Emergency lighting for windowless garage

[Stephen H]

Now that I have turned my attention to the garage lighting, its struck me that as I have no windows, I always have the lights on when sawing up pallets with my reciprocating saw.

The potential for an accident should there be a power cut or the 6A RCBO trips is quite high.

I see two solutions:

First solution is:

Buy some emergency lights such as those at screwfix that have 3 hour batteries and wire these into the lighting circuit.

As I can see, they will come on with every power cut irrespective of whether its daylight or dark and irrespective of whether the actual garage lights are on or off.

now whats the difference between maintained and non-maintained?

Do I need to install emergency test switches according to wiring regs or can I test them by popping the 6A RCBO?.

Second solution is to replace the existing flourescent battens with emergency ones.

Now my questions are: will the batten come on automatically with a power interruption irrespective of the actual lighting switch position? It would be nice to stop the thing coming on even when the light switch is in the off position. Obnviously if the switch is already on, then the light should stay lit with a power cut.

However, it would be handy that battery charge is conserved for when I actually want to use the light during a power cut.

Comment welcome...........

Stephen

[Phil L]

Will the reciprocating saw carry on working without electricity?

[John Rumm]

Non maintained work as you describe - they only come on when you remove power. Maintained ones do the same, but can also be switched manually and used as a normal light as well.

If you fit non maintained ones then they will only light on power failure. There is no way to turn them "off" other than by restoring power.

[Mike Barnes]

Stephen H :

Non-maintained only comes on when its power is cut.

Maintained has an extra connection that can be used to make it come on when there isn't a power cut. You can connect either a permanent supply or a switched supply to that extra connection.

I test mine the second way.

Speaking for myself, I'd want the main lights to go off, making it absolutely clear what has happened.

I think that telling the difference between a power cut and you switching off requires more subtlety than that possessed by most emergency lights. I'm not saying there aren't any that can do that, but I wouldn't expect it.

[Steve Walker]

I have one of these on standby charge in the garage, in a bracket pointed at the ceiling. If mains power goes, it provides an adequate light for the room and is portable.

[Andy Burns]

Mine can be used either way, there's a jumper inside that shorts two pins, that way it's non-maintained ... if you take off the jumper and wire it to an external switch it's maintained ... doesn't require a separate supply.

Since mine's in the cupboard under the stairs (handy for seeing the CU if anything's tripped) I fitted an architrave switch as a handy way of illuminating the cobwebs at other times too ...

[meow2222]

is it?

Emergency lights cost around £16 last time I looked. They provide low lev el lighting only.

Full size fluorescents with battery packs cost well north of £50. They ru n at reduced output on battery.

Coming on instantly would be an advantage. 10 NiMHs, a wallwart & resistor as trickle charger, a relay and a 12v 21w filament lamp would do this for a bout £5.

You can also get torches that come on when mains fails for a tenner or so.

NT

[Owain]

Probably for long enough to slice something painful, yes.

Owain

[John Rumm]

Even if not, being in a garage surrounded by cut logs in the dark is a good way to end up going base over apex trying to feel your way to a consumer unit.

[polygonum]

The £7.99 LiIon battery torch with inductive charging Lidl were selling (last week?) looked like it could cover that situation - but maybe not enough to feel safe with power tools still turning. (Whether by inertia or the lamp failing other than by power failure.)

Anyone get one? Think they had proximity detection option.

[Nick Odell]

Hopefully a superfluous question: does the reciprocating saw have a solenoid-type safety switch? The only thing I can imagine that would be worse than being plunged into darkness while the saw runs down under its own inertia would be the saw suddenly springing back to life when the power is restored.

Nick

[Lobster]

For some reason I'm reminded of a punchline from the days of when it wasn't politically incorrect to tell 'Irish' jokes:

"Jaysus, what the f*ck's that noise?"

[Reentrant]

It will take your eyes a little while to adjust if the emergency lighting is much dimmer than the work lighting, so you may be no safer than being plunged into total darkness as the saw comes to a halt.

[Phil L]

Highly unlikely, the saw will work for a fraction of a second after the lights trip - he would have to be actually holding the sawblade to a body part before the leccy went for an accident to occur, which is highly unlikely.... the chances are it would be halfway through a log and would stop dead

[PeterC]

Um, am I missing something here? If the lights in my shed trip, the 13A sockets will stay on so machinery will keep running - OK, hand-held's not a problem. This is unlikely to happen as the 13A is on a RCD and the lights aren't.

[Andrew Gabriel]

It's still obvious - in emergency mode, they give off about 10% of the normal light output, and in a multi-tube luminare, only one operates in emergency mode.

+1

Other thing is that all the emergency lights I have have a high standy load - many watts even when battery is fully charged. It might be that more recent ones are more energy efficient, but older ones are about as crude a design as anyone could imagine, charge the batteries at high current (they have to be ready for another full run quite quickly after power restored) and have no logic to stop the charging, relying on the batteries dissipating the excess heat (which is partly why they use special high temperature NiCds).