Hello Trade Community,
Here’s part one of a two part series. We’ve been given a budget to solve this peripheral strip lighting inside our eight tall cases this fiscal year. It’s very exciting because we are going from these pill shaped lamps (pictured below, I’ll work on finding a part number on these) to LED strips. First, let’s discuss the issues. BURN OUT! that is the worst part of these things, they just don’t last and pulling the plex off, removing the objects, the putting the plex back on takes time AND often these lamps get very vey stuck in their holders. At times, we’ve had to simply move on and leave the lamp in the holder because the force required to remove them might pull out the entire housing so we haven’t pressed our luck.
The pill shaped lamps that burn out and often get stuck :- (
Heat is also a little bit of an issue, but heat can escape and the lamps aren’t that close to the works. What ends up happening is that we don’t get to this often enough and we can find a day like the one pictured below where several lamps are out and the lighting is very spotty. Not good and not proud of this presentation.
Our solution, LED strips inside the same channels. Getting the budget to solve this was step one. Step two is test strips we have on hand in the channels by lightly taping them to the current lamps (which would be turned off obviously). This is to asses the lumen output and color temperature. If we don’t like what we already have on hand, we’ll have to look for new product to sample. Next issue, can we power these from the current transformers that are pushing the pill shaped lamps using some kind of appropriate converter or do we need new dedicated transformers, which really aren’t very expensive and I’ve budgeted for this worst case scenario. Then we’re ready to buy all the materials and schedule the city contractor (we are tuned in part by the city of sacramento and we have to use their electricians). Keep in mind that you’ll need couplers, extensions, elbows and the like to make the runs to other strips and back to the transformers. In our case the transformers are installed through a wall and up high. Well, that’s the end of part one, I’ll write a follow up as we start to pull out the old and install the new and I’ll get a better picture of how these pill shaped lamps install and the plastic tool used to pull them. I’ll also include the spec and brands of LEDs and transformers we end up with for the final installation. Wish us luck.
