Can anyone help suggest a......

[righter101]

Hey everyone. We are doing a small interior remodel of the local building department facility here. Mostly getting rid of the 20 year old stained pink carpet (seriously), and a new counter top, that sort of minor stuff. I have offered to put forth a lighting proposal because our lighting here is awful. The entire building has the flush mount fixtures that have either 2, 3 or 4 flourscent bulbs.

Wondering if anyone has suggestions for low cost alternatives to these. I am going to do an energy savings analysis and that will be a key selling point. I have, for my own home, purchased a few of the CREE LED bulbs so i was considering even just getting some inexpensive flush mount ceiling fixtures and using those bulbs.

Wondering if anyone has experience with a good substitute for the tube flourscents??? I don't like the buzz, i don't like the color spectrum, and they use more power than a number of LED alternatives.

Thanks.

John

 

[Paul Sweet]

LED fixtures are still fairly pricy, and they aren't enough more efficient than a good fluorescent light to offset the price difference. Our office recently had 2-tube fluorescent fixtures installed (similar to http://www.lithonia.com/commercial/rt8.html ), and the light level is close to what the old 4-tube fixtures put out. T-8 fluorescent tubes (I prefer 3500K) give much better color rendition than the old cool white T-12s and aren't quite as pricy as T-5s. The new electronic ballasts don't buzz like the old magnetic ballasts, and last a lot longer than the early electronic ones did.

 

[righter101]

Thanks Paul. I have an inquiry out to CREE for some T8 equivalents. they are getting 100+ lumens per watt, so the wattage would be cut in half for equal or brighter light.

I got some CREE bulbs from Home Depot for home, the 65 and 40 w equivalents. Those are amazing. Really dropping in price too. They are a 2700K temp so it's a nice light. I can't stand the 6000K. I call them "prison blue".

Thanks for the input. I will let you know how the discussions with CREE go.