Is it worth installing dimming in a new venue?

[lxkev]

Hello,

 

1000 seat theatre, receiving tours and producing.

 

Should we still be installing dimmers with true by pass... Or just distro.

 

When do people think we will really stop using incandescent lamps?

[J Pearce]

The 4 concert halls at work were installed with Chilli Bypass dimmers. The rigs are all ETC Lustr.

 

A few channels have been used as dimmers over the past 4 years, but I think we’d have been better with distro boards/contactors instead of dimmers then a small pile of single channel dimmers on hookclamps that could be deployed when needed.

 

Some way of remotely turning the rig power off would be good, which isn’t possible with the Chilli Bypass units.

 

The ideal answer for you is probably one of the modular systems with a load of contactor modules and a smaller pile of dimmer modules.

[Edward- Z88]

Hi Kev and Jon,

 

As Jon says, the bypass switches on Chilli cannot be remotely activated, however it may be worth taking a look at RigSwitch for this application...

Zero 88 RigSwitch

 

If you have any questions let me know.

Edward

Edited March 4, 2021 by Edward- Z88

[J Pearce]

They look great Edward - what we should have had, alongside a small pile of single channel dimmers. Oh well, what is done is done...

[ianknight]

Hello,

 

1000 seat theatre, receiving tours and producing.

 

Should we still be installing dimmers with true by pass... Or just distro.

 

When do people think we will really stop using incandescent lamps?

 

Yes - in an ideal world we'd stop using incandescent lamps next year, drive electric tour busses & wagons and give everyone a pink unicorn for home use however, as you probably know when you look in your venue - you have 100's of conventionally lamped fixtures still in perfect working order with likely a few dozen spare lamps still to use.

 

Now... You're bidding to replace some dimmers which will raise eyebrows anyway but if you consider that an LED fixture of any note will likely cost circa £600 (perhaps more) and you own 60 that you use regularly... That's around £30,000 plus rewiring your venue for hard power - buying 72 channels of dimming will be around £7000 plus some change. (Multiply that against every venue from church hall, school theatre, little theatre to large theatre in the UK alone!)

 

If you were building a new venue from scratch then yes - LED should be in your planning (as indeed I did back in 2018 and will be doing for a new venue later this year) but converting a "conventional" venue isn't yet financially viable without government grants - something that the politicians haven't yet realised but then they're pre-occupied with vaccines, passports & making everyone drive an electric car (no one's told them yet that one charge of an electric cars uses roughly the same electricity as a house uses in one day - that's a lot more wind farms off the Norfolk coast & wiring infrastructure to support them!).

 

Yes - it would be worthwhile planning to use some LED fixtures and include the means to use them (Chilli bypass can work well for that especially if you think of distributed dimming around the venue - that can reduce cabling costs alone) and to present a roadmap to your venue for gradual replacement but I don't think a miracle will happen in the next 2 years & conventionals will "disappear" - this conversation has been happening for 10 years at least (and I left CTS back in 2017 just as 'save tungsten' was happening) - there's simply not the financial means after the last 12 months to do it, the ball has been kicked down the road at least 3 years.

[adam2]

I would be inclined to install SOME dimmers, but much fewer than in the past. Perhaps six dimmers in a village hall, a dozen in a medium size theatre and a few dozen in a large venue. It seems reasonable to plan for a LARGELY LED future, but with provision for limited use of halogen fixtures if a future production or director wants this.

Incandescent lighting is going the way of gas lights and oil lamps, but is not yet completly dead so it seems reasonable to make limited provision for use of halogen fixtures. Consider also, not just "proper" incandescent theatre lanterns but any possible future need for dimming of other incandescent lamps. Incandescent fairy lights, industrial work lights, d0m3stic fixtures with GLS lamps, incandescent festoons and similar lights are reasonably foreseeable future requirements for certain productions. LED alternatives DO EXIST for most of the above, but dont allways dim reliably or well, and incandescent might be used.

 

Good quality LED theatre lanterns that dim well are available from many suppliers, and are likely to meet the great majority of future stage lighting needs, but limited provision for incandescent seems prudent.

 

Also the venue might be used in the future for some form of education or training, and being able to demonstrate "how it used to be done" might be useful.

 

The more obscure types of incandescent bulb will are already hard to find, and production has probably ceased. I expect that the more common types will be available for decades yet.

[gareth]

If you were only producing your own work using in-house kit and presenting 'one-nighter' type tours which travel with no LX equipment and rely on picking up lighting rigs in-house, then I think you may well have a case for a dimmer-free venue.

 

However, if by 'receiving tours' you mean presenting commercial theatre productions, on whatever scale, then I think leaving dimmers off the spec would be a big mistake. Even the smallest touring theatrical productions will probably be carrying a handful of pracs, etc. which need dimmed feeds - and as you move up into the realm of mid-scale commercial tours it's even more likely that they'll be carrying some LX equipment with them as part of the rig which will need a dimmer to plug into (quite possibly an entire overhead rig which might need two or three dozen dimmer channels). As a touring production electrician, I'd be quite unsettled by the idea of a receiving house having no conventional dimming at all - it would almost certainly mean that either I'd have to sacrifice some of my budget and some of my truck space, both of which are at a premium, to some touring dimmers which would only get used at a couple of venues ; or I'd have to ask you to rent some in for me, which would mean extra thing to deal with on what'll probably already be a fairly tight one-day fit-up along with a contra charge to pay for them.

Edited March 4, 2021 by gareth

[Stuart91]

As Jon says, the bypass switches on Chilli cannot be remotely activated, however it may be worth taking a look at RigSwitch for this application...

Zero 88 RigSwitch

 

If you have any questions let me know.

 

Edward - what are the "Traffic Light RCBOs" that are mentioned as an option? I haven't come across the term before, and Google isn't turning anything up for me.

[sleah]

I'd agree with most of what's been said.

We've just built a brand new school and I've had chilli bypass dimmers put in the two larger main performance spaces. There's two other spaces that will have some performances (but not serious theatre) where I've just had hard power.

We have quite a few decent LED fixtures, but the majority of our inventory is conventionals that will be used for serious drama and theatre. Over time we'll be changing them for LED, but as mentioned above it's a large investment.

 

If you are building an inventory from scratch and have the budget to go all LED and you won't have external users bringing kit in then maybe go hard power only, otherwise get Chilli bypass or similar. Either that or a shed load of small dimmers that can be hung alongside conventionals...

Edited March 4, 2021 by sleah

[mac.calder]

Without knowing your stock... I would probably install straight power distribution in a new build - my company has done a number of school builds - our standard for that now is patchable power distribution - with a couple of spare 3 phase outlets beside the power distribution. Want to bring in dimmers - go for it. These schools tend to request far fewer circuits than I would put in a standard theatre though... so this makes sense.

 

A receiving house, I would probably go for a mix. I would wire the venue with 50% patchable power with either sinewave dimming or a switchable dimmer/distro combo, alternating the dimmable sockets on bars with the other 50% being hard wired hot power to the db board. Remote actuated contactor across the whole supply so that you can turn off the grid from the bio box and side of stage.

 

Or I would just provide hot power and some nice chunky 3ph supplies all over the place - like up in the grid or on the fly floor and sides of stage as well as each a few on each FOH bridge... And maybe keep 1 or 2 12ch portable dimmers in stock.

 

By not having to put in either an acre of dimmers or patchable power and also make facility for a dimmer room or similar in a venue with a couple of hundred points, hard wired hot power can really save some significant coin - and have very few downsides. Even if you had an existing stock of 60 or so incandescent fixtures, it would be cheaper to throw them in the bin and buy new LED fixtures over putting in a propper dimming system for a moderate to large receiving house of 300-600 physical points. And I mean decent replacements like Lustr 2's.

 

Maybe my experience is slightly different to some others hear, I tech managed as 2300 seat receiving house in Australia for a short while - it was fairly rare for a show to bring in fixtures that needed our dimming (sometimes we would augment our stock and hire in at their request fixtures that would go on our dimmers, but we were hiring in to match our rig, so would have just matched with LED's if we were a LED house). Typically a show that toured with a full rig would be touring with dimmers - or more commonly a fully cabled dimmer/distro rack, pre wired with soccapex or weiland ends to live side of stage.

Edited March 4, 2021 by mac.calder

[sandall]

Good quality LED theatre lanterns that dim well are available from many suppliers

(Slightly off-topic) True, but not at the price of the 2nd-hand Minuettes or Preludes that are all that a lot of small venues can afford.

 

Also, unless you buy Lustrs are your beams all going to be the same colour in a year or two's time?

Edited March 4, 2021 by sandall

[gareth]

are your beams all going to be the same colour in a year or two's time?

 

From someone who used to be the custodian of a large fleet of Strand SLs, I can assure you that this problem is in no way unique to LED fixtures

[J Pearce]

Yep. Many of us have dealt with discharge lamps shifting as they age too, and carbon arcs colour shifted as they burnt, and gas mantles change as they age - its a problem as old as artificial light.

[TomHoward]

Is the Traffic light RCBO to do with showing what caused the trip? One of my bugbears is the old separate RCD & MCB distro would let you know if you were dealing with an overcurrent or earth leakage problem, whereas an RCBO trip can be harder to track down in a muddy catering tent if you didn't see it trip.

 

Is an neutral disconnect MCB in the Rigswitch a two-pole MCB or does that mean a single-pole MCB fitted on the neutral side? Is the relay switching then on the phase side?

[Stuart91]

Is the Traffic light RCBO to do with showing what caused the trip? One of my bugbears is the old separate RCD & MCB distro would let you know if you were dealing with an overcurrent or earth leakage problem, whereas an RCBO trip can be harder to track down

 

That's what I was hoping. I've had similar concerns, indeed I tend to make up distros with separate RCD and MCB per outlet when I can. It's a bit of extra space for the switchgear but I think it's worth it.