hijacking a thread - question for Ship

len

Well-Known Member
Ship wrote in another thread:

"Stage lighting fixtures are specifically not rated for home owner usage at home. Given that, I can count four 3.5Q5, Two 3" Fresnel, Six Pinspot and two 10" scoop in use at my house at the moment. Than again, I'm the guy that wired the fixtures and has studied into the heat related issues of why you don't use stage fixtures at home. Much less moving lights that will seriously piss off the FAA and FCC. Think about phase harmonics and aircraft landing lights."

So are you offering tours?
 
Lasers area touchy subject right now in the USA. Watching the news, there have been a bunch of incidents across the US where lasers have been aimed into the cockpits of Airliners flying overhead. I dont think it would be a good idea to be caught ouside with a semi-powerful laser at night, at least till the weirdos who are trying to blind pilots have given up. (stuipd, people, make the govermentent officials get annoyed and that annoys the rest of us!)
 
I got a chuckle of one of our electrics the other day "Not for home use" REally I wanted to install this 40 foot piece of pipe in my tv room so I could get some rocking lighting on the book self as track lighting ant doing it for me anymore. duh
 
just wondering, why would anyone like the government care if i had a few intels sitting around? not that i do, but i wouldn't mind some cheap scanners in my room or bathroom. and i use par 38's all the time at my house indoors for things. i know htose aren't specifically for the stage, but still....
 
JahJahwarrior said:
i wouldn't mind some cheap scanners in my room or bathroom.

Your rubber duck isn't enough fun in the bathroom any more 8O
 
Sorry - double post which I cannot delete only edit.
 
OK, I really didn't want this to turn into a "what fixtures I have or would like to installin my house thread" but whatever.

As long as it's being discussed, I believe the reason the "not for household use" label is on there is that most homes have paint, carpet, furniture, etc. that is not flame retardant. And by noting that pro lights are not designed for home use the mfg. are trying to limit their liability should someone use them in the house and cause a fire. No actual proof, but it's a theory.
 
that makes sense, also stage fixtures are reallly hot which could burn your skin if you are sitting under a 1000w lamp for a few hours, and while it is hot on stage way above you in the flyspace, the height of my kitchen is say 9 feet, i have a 2.5 foot long lieko above my head and im 5' 10" that leaves less than a foot between the top of my head and a lieko, and my dad would hit his head on it... ouch
 
It is mostly, as with everything else, to prevent a lawsuit. Its like how McDonalds now needs to warn us that our coffee is hot because they got sued when someone spilled hot coffee on themselves. Clearly, ordering coffee was not enough of a warning that it would be hot.....

The world is run by lawyers. And it sucks. (no offense to anyones family members who may be lawyers, my entire family are lawyers.... :-(
 
Wondering if I should stay out of this post or not.

FAA with lights in general. You know I also own this 3,000w incandescent Kliegl Dynabeam Follow Spot that I when I was TD of some small store front theater, I was just dying to install it on the roof. We checked into doing this and you needed a special permit for doing such because it than became classified as a search light in disrupting the air space - especially if near an airport.

FCC with moving lights - plus the above with the FAA. Moving lights introduce some phase harmonics problems that will at times disrupt a TV or radio signal on a system that's one neighbor to another off the same transformer. Your neighbors might complain at the point they can't watch Queer Eye for the Straight guy, because your moving light is cycling thru gobos. This would include a stage grade dimmer in doing so.

Had some idiots from the shop throw a party. We get to occasionally take home our equipment. They placed them on an apartment balcony. Later they got a visit by the police not because other neighbors had a problem but because the FAA reported a wee bit of a strobing action or something on the ground in their route.

The lights I have in my apartment are stage lights in addition to the various track lights and other fixtures. For the next few months before I buy my first house, I have free standing boom and drape surrounding my living room walls. Hung from it are some Lekos on side arms so as to project a folliage pattern to the ceiling in addition to red rope light as a opposing color that lights the rear of the pole and drape in creating an artistic cove effect at the edges of the ceiling.

These fixtures - in this case Altman 3.5Q5 fixtures are lamped with HX-401 or in other words, 400w lamps that are pre-set at about 30% on the dimmer. You really can put your hands on the lamp cap, much less the duvytine drapes are flame treated as of only a few years ago that they are nearest. Such lights hang about three or four feet from the ceiling in projecting up at it.

The 8-channel dimmer pack itself that I'm using will disrupt the phase harmonics of the building some however. It's yet given the loading of a few fixtures of various type to have an effect sufficient to notice. I did study and place it's circuiting well for where to power it up from.

Such a system is approved by the building management given it's controlled and very much self contained - I asked before doing so. The fixtures yes, they are not listed for insurance reasons due to the heat and other factors above. Thing is that I own and as some form of expert have the liability for what I have installed.

Going back to an earlier post, I in the bedroom also have those 75w black light blue lamps in some Altman 10" scoops. As said, they don't do much. The effect desired was to pick up some of the 19 layers of paint and glaze on the bedroom furnature
in showing it for a different color as opposed to the colors that pop in the morning verses those at night.

This beyond the two 4x12 soft flats with a cloud like pattern to them hung from the ceiling. Below the clouds is navy blue scrim draped down from it, and Christmas net lights above it and on a household dimmer so at night I get a starry sky from the lights shining thru effect as opposed to the cloudy sky image from the ceiling. Such net lamps are at about 20% in just bairly showing thru the rear of the fabric. I have been raised on similar effects and in my home, this is the design I wanted.

For my kitchen area, I have a Unistrut grid hung 6" below the ceiling and also self suppored by the free standing book shelves. The grid helps to support the shelves. On it are some 3" Fresnels and various track light fixtures in having been converted to hang from the strut and transformered and dimmed elsewhere. Looks kind of strange but lights the specific working areas wall and is a statement of me having too much free time and too many lights for my own good.

Finally the pinspots. They are on the living room pole and drape and hung above the front door on a 3' C-Clamp mounted Unistrut track that has electrical boxes attached to it also. They focus on an owl mask that covers the eyelet centered on the door. Makes the mask by way of lighting at about 10% have a sort of low glow to it. This in balancing the opposing side of the room with the TV, much less it's center with a Shakespeare lithograph that's also lit by way of in this case MR-16 and Fresnel with barn doors.

Important intent thus is this is designed for effect not just having them as there are many more fixtures in a basement storage closet. Second they are certified by me as a ME for a major lighting production company to be safe to install here given supervison - imagine who that is. Third is I am sufficiently trained that in knowing the liability of using such things. Such fixtures installed are within the spirit of the code and normal way they would be installed in a studio theater - even if not listed for the location I'm using them for.

In other words, it's not hey cool, I have this stuff, I'm going to use it. It's not also some intent to be cool, it's just what I decided in making my own little world livable that I designed and certified was the best for this space. When I move in a few months, I have no idea of what design I will place on the new space. I miss the 12x12 painted drop that I had hung in my last apartment and will have to do another one. Given a large living room and bedroom where I currently live, that's just what I designed for here given I could not paint it much or perminantly install much. Much less I hate crap furnature but can't really afford good antiques thus short of a scene shop any longer, I can't yet make much of my own. In the bedroom for furnature I have a catwalk/shelving/storage/work table system running around half the room in a serious way meaning little ramps and platforms at ceiling level wide enough for a cat to have an adventure land. All also free standing so as not to piss off the owners of the building. Plus there is steam heat base board heaters all over the apartment so wall space short of legged units is at a premium.

Tours of my apartment? I don't even let most people from work see it much less anyone else. This is my private space, beyond any associations on line that are to be left on line in not being very interested in making them in person. Spoke at some point to Inkie, Dave and Mayhem on the phone now at some point. In just talking to people with far different accents to my own it was strange enough. No, only place to meet people is at a bar.
 
haha i get it, a CAT-walk lol
 
We'll try to respect you privacy and I'll try to stay away when I'm in Chicago area. But it sounds like you have done some impresive things in your space. Could you at least take some pictures? Good archtech. lighting makes all the difference. I'd like to see the front door, the kitchen grid, the living room, and the cloud shrine. Particularly the kitchen. Just curious how are you all controlling this? Do you type in a cue everytime you enter a room?

This stuff can you look really nice off the stage, particularly inkies (3" fersnel). I have a friend's father who happens to be a professor of lighting and ME for the University of Michigan and there office has a batch of inkies on desks and placed in various spots the on floor accenting the beautiful office (that is filled with vectorworks loaded Powerbooks and Imacs) with color.
 
Architectural lighting is an artform in itself and sadly not very exploited sometimes. LEDs are gaining a lot of acceptance here because they draw little power.
 
Architectural lighting both for homes and clubs if not offices is the newest market for the lighting production company marketing. If in school and if at all possible study into the architecture and interior design aspects of it in addition to the theater classes, if not take some of the GE lighting On-Line if not GE Institute school seminars. There are for instance some moving lights that are on the market and specifically designed for home installations. Along with the spatter paint technique job my parents paid big money to do in some of the rooms in their house that any low paid scenic painter could almost do in their sleep, the same is becoming true with lighting in needing theater people to get more design into the concept than a architect can do.

This study of architectural lighting will open up your possibilities especially as a designer to anywhere you go for work given they also are looking to persue that market more. Much less many architecture firms have descovered that while they can determine the steel for the building or light the parking lot, when it comes to real lighting design, they partner up with production companies to figure out what to do there.

Probably a good 1/3 of my lamp purchases are for clubs and buildings. Another 1/4 of my wiring skills is in wiring up architectural lights or repairing them say when a ballast does not work and the replacement ballast of a different type needs a whole new mounting platform manufactured for it.

Even doing some lamp quoting for I forget if it was the Sears Tower or John Handcock top of the building's lighting. This from a tech person working at a theater a few years ago that if a fixture blew it's lamp at the beginning of the season, there was a good chance it would not get a replacement for the rest of it.

Theater lighting in following the industry needs than modifies their gear to work for us. Those modifications and custom design use than is now going back to leading the industry again. Architectural lighting fixture companies like Hubble in following trends even came out with a line of moving lights to demonstrate this.

Speaking of LED's, that's also something I'm being pulled into unfortunately. Companies like Mule lighting and others making other than incandescent types of sources. Life was so simple for figuring out lamp types before such things came to market. Now we have LED fixtures shaped like large ice cubes you can put in a garden, all the way up to me having to figure out how to change a broken lens on a Color Blast - and having to have the lenses specially made for me. Every day there is something new. Kind of liked the days when there was LED wash lights on the market but they were not bright enough to be of much use. Now that's all changed and cyc lights are LED. Even had the first major tour go out of our shop that was lit only by LED lighting. Took a lot of work to make this happen because such fixtures were not designed for touring and truss. Even today I was re-engineering a power supply for a Color Blast due to the fact that it's a major crap electrical box that's impossible to mount a clamp much less safety cable to short of this. One of the above buildings is considering going LED in fact for the top of the building coloring.
 

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