Unison dimmers that dim despite being config'd not to

First thought to come to mind was - Why are stair lights connected to a dimming system ?.

I would think that the stairs are a path of egress in an emergency ?, and as such, the fluorescents would want to be always ON ?, as well as connected to an emergency power source - local battery/generator system ?.  

Can I assume the stairs are visible to audience members during a show and that leaving the lights on is intrusive to a performance ?.  FWIW, we deal with this with doors that have panic bars as well as curtains across the entry way.

 I would certainly suck the configuration file out of Unison and send ot off the ETC for a look at.  Easy to do as the processor has a 3.5 floppy drive on the side.

Steve Bailey

Brooklyn College

The lights are in stair halls on either side of the audience, but outside the room (doors and walls between the stairs and the house seats).  These are not the step lights in the seating area.  Truthfully they have no reason to be part of the Unison system at all but they are.

This is not an emergency egress problem.  There are 4 doors that lead into the seating area, each with a direct outside exit across the stair hall from the seating area.  The stairs need not be used in the event of an emergency, in fact they have automatic doors to close off the stairs if the fire alarm goes off.  These stairs serve two purposes.  They lead from FOH to back stage, and allow a second path for patrons seated in the forward rows to get to and from their seats.  The entire Unison system has emergency power backup. This may be why the stair hall lights are tied into the Unison, but again, they don't need to be.  We have other lights in the building on emergency backup power that aren't connected to the Unison system.

It's also worth mentioning that the lower lighting level does technically meet code requirements.  I have metered the light at the stair treads.  The problem is that the code is still quite dim, especially when entering the theatre on a sunny day.  This is also why we've let this problem go on for so long.

....Ron

The lights are in stair halls on either side of the audience, but outside the room (doors and walls between the stairs and the house seats).  These are not the step lights in the seating area.  Truthfully they have no reason to be part of the Unison system at all but they are.

This is not an emergency egress problem.  There are 4 doors that lead into the seating area, each with a direct outside exit across the stair hall from the seating area.  The stairs need not be used in the event of an emergency, in fact they have automatic doors to close off the stairs if the fire alarm goes off.  These stairs serve two purposes.  They lead from FOH to back stage, and allow a second path for patrons seated in the forward rows to get to and from their seats.  The entire Unison system has emergency power backup. This may be why the stair hall lights are tied into the Unison, but again, they don't need to be.  We have other lights in the building on emergency backup power that aren't connected to the Unison system.

It's also worth mentioning that the lower lighting level does technically meet code requirements.  I have metered the light at the stair treads.  The problem is that the code is still quite dim, especially when entering the theatre on a sunny day.  This is also why we've let this problem go on for so long.

....Ron