LED house lights for a church

John Noah

Member
Good morning,
I'm looking for a solution for Led house lights for a church. What they used to have have 24 500watt par 56 cans shooting down with a medium flood degree. There was hurricane that came and destroyed the dimmer rack, electrical, so we have the ability to start from scratch.

Budget is $10,000 total for house Light renovation, however there is still other things that were damaged so whatever is not used from that will go into the sound system or instruments.

There aren't too many requirements, like we don't really need color mixing between warm and white. It would be nice if theres no flickering from dimming functions, but it doesn't have to be perfect, especially since most of the time church is during the day and night services if any would rarely have that need for house at half. There will be video for live streaming, so refresh rates might play a part. No fans on the light. We would like to be able to control the lights through DMX if possible.

Thanks in advance
 
I'd turn first to Gothams Incito 6" cylinder. Probably two - 20 amp circuits - one might be emergency - and in the 3000-4000 lumen range. Great (white) color and great dimming on dmx. If you can change spacing, you might look at fewer brighter and save some. I'm not sure of current price but 24 may exceed $10k budget, which is why I ask about fewer. How big is the space or what is the approximate spacing of existing - and guestimate on height above floor?

Use that as a basis and shop at an electrical distributor. Feelfree to ask here about proposed substitutions.
 
You'll probably want 0-10V lamps w/ a DMX converter. That will expand your solution space by a lot.

I'd try to look for 1% dimming.
 
While I'm partialto DMX and the ability to address each light individually, 0-10 control as Chris suggests is fine.

Keep in mind that if the data says it dimes to 1%, that is 1% of the lumens but about 10% to the human eye - a very noticeable off if you fade to and from full off. I always insist in 0.1% dimming (high school and college auditoriums and a few churches) and a CRI of 90 or greater.
 
Sounds like a good route. I guess its based off the kind of dimmer, but will be able to shut the off completely or will there be a dull glow. I'm guessing a dummy load with an incadscent would fix that kind of thing?
 
You said the dimmer rack was destroyed so no dimmer - just power and DMX to each fixture. Good LED dimming is a function of the driver - not external dimmers.

If you want to use your dimmers and use retrofit lamps - that's an option - but not a good long term solution IMHO - and it sounded like this was all new. R-LED is the good retrofit lamp option - but if you have to buy and install new incandescent fixtures and new dimmers, skip it and move to LED fixtures.

For the LED downlights - like the Incito I mentioned - the manufacturers claim it is not necessary to de-power the fixtures when not - but I always put them on a relay and put occupancy/vacancy detectors at all the entrances to power the relays on when someone enters (and off by clock at midnight or 1:00).
 
Sorry yes dimmer rack was destroyed, but a A/V company let them hold a refurb unit for very basic lighting until we figure a solution. The incitos look good, and I'm sure its a quality light, but at $850ea my budget will be blown I believe. Congregation area size is about 55ft wide, 60ft from back of church to stage. Ceiling is an A frame, 25ft at highest point guestimate, current hang of par56 is about 16ft guestimate above congregation doing 500w with medium floods. The lumens from the incito seemed liked I would probably have to work creatively to get to the same illumination of the congregation.
Haven't seen any led high power lights with a CRI of 90 with a lumen rating above 10k, closest have been a few ufo high bay looking lights hovering around 84 CRI with dimming at 1% as you mentioned.
 
Is there a general guide for spacing based on height? I'm in a scenario where we are blowing through house lights like crazy as they are the primary worklight in the space, but there are 60 lamps across the space that are hard to access. If I could go with fewer fixtures, I might be able to convince the PowersThatBe (tm) to switch to LED finally (without retrofitting lamps).
 
Is there a general guide for spacing based on height? I'm in a scenario where we are blowing through house lights like crazy as they are the primary worklight in the space, but there are 60 lamps across the space that are hard to access. If I could go with fewer fixtures, I might be able to convince the PowersThatBe (tm) to switch to LED finally (without retrofitting lamps).
@urban79 It's going to depend upon the coverage angles of your fixtures and that's before we get into intensity, inverse square law, evenness and color temperature / CRI.
From north of Donald's walls.
Toodleoo!
Ron Hebbard
 
Is there a general guide for spacing based on height? I'm in a scenario where we are blowing through house lights like crazy as they are the primary worklight in the space, but there are 60 lamps across the space that are hard to access. If I could go with fewer fixtures, I might be able to convince the PowersThatBe (tm) to switch to LED finally (without retrofitting lamps).

It's a beam angle issue. I like to not go over 60 degrees and stay lower than that because of glare - a 45 degree beam is nice - no glare - but I can tell you at 16', can't afford it. A sales rep can get a nice computer photometric - and you might be able to find free manufacturers software and do it your self. I'm old fashioned and just draw in section and plot the coverage. The nice thing about LED over tungsten is the evenness. So the higher you can mount fixture, the fewer you need. And if you looked at the Incito prices much, you'll see the price varies little in proportion to the lumen output.

I sort of start with 15' on center. Your nearly double that now best I can tell (24 fixtures in a 55 x 60 room) but that 16' is hard to overcome. Basic high school auditorium I work on is 25 to 30' except under balcony, which might not be even 10'

If starting on your room from scratch, I'd try to get probably 8 lights high - 4 rows (across space) and 2 columns (parallel to ridge) and probably another low column each side - maybe 5 each. High ones maybe 6000 lumens and low 3500. I'd have to draw to be sure.

$850 seems high - I thought a 6" 5000 lumen unit was under $600. Depending how you are sourcing it mark-ups can add a lot.

A lot about how you value the look. Some good high bays out there - just not the same as downlight cans.
 
Sorry yes dimmer rack was destroyed, but a A/V company let them hold a refurb unit for very basic lighting until we figure a solution. The incitos look good, and I'm sure its a quality light, but at $850ea my budget will be blown I believe. Congregation area size is about 55ft wide, 60ft from back of church to stage. Ceiling is an A frame, 25ft at highest point guestimate, current hang of par56 is about 16ft guestimate above congregation doing 500w with medium floods. The lumens from the incito seemed liked I would probably have to work creatively to get to the same illumination of the congregation.
Haven't seen any led high power lights with a CRI of 90 with a lumen rating above 10k, closest have been a few ufo high bay looking lights hovering around 84 CRI with dimming at 1% as you mentioned.

So I asked rep what these really cost, because I thought way below $850. $415 to a distributor, probably around $500 to you bought by your electrical contractor.
 
Hello,

Out of curiosity how significant would .2% coming be versus .1%?
 
Man, you're making me think and dig up that academic stuff. Short answer, 0.1% of full lumen output appears to be dimmed to 3.16% of full. 0.2% should appear to be 4.48% of full - so around half again as bright. 1% would be about 10% of full and 10% lumens appears to be about 31% of full.

The eye sees it approximately logarithmically (and TG for spell checker!). Here's one white paper from the fine folks at Pathway with a good graph.

I've not seen a fixture/dimmer advertised todim to 0.2% of lumen output.
 

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Looks like the other Pathway Lighting http://www.pathwaylighting.com/ in its low voltage/remote ballast concept.

Lots of folks use the EldoLED drivers for 0.1% dimming, so not sure what would make me consider 0.2% - but I'd probably consider it (unlike 1.0% that's gets submitted). I think I'd have to see a side by side comparison to see what that final fade and bump on look like. The numbers are a little abstract for that kind of comparison.
 

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