Outside lights

Local hotel where I work regularly has 2 x 500w halogen flood lights above the front of the building. They essentially just illuminate the pavement around the entrance & are wall mounted 4m up.

Current policy is to buy el cheapo ones, which last about 6 months & then rot/rust/leak etc. Changing the lamp or fixture is a PITA because of the ladder access on a busy street. Apart from which, they are consuming 1000w just to provide a little illumination.

Any better type of light? Sodium or something, that would use less energy & give longer lamp/fixture life?

Reply to
The Medway Handyman
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Metal Halide? Very similar colour rendition. better lamp life and efficiency.

Something like this:

Reply to
<me9

You need to change the fittings

I use a 70W CDM-T light for the front of my house. 70W and as bright as a

500W halogen once it has fired up. 4 years after installation it still works. I have a 150W metal halide at the back of the house but that was only installed 3 months ago.

Adam

Reply to
ARWadsworth

We've been using these for a while now

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they seem to be lasting years. They give good light to the properties we've used them on. Shop about a bit for the best price though.

As for the fittings themselves. Try buying decent aluminum bodied floods, rather than the cheap "DIY store" pressed steel things. You know the ones, with a thin coat of Hammerite Paint on them. :-)

Reply to
BigWallop

Dave. It sounds like you're wanting to do yourself out of regular work.

Reply to
gunsmith

Yes, but you'll need 150W to match a 500W halogen output.

There are other options if they don't need something which is the same as the 500W halogen output, e.g. if you don't need it as bright, use a 70W metal halide, or don't care too much about the colour (or want something warmer and possibly more welcoming), use a SON (high pressure sodium, peach coloured).

Metal halide come in warm white, white, and cool white colour temperatures (and many specials, but we'll ignore those here). Warm white is slightly lower light output (not enough that you're likely to notice), but in my view is the best of the three in terms of the colour to use for night time use. Often, you'll get a lamp with the luminare anyway, and unless you buy it from somewhere which sells spare lamps and will do a swap, you'll probably be stuck with whatever it comes with.

The other option is conventional or electronic control gear. Electronic control gear will get you longer lamp life and more of the lamp life at the original colour (metal halide colour changes as the lamps age), but you will probably struggle to find any fixtures which include it unless you pay a fortune for them. The control gear itself isn't overly expensive (eBay is probably the cheapest source), but it's seen as a luxury by the luminare manufacturers, and priced accordingly.

Also a word of warning -- metal halide (and some other) high intensity discharge lamps require high voltage (about 5kV in this case) to strike the arc, so keep hands out when they are powered.

Reply to
Andrew Gabriel

Metal Halide in a warm colour or High Pressure Sodium / SON, lot warmer be a great choice, modern street lights are usually HPS, as Andrew puts it peach coloured, stadium floodlights are usually MH, MH in cold white can look a bit Stalag 13, though it does make green vegetation look good at night and provide a cool contrast to warm table lamps etc in public facing windows.

Cautions , apart from high voltages, are that they wont hot retstrike,no good if they are frequently switched and they NEED changed at lifespan rated intervals, which is before they stop emitting light but usually after they have significantly changed colour, the arc tube contains high pressure and dosen`t get stronger with age. Running them past rated lifespan comes with an explosion risk, in reality about as big a bang as a halogen bubble giving up, but sometimes enough to blow a front glass out.

Good news is lamplife will be 6000 hours plus so annual or bi annual replacement is usually all thats required.

Adam

Reply to
AA

Actually wanting to do myself into long term regular work. If you give people good advice that benefits them they remember it & come back again. Thats my policy anyway.

Dave - The Medway Handyman

Reply to
The Medway Handyman

Don't know whats going on here, but I posted a question about outside lights & the neither the OP or the 6 replies appear in my view of the group.

If I go to Google Groups & search. my OP is between the 'Would it be possible to have' post and the 'What kind of fixing is this?' posts, but with OE6 I don't see them?

Reply to
The Medway Handyman

You could try un-subscribing and resubscribing I suppose.

Reply to
John Rumm

Yup, show clients they can trust you with small stuff and they will then trust you with bigger jobs.

Reply to
John Rumm

Same title as a much older post? OE doesn't cope with that and you will need to hunt back through the old threads to find it.

Reply to
Yellow

I'm using OE6 and it doesn't appear here either. Curious.

Reply to
Keith W

I'm using OE6 *and* the same Usenet server (and ISP for that matter) as Dave and they all appeared here. Curiouser.

Reply to
neverwas

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