300 watt incandescent house light problem

[Vaporlock]

Hi Folks,

The house lights in our studio theatre space were 300 watt incandescents when I took my job here. They were constantly burning out, every week it seemed that another 3 would go down. Due to the unique way our school's funding is set up, I'd have to put in a work order for maintenance to come and replace them because they were classified as general lighting, and came out of the physical plant's budget. As an alternative, I found a warm temperature 300w CFL equivalent at Lowes that put out over 3000 lumens. They worked great, until we realized that they weren't compatible with the dimmer system they were on. At full off, they sporadically flicker unless you trip the breaker, and they can't handle being on the system at all (even if you don't dim them) and their lives are a month long instead of week long. A step in the right direction, but not an answer. Maintenance won't bypass the dimmers, because that also comes out of their budget. As a result, I've got a perpetually (and literally) Black Box. Does anybody know of a readily available lamp that fits into a standard medium base socket, has a warm color temp (gymnasium, or "daylight" color temp is effin' brutal), puts out at least 3000 lumens, that's dimmable?
It can be CFL, LED, or incandescent (so long as it's durable) or any other technology, I don't care.. I just want to see the black floor I'm walking on in the black room I'm walking through.. I need about 25 of them

Thanks in advance,

Matt

 

[sk8rsdad]

There is no good reason for a 300W incandescent to have a short life unless it is either a bad lot, or a victim of bad power like over-voltaging.
I would suggest a 130V 300W incandescent lamp and adjusting your dimmers so they are limited to 110V max output.

My facility has a set of 500W/130V incandescent lamps in our houselights that have been going strong for 17 years so far.

 

[BillConnerFASTC]

I agree that there is no reason for the unusually short life., Check voltage with a good meter at the socket with dimmer set to full on a typically loaded circuit.

How badly do you need 3000 lumens, for house lights? Or does this do double duty as a classroom and require illumination for detailed reading and test taking?

I recently posted that I had not found an LED replacement lamp that dimmed well at all on mains dimming but say a LED dimmable PAR 38 at USITT - TCP Pro - and it was much better at the low end than anything else by a wide margin. Looks like max is around 1200 lumens varying a little with color temp. Yo0u might try one. Around $40-50 as I recall. I saw than at the ill-fated Mainstage-Vincent-PA booth.

 

[Vaporlock]

Yes, I also suspect too much voltage/spikes or surges, but didn't know it to be a fact, so I didn't want to prompt you guys in that direction by saying so.. As for the reason why we need 3000 lumen, I should have been more specific in mentioning that these also function as the work lights in this particular studio space. With flat black walls, ceiling, and floors and no windows, that's a lot to overcome. Also, its worth noting that when I say "on a dimmer" I don't mean patched into the board so much as on a six toggle slider switch on the wall in the corner separate from any control in the booth.

 

[gafftapegreenia]

If you can keep the lamps at 90%, or 80%, they last a lot longer.

 

[FMEng]

If all of the incandescent lamps were installed at the same time, they will fail with a bell curve distribution. Most of them will fail within hours of each other. For this reason, mass failures are pretty common in relatively new buildings.

In some commercial settings, they relamp everything at once, and then wait for the onslaught to happen, and then totally relamp everything again. It saves labor, and little lamp life is wasted.

 

[techieman33]

If all of the incandescent lamps were installed at the same time, they will fail with a bell curve distribution. Most of them will fail within hours of each other. For this reason, mass failures are pretty common in relatively new buildings.

In some commercial settings, they relamp everything at once, and then wait for the onslaught to happen, and then totally relamp everything again. It saves labor, and little lamp life is wasted.

We change our fluorescent tubes in groups, once one is gone the others have usually lost enough output to warrant replacement. The incandescent lamps are done on an as needed basis though.

 

[muslighting]

what is your incandescents input? maybe dimmable led tube light is better for you/

 

[tjrobb]

Remember also that depending on the fixture a good amount of those 3000 lumens may be lost inside the unit. A PAR lamp with fewer lumens may still work. Case in point: church I helped out replaced many 300W lamps overhead with 90W PAR's (fixtures had glass reflectors, not refractors, c1940's) and doubled the light level. Again, though, your mileage may vary.