House Lights Dimmers

[J Pearce]

Fit flourescents for normal and emergency and fit some cheap tungsten or halogen units for theatrical house lights. Ten times simpler and quite probably a lot cheaper too.

 

I've seen par16 and par38 downlightera work well as houselights, and uplighters work well with a white ceiling.

[Smiffy]

Energy Efficient generally = Fluorescent in my experience. Again, they don't dim nicely.

 

LED might be worth a punt in this instance. Try GE and Phillips to start with. I'm fairly certain that one of the two will have a white light LED system that is dimmable (whether that's with DMX or their own protocols / old fashioned dimmer switch etc, I wouldn't know).

 

 

Cheers

 

Smiffy

[Jamtastic3]

I'm going to add my bit and say that fluorescents are best used as workers if anything. They don't completely dim and do have a harsh colour temperature to them. I've installed dimmable fluories and the snap between off and the first step of dimming is quite noticeable.

 

You would probably be best setting up some sort of conventional wall uplighters - parcans for example or even RGB fixtures?

For seating and walkway areas your best using floodlights or short nose par 56's in rows.

[Jivemaster]

Your energy efficiency requirements will be met by installed fluorescent lamps, and it seems that you have your emergency lighting needs met by suitable fittings too.

 

However fluorescent lamps don't dim well whatever the dimmer, and the emergency lighting controller may take a dislike to phase angle dimming, withthe risk of destroying the emergency lighting system that the venue's licence requires. For dimmable house lights you need some lamps that dim properly. This can be implemented in tungsten, halogen, or perhaps LED. You need to find the fittings and get them installed alongside the fluorescent lamps.

 

PS IME CFLs strobe and die in minutes if dimmed by a conventional phase angle dimmer.

 

You also need a way of ensuring that the fluorescent lamps are OFF at times when you will need the dimmable house lights

[Dodgecaliber]

To put an end to this one,

 

Avoid flo's. They dim badly and don't look pretty as house lights. The other type of bulb you linked is no better than a flo.

 

What you should either do is go down the route of LED's which are expensive in this role or, in reality:

 

If you only need a couple of channels, get yourself a small, basic dimmer with a switch wired outside of the locked room. You can easily get one of the yellow/red switches that can be padlocked on/off.

 

Either stick up a few parcans or suitable looking wall lights with incan bulbs and your done! In honesty, a few pics of the venue wouldn't hurt as we could perhaps give out better suggestions.

 

The sparky may not understand what exactly you want if he is not from a theatre background, but dependant on your venue style, I would suggest a cheap analogue dimmer with a handheld controller (Thinking of the old grey ETC ones) and either parcans/fresnels or suitable looking bog standard wall lights and fit them with dimmable LED bulbs or incand bulbs.

 

Again - Where are you?

[adam2]

Flourescent lamps can be dimmed, but as others post do not give satisfaction especialy at the lower end of the dimming curve.

 

To dim flourescent lamps, special dimmable ballasts are required, any good wholesaler can supply these, but they can be expensive.

Most types use a special controller, not a standard triac dimmer as used for theatre lanterns or d0m3stic lighting.

Some use a DMX signal (direct to the ballast) others use a 0/10 volt DC signal.

 

Dimmable CFLs exist, and work from a standard dimmer, but like the others, fail to give satisfaction at low levels.

[dwright2104]

Central scotland,

 

Its a hall that is used for parties mostly, with the odd theatre type performance every now and then, and plenty charity shows put on.

We really dont want two seperate systems, as it will mostly be used by people that dont know anything about lighting. The idea that sounds perfect to us is standard halogen downlighters, with led bulbs instead.

and perhaps some cheap led par cans mounted into the celing at the walls for some colour.

[Dodgecaliber]

I think the OP has got it in one. I've PM'd them directly to offer a bit more help, but in this situation it appears that a basic dimmer and some domestic style lamps working together should do the job.

 

Prancing Padlock?

[timsabre]

Central scotland,

 

Its a hall that is used for parties mostly, with the odd theatre type performance every now and then, and plenty charity shows put on.

We really dont want two seperate systems, as it will mostly be used by people that dont know anything about lighting. The idea that sounds perfect to us is standard halogen downlighters, with led bulbs instead.

and perhaps some cheap led par cans mounted into the celing at the walls for some colour.

 

Stay away from LED GU10's. The light output is pathetic compared to a halogen GU10. Also they are not dimmable if you were thinking of doing that.

I would stay away from halogen GU10's as well because the lifetime of the lamp is horribly short.

 

If you want this type of fitting, halogen MR16 with a dimmable transformer will be much more reliable.

[stillwave]

I can speak from personal experience with those LED GU10 Lamps, you get as much light output as one of the poundshop style LED torches, very dull, perfect for hallways at home when you need the toilet in the middle of the night! & they are not dimmable

[Jamtastic3]

Word of advice....

 

If you're going down the halogen downlighter route, get the 12v type (with trannie).

240v GU10's are known for not being as reliable and long lasting compare to the 12v version.

[adam2]

Agree, the cheap LED GU10 lamps give little light, cant be dimmed, and dont last anything like as long as claimed.

 

I can recomend a supplier of very good LED GU10s, but they are expensive, and still cant be dimmed, though at least they give a good light.

 

The same supplier also offer good 12 MR16 LED lamps, but again not dimmable with a standard transformer and dimmer, and still expensive. They CAN be dimmed, but only with a variable DC supply, which is probably an undesireable complication.

 

The options would therefore appear to be either flourescent working lights with simple on/off switching, together with dimmable incandescent houselights.

 

Or dimmable CFLs on a standard dimmer, these work to an extent but are poor at the bottom of the dimming curve.

[stillwave]

there was a supplier at PLASA Leeds this year showcasing dimmable Phillips MasterLED range. good dimming curve (controlled from a d0me$tic rotary dimmer) & very comparable to the 50W they had side by side, although in my opinion they were demonstrated incorrectly being surface mounted pointing up directly into your eyes, when they will not be used in such a manner? (who has GU10's as a replacement for molefays!) downside - they are expensive £25 each about the cheapest I could find them for!

 

as other have already said go for non dimmed floro's for general use & tungsten for theatrical use whether it be uplighters or 12V halogens or theatrical lanterns, but don't use dimmable floros for theatre even as an am dram venue! also it might be teaching your local spark to suck eggs (sorry if it is :** laughs out loud **: ) but if he was suggesting dimming secondary lighting (as well as what other have said regards the floro's driver not liking the output of the dimmers) the secondary lights will need a non dimmed permanent supply to them as well for charging the backup battery (assuming they are local battery fittings as opposed to central battery systems)

 

A local Am dram theatre uses a combination of small discharge lighting fixtures for cleaning & non-theatrical use & tungsten uplighters with some fresnels which can be switched to either ON-OFF on a standard light switch wall plate or through a 2 channel dimmer that has integrated faders (a Showtec one I think, with the possibility to DMX control also). a very flexible system that allows them to be low energy & simple to full blown DMX desk control of houselights at the flick of a switch! sounds abit complicated but is extremely simple in operation for non-technical minded people.

 

don't go with dimming floros though whatever you decide.

 

 

Regards,

 

Ben Wainwright

[musht]

Dimmable fluro as your spark describes t,hem sound like dimming ballasts, which as Adam2 said might take 0-10V or similar, they don`t plug into a dimmer. Dimming ballasts at real money are not cheap and nothing goes below 10% well. Gentle fade with a plunge to black.

 

Fluro cheapest way of getting general `cleaners` coverage, if its a modular ceiling , drop in cells and a multiway switch on the wall for how bright user needs it, people understand switches.

 

Dimmed 15A in ceiling sounds great idea, may have other room users who don`t want permanently rigged lanterns off ceiling, just make sure have an accesible rigging points near the 15A sockets.

 

LED, perhaps get you spark to pull some Cat5 up the 15A sockets so you can have DMX in ceiling and repatch some of the 15A to hard power for LED cans for a bit of colour.

 

Enough white light in LED entirely possible but very expensive, forget retrofit GU10s.

 

Cable is cheap, even if you dont terminate it now , pull it and label it in an indellible understandable way can always stick the connectors on it when funds allow, and pull Cat5 everywhere.

[Tomo]

As someone who commissions quite a few installs:

 

Rule One

House Lights are Tungsten Halogen.

 

There are exceptions, but they take a lot of very careful planning and aren't cheap.

 

- Current 'affordable' LED is best for feature and surface lighting - it'll make a nice-looking chandelier, excellent stair edging, good emergency exit lighting and similar.

It will not illuminate the space unless used in very large numbers - thus no longer cheap.

 

- I've seen one venue that went with loads of the cheap RGB LED pars. That worked well - but it was a small venue with a low auditorium ceiling, and they had a lot of the LED pars.

They also wanted the narrow-band emitter look as the red emitter really 'popped' the seating colour out.

 

At the moment, white LED doesn't have a very nice colour - most are blue/yellow.

- However, some expensive and very bright multi-phosphor stuff is starting to come out. Even those don't dim as nicely as tungsten, because tungsten gets 'warmer' at lower intensity, while LED stays the same colour temperature.

 

Rule Two

DSI and DALI is not for House Lights.

- That's for office space style control. (With a few fittings on a single DALI run you'll see steppy fades. Horrible, takes a lot of messing about to get it looking almost as good as 0-10v.)

 

Rule Three

White worklight, cleaning light and similar 'general use' light should be fluorescent or HID.

- Blue worklight is a great place for LED. This is supposed to be dim and unobtrusive, so the low output of the affordable fittings is a good thing. (Had to actually dim down some of the LED blues at a recent install as they were too bright!)

 

Which to choose out of Fluorescent or HID depends on the style of usage of the space.

 

If it's long usage, "turn on, leave on for hours, turn off when everyone goes home", then HID (specifically CDM at the moment) is great - 10,000 hour lamp life, very high efficiency, very nice light quality (once hot).

(The strike of a CDM is interesting - almost instant pale pink or green fading to the final white over a few minutes.)

 

If it's shorter usage with public lightswitches, then fluorescent. Long-tube is by far the best - CFLs are less efficient and don't last as long.

 

Finally:

Whatever you decide on using, try a sample in a dark room first to check that it's really what you want.

 

You're going to be stuck with them for many years, so it's worth taking the time to ensure you get the right ones.