Task lighting over a dartboard
TimR
needs some additional lighting, nice and bright but without shadows.
I was in the local bigbox home supply store yesterday looking at two
foot fluourescent fixtures. I'm limited to the 32 inch wide
backboard, and planned to install lights on an outrigger roughly two
feet above and two feet in front of the board.
Looking at the various tubes, the lumen count on two foot fluorescents
isn't impressive. And the cheap fixtures don't have a reflector at
all. But......they're cheap.
Does it matter? Is there any practical difference between cheap and
expensive, T5 vs T8 vs T12 on an application like this? It will never
burn enough hours in a year to make energy use a consideration, but
bright glare free light is important.
I've had a number of fluorescent desk lamps over the years and never
really had one bright enough.
Andrew Gabriel
TimR <timot...@aol.com> writes:
> Over Christmas we put up a dartboard in a corner of my basement. It
> needs some additional lighting, nice and bright but without shadows.
>
> I was in the local bigbox home supply store yesterday looking at two
> foot fluourescent fixtures. I'm limited to the 32 inch wide
> backboard, and planned to install lights on an outrigger roughly two
> feet above and two feet in front of the board.
>
> Looking at the various tubes, the lumen count on two foot fluorescents
> isn't impressive. And the cheap fixtures don't have a reflector at
> all. But......they're cheap.
>
> Does it matter? Is there any practical difference between cheap and
> expensive, T5 vs T8 vs T12 on an application like this? It will never
> burn enough hours in a year to make energy use a consideration, but
> bright glare free light is important.
I would look at a ceiling mounted perimeter wall washer, in your
case mounted nearer to the wall than normally intended so it's
output is concentrated in the area where the dart board is (rather
than down the whole wall). If your ceiling is too high, you could
suspend it lower, but any lighting needs to be well clear of mis-
aimed darts. These normally take large pinned compact fluorescents
or T5 tubes nowadays. There's so little glare from most of these
that you generally can't even see that they're on by looking just
at the fitting itself. This is commercial lighting, often at high
prices. For 1-off, you might find one on eBay at a fraction of the
new price.
Electronic control gear generally gets you around 10% more light
from the same tube than heavy magnetic ballasts. T5 and most
compact fluorescents can only be driven from electronic control
gear, whereas T8 and T12 can be driven by either. As tube diameter
gets larger, building polished reflectors to accurately direct the
light in specific direction becomes less possible, so if you are
looking at fittings with accurately directed beams, you want
thinner tubes.
The original European T8 retrofits were same light output as
their T12 counterparts. I haven't checked in detail recently, but
I believe they got better and now exceed their T12 counterparts.
However, US T8 tubes aren't retrofits and are lower power than
European T8 tubes and significantly lower power than their T12
counterparts, and I don't know how they compare in light output.
There are 3 ranges of T5, the original short 4/6/8/13W, and two
newer ranges which I recently documented on the Wikipedia page
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluorescent_lamp#New_T5_tubes
I don't know how widespread these new ranges are in products in
the US yet, but like I said, I'd look for a perimeter wall washer
based on either these newer T5 tubes, or a pinned long compact
fluorescent with electronic control gear.
> I've had a number of fluorescent desk lamps over the years and never
> really had one bright enough.
In my view, a desk lamp is for lighting a sheet of paper - the
name is based on where it sits, not what it does.
If you want to light a desk, you probably need something fitted
on the ceiling (or reflecting off the ceiling) above the desk.
--
Andrew Gabriel
[email address is not usable -- followup in the newsgroup]
TKM
"TimR" <timot...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:d60aa829-266d-4c49...@k19g2000yqc.googlegroups.com...
The linear fluorescent tube (assuming that you put it in some kind of
enclosure to shield the glare won't have much directional control so as much
light will end up on the floor as on the wall.
You could get more light on the dartboard itself by using a reflector CFL --
or two. There are ouitrigger fixtures with adjustable screw-in sockets that
would do the job or you could build a unit yourself. Look for a standard
porcelain socket and an adjustable screw-in insert or an adjustable PAR lamp
holder that you could mount on the outrigger. Given the short burning
hours, you might want to use a PAR or R halogen lamp -- plenty of light with
either one.
Terry McGowan
Thomas Paterson
Tim,
I'd generally agree with Terry, but would add the option of getting a
2' T5 High Output shop light, and using an outrigger with a bracket to
both shield it from direct view and to use the shoplight reflector to
reflect the light towards the board.
You could even go double lamp.
Thomas Paterson
http://www.luxpopuli.com