Minimum foot candles or lumens for night lighting?

[dogleg43]

We're doing the design on a large lift station and have several questions:

1) Is there a difference between night lights and

emergency lights (I'm not referring to EXIT signs, but light scattered throughout various rooms). Maybe the only term I should be using is "night lights". These are the lights that remain on just to find your way around the place when the regular light switches turn off most of the lights in a room.

2) Is there a NEC reference to the minimum number of lumens or foot candles required for this night lighting (in a large lift station)?

3) We're planning on putting all of the night lights on an inverter in case the power fails.
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[Dennis Alwon]

Welcome to the forum

The foot candle issue is a building code situation not an NEC issue. Night Light is probably what you are talking about since they do not come on in an emergency

 

[Adamjamma]

since you are probably talking the lighting like hotels sometimes use for pathways and many movie theatres use for their steps after the movie starts, have you considered setting them up an battery systems using LEDs, low voltage strings? Not very bright but enough to find paths, follow halls, etc, can usually be mounted under the lips of stairs or along a wall, and can be directly run from the batteries, charged by solar... Never seen a code yet requiring a minimum but know that blue seems to be a pretty decent color that does not interfere in many areas... Quest Diagnostics in Atlanta was looking at using such a system at one point for night time security... Moved to UK before they actually started the work so do not know if they did it or not. While I was there they were testing different colors and light strengths of leds, spacings, etc... to figure how much they actually needed and how it affected their security cameras.

 

[sameguy]

Temp. lighting is 5 ft/candle if I recall.
How about Bodine ballast and one lamp or led?
Inverter? Waterfall outside of building?
Unless you have night light circuits, not just lighting circuits tapped with no switch leg, you will be doing possibly more work adding an inverter, panel/ lighting contactor, pipe work to get circuits together.

 

[beanland]

1fc

1fc

If I remember right, the standard for egress lighting is 1 foot-candle along the egress path. You do not need 1fc average. Egress lighting must also function for 90 minutes after a power outage. If you want to know recommended light levels for various work spaces, refer to IES standards. I know some states also have limits on the allowable power or light level budgets. Other codes, NESC for example, have standards for specific industrial sites. There is no standard for "night lights" because the space can be black if no one is present.

 

[victor.cherkashi]

There is no such a term "night lighting" in a code.
See NFPA 101 Life Safety Code. section 7.9 Emergency Lighting.
Emergency lighting facilities shall be arranged to provide initial illumination that is not less than an average of 1 ft-candle and, at any point, not less than 0.1 ft-candle (1.1 lux). A maximum-to minimum illumination uniformity ratio of 40 to 1 shall not be exceeded.

 

[Adamjamma]

But if you look, the problem is the person is not looking for emergency lighting but low level lighting to simply keep some mobility for security etc... not for work purposes.

thus, not required to be at the level of emergency lighting and not actually a requirement. Have worked security in Georgia before where was required to carry flashlights and use them as no lighting supplied and customer did not want us using the lights unless necessary. Plus we had red filters on the lights so we did not interfere with the security cameras.

Would have loved some led strips along the rug mouldings..lol