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    Ricky Newkirk
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Replacing House lights

I am in the process of trying to find a good replacement for some of my house lights. Right now they are 12 regular PAR 64 par cans, a row of 5, a row of 4 then a row of 3 . My problems are many because there is no ceiling over my lower orchestra seating, everything is hung from the roof (aprox. 55') except for 4 that are hung from my 2nd catwalk. The only way to change the lamps is to rent an $800 per day pew lift. Needless to say I need something more efficient then 500w par cans. LEDs won't work because we can't afford to run data lines to each lamp, we would have to scaffold the whole area. (that is how everything was installed) and it is a High School building so my budget is not huge! I am looking at replacing with SF pars and increasing wattage from 500 to 750. I also want to try an maintain the asethic look of the hall when this is done. Does anyone have a better suggestion or idea? Our building is only 9 years old and I would love to get my hands on the electrical engineer or architect that left this mess for me! Any help will be greatly appreciated!

Ricky Newkirk

Bartlesville High School Fine Arts Center

 

  • It seems to me you have 2 basic options: increase lamp life or reduce lamp replacement cost. It's not quite that simple though since increasing lamp life with an incandescent source means reducing luminous efficiency which means you're going to pay more in electricity costs to operate.

    The easiest way to increase lamp life is to reduce the voltage feeding the fixture. My facility uses 12 500W 130V E39 mogul base lamps with the dimmers set to deliver 110V max, but usually operated at around 60% of that. They've been in use since 1996 without any need to replace yet.

    Reducing lamp replacement cost would mean either installing fixtures (and cable management) that can be lowered somehow, or placing all your fixtures in accessible locations like off of your catwalks. Either option is going to require a capital investment and likely the services of an electrician to install, since temporary wiring is frowned upon for permanent installations.

    Going LED might be a viable option if you analyze the total cost of ownership. There may be other considerations for an LED solution like emergency bypass behavior. It might be possible to install new fixtures and data without having to erect scaffolding everywhere, but it depends on your facility. In my place we could drive in a boom lift. There are also high riggers that specialize in the work, but they may be hard to find.

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