. They are all beat up and hard to work on, a tight spot. There is also some but not many ceiling fixtures. They are getting a $400/month electric bill and one of his managers said to me they wouldn't mind spending 4 or 5 thousand to redo the lighting better looking and more efficient to slice that bill. This job was mentioned another time but now that he dangled the 5g carrot in front of me I want to take a more serious look. The building is 3 floors, probably 10' ceilings, and I guess the halls are maybe 50 feet long with a couple of short halls. Without looking recently I'm thinking to abandon the side lighting and do ceiling lighting on the existing feeds. Maybe some type of LED lighting. Anyone do a similar job or got thoughts?
 
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GerryB

Senior Member
Location
woodbridge, ct. USA
ptonsparky said:
LED will quickly eat up a $5000 budget. That may get 15 fixtures installed.
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I know, I just put in some RAB floods that were $175 each. But the 5 is a starting point. As far as a rebate the other poster mentioned (this is UI terrritory in Ct) I think it has to be commercially metered which this probably is. (it is an 800 amp service in a city with all kinds of businesses in the area)
 
iwire

iwire

Moderator
Staff member
Location
Massachusetts
GerryB said:
I know, I just put in some RAB floods that were $175 each. But the 5 is a starting point. As far as a rebate the other poster mentioned (this is UI terrritory in Ct) I think it has to be commercially metered which this probably is. (it is an 800 amp service in a city with all kinds of businesses in the area)
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We do a lot of lighting retrofits and the only way they happen at all is using the rebates offered. I don't know all the details of of how that works but typically the estimators will send me out to survey what is in place now. The total wattage being used is what they really want to know.

Then they have to choose fixtures that are on a list of power company approved fixtures and that will meet the customers needs. They they compare the existing wattage vs what it would be if we do the retrofit. With that known they can get the rebate numbers from the power company and try to make the numbers work for the customer.

Typically it only ends up working with large numbers of fixtures.
 
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GoldDigger

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Staff member
Location
Placerville, CA, USA
Occupation
Retired PV System Designer
Sometimes to get the most of the T5's rated efficiency you need to use a different reflector too, so in those cases an entire fixture replacement will be best.
It depends on what you ate starting with
 
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mirawho

Senior Member
Location
Sun Valley, CA
GoldDigger said:
Sometimes to get the most of the T5's rated efficiency you need to use a different reflector too, so in those cases an entire fixture replacement will be best.
It depends on what you ate starting with
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Just what GoldDigger said. Basically, replace the fixtures with newer ones. It will be a lot less grief for you. They do make LED tubes that will fit on fluorescent lampholders, but you have to wire the primary to the lampholders.

This just reminded me. We had some guys come in to demo some of the newer tubes they made that were supposed to be high output LED's. I was up in my office and someone came to get me as they were having a problem. The group had one of their guys who was supposed to be an electrician installing the lamp. He arced his screwdriver and got everyone worried. First he said there was a problem with the wiring and that's when someone decided to get me involved. He was in the process of rewiring and I walked in and asked him what problems he was having. He said he thought there was something funny about the wiring. I asked him if he knew the voltage and he said 120. I asked him how he figured that out and he said because it was running fluorescent lights. I laughed and told him that all our lighting circuits were 277 and I wanted him off of the ladder now. Aside from the fact that he was hooking it up hot, he neglected to see the orange and brown wires running in and neglected to test the voltage. There was a wall switch. Fortunate for him that he didn't turn it off and tie in the lamp as they would have been in for a big surprise when they turned it on.

Anyway, getting back to your installation GerryB, the good sales point for the direct lamp LED replacement is that they are rated at an average of 50K hours. You don't have a ballast and I think they are around 15 - 18W each. So you have half the wattage but the output is around 2100 lumens. The average F40 lumen rating is around 2000 to 3000, depending on the lamp, so you are getting close to the same output at half the wattage and you don't have ballast maintenance. The T5HO, on the other hand, has an average lumen rating of 4500 lumens per lamp so you get twice the light. I would price out the items with your suppliers and go online and check pricing for the LED replacements if you choose to go that route.
 
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GerryB

Senior Member
Location
woodbridge, ct. USA
mirawho said:
Just what GoldDigger said. Basically, replace the fixtures with newer ones. It will be a lot less grief for you. They do make LED tubes that will fit on fluorescent lampholders, but you have to wire the primary to the lampholders.

This just reminded me. We had some guys come in to demo some of the newer tubes they made that were supposed to be high output LED's. I was up in my office and someone came to get me as they were having a problem. The group had one of their guys who was supposed to be an electrician installing the lamp. He arced his screwdriver and got everyone worried. First he said there was a problem with the wiring and that's when someone decided to get me involved. He was in the process of rewiring and I walked in and asked him what problems he was having. He said he thought there was something funny about the wiring. I asked him if he knew the voltage and he said 120. I asked him how he figured that out and he said because it was running fluorescent lights. I laughed and told him that all our lighting circuits were 277 and I wanted him off of the ladder now. Aside from the fact that he was hooking it up hot, he neglected to see the orange and brown wires running in and neglected to test the voltage. There was a wall switch. Fortunate for him that he didn't turn it off and tie in the lamp as they would have been in for a big surprise when they turned it on.

Anyway, getting back to your installation GerryB, the good sales point for the direct lamp LED replacement is that they are rated at an average of 50K hours. You don't have a ballast and I think they are around 15 - 18W each. So you have half the wattage but the output is around 2100 lumens. The average F40 lumen rating is around 2000 to 3000, depending on the lamp, so you are getting close to the same output at half the wattage and you don't have ballast maintenance. The T5HO, on the other hand, has an average lumen rating of 4500 lumens per lamp so you get twice the light. I would price out the items with your suppliers and go online and check pricing for the LED replacements if you choose to go that route.
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I had a meeting with the property manager and my supply house rep who is in the program with the POCO, we'll see what he comes back with. I like the idea of the LED tubes and no ballast. He said they were not approved for the program right now, didn't know why. So if the one guy who was "supposed" to be the electrician didn't know the voltage I guess I'd be real worried about what the other guys were doing. "Don't worry about that white wire guys, that won't hurt you":eek:
 
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hbendillo

Senior Member
Location
South carolina
GerryB said:
I do a lot of work for a property owner who has a lot of properties, mostly residential but also some commercial. One property used to be a school and now it is apartments. The hallway lighting consists of florescent fixtures on each side in the corner where the wall meets the ceiling and they extend the entire length of the wall, almost like indirect or soffit lighting. They are all beat up and hard to work on, a tight spot. There is also some but not many ceiling fixtures. They are getting a $400/month electric bill and one of his managers said to me they wouldn't mind spending 4 or 5 thousand to redo the lighting better looking and more efficient to slice that bill. This job was mentioned another time but now that he dangled the 5g carrot in front of me I want to take a more serious look. The building is 3 floors, probably 10' ceilings, and I guess the halls are maybe 50 feet long with a couple of short halls. Without looking recently I'm thinking to abandon the side lighting and do ceiling lighting on the existing feeds. Maybe some type of LED lighting. Anyone do a similar job or got thoughts?
Click to expand...

When you say "almost like indirect or soffit lighting" what do you mean? Is it indirect lighting? Does it have a continuous 1-lamp profile or 2-lamp? Are existing ballasts magnetic or electronic?

You already said the fixtures used T12 lamps, so you have lots of options to save energy.

Using T8 lamps and electronic ballasts is the quick fix. You install the new ballasts, rewire the lamp sockets, install the lamps and you are done.

As others have said, if you go the T5 route the only viable way to do it is install new light fixtures. Lamp cost is over twice that of a T8 lamp. T5 fixtures have not caught on generally.

LED replacements do a fair job for a replacement in direct lighting fixtures but not so much for indirect. Lumen output of the LED replacements is about 2000 compared to about 2900 for a T8 lamp. However, the percentage lumen output from the LED lamp is greater than the T8. That is because the light comes directly out of the LED lamp and some of the T8 lamp output is reflected light. So total lumen output from the fixture is close to the same. If you use LED replacement lamps you have to rewire the sockets directly to the 120-volt source. I am not sure if they make 277 volt LEDs.
 
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