First Annual Table Tennis Tournament

Tec Inc. had it’s first family movie night and table tennis tournament on Saturday, April 9th.  Tec employee Brandon Sargent organized and played host for the event, held in the new lunchroom and table tennis court.  The movie chosen was the family friendly, but adult entertaining Shrek.  While Shrek played in the lunchroom, next door in the table tennis court the action was intense.  Ultimately, Brandon, the resident table tennis pro won the tournament. Based on the pictures, a fun time was had by all who attended.

  

Streetlight Study

The Lighting Research Center’s National Lighting Product Information Program has just published a Specifier Report on commercially available Steetlights used for collector roads. The results are pretty interesting considering all the LED hoopla we all have been subjected to in the industry over the past few years. Below is a take-off on the Abstract . . .
The organization purchased 14 streetlights (identified by a survey of Specifiers during 2009). Four of the streetlights were high pressure sodium (HPS), one was induction, one was pulse start metal halide (PSMH) and eight were LED. Using IES Recommended Practice guidelines in RP-8-00, the poles were laid out to meet required footcandle and contrast levels.

On average, the LED streetlights and the Induction streetlight could be spaced only about half the distance of the HPS and PSMH streetlights and still meet the IES RP-8-00 criteria. Meaning, a one to one replacement (as often suggested by manufacturers) may end up below acceptable light levels.

The Life Cycle cost is dominated by the initial product cost rather than the potential energy savings or maintenance cost and the other “more efficient” sources only offered 1% to 10% less power consumption per mile illuminated.

For further info, please check out the link below to the published document

http://www.lrc.rpi.edu/programs/NLPIP/PDF/VIEW/SRStreetlights.pdf

The New Obsolete

Technology is evolving so quickly these days and it seems what was “new” yesterday is old news today. We recently had a situation where a product specified less than 10 years ago became obsolete. A lamp used in a Fiberstars fiber optic illuminator was no longer available or supported by the manufacturer. The First Convenent Church of Willoughby Hills was desperate to come up with an affordable solution to keep the cross illuminated at night with the loss of the original lighting system.

 

Tec would like to thank Gene Scheilcher of Fiberstars for stepping up and finding a solution. While the lamp was no longer available, Gene had urged us to consider an LED option. Based on the cut sheets submitted, we were concerned with lumen output matching the previous system and asked for support on a mock-up. Following the mock-up, Gene went step further and provided the church with the replacement illuminator from Fiberstars.

Gene, thank you for your generous donation.

Photo Shoot at Miami University Farmer School of Business

I recently headed to Oxford, Ohio (near Dayton) for a photo shoot of a lighting design project at Miami University. An architectural lighting shoot is always a challenge. To those who haven’t had the opportunity to participate, it typically happens after hours (so we don’t end up with a lot of daylight filling the space). This means, the Owner is gracious enough to hand us the keys to the building and allow us to poke around in there after normal hours (just us and the cleaning crew).  We met  the day prior to the shoot to walk the space and come up with a gameplan. We also had to override the astronomical time clock on the lighting control system.

Checking the specific time of day for sunset, next we coordinated the “magic hour”.  It  happens for only about 45 minutes right before and during sunset. We get a great navy blue sky with no fill light coming in the windows striking a perfect balance with the indoor and outdoor environment. This project just so happened to be full of windows where we could take advantage of the daylight harvesting. It meant we had to pick the most significant spaces to catch that perfect light.

The photographer showed up with two sets of cameras to set up and allow us to move quickly between the two rooms with the most windows.  We shot eight different spaces in total and the shoot lasted almost 5 hours. We left the building around midnight.  You’d think that was a pretty long time for 8 photographs, but our photographer, Scott Pease (www.peasephotography.com) was very detailed and intent in getting us the best shots possible. As the human eye is so much more sophisticated than a camera lens, we are able to easily discern details on lighting fixtures, whereas the camera often turns them into blobs of light. Scott brought his laptop and checked every exposure before the final bracketing shots to make sure we would get the details and contrast we needed.

Along with getting sneak peeks of the final images, I spent the rest of the evening with Scott’s assistant straightening tables, and lampshades, pushing chairs in, and moving trash cans out of the shot. After all pictures are taken, we restore the space and then the same scenario happens in the next space. It’s a lot of “hurry up and wait”, but the final images look fantastic.

Thanks again Scott!

Laws, Standards & Codes OH MY!

I will be presenting at the next Illuminating Engineering Society program in Cleveland held on February 17, 2010 at 11:45 at Hilton Garden Inn Downtown Cleveland.

The presentation is Laws, Standards and Codes OH MY! These are current code topics that everyone in the lighting industry should be aware of when creating, supporting or supplying for a lighting design. For more information on the program, see the February Lumen Press.