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[Kelsen Depp]

I'm looking to retrofit our multi-purpose room's current house lighting with something that is dimmable and turns on immediately, rather than the typical "sport" light wait time. Currently the light used are 10 MVR400/U (GE Multi-Vapor quartz-Metal Halide lamps), fed from M59/S ballasts.

Our worship pastor said they did this type of retrofit to the same type of lights at a past church he lead, and it was fairly strait forward without having to change out much, if any, fixture hardware or wiring.

I am not much of a house lighting person, but my understanding is that each lamp has its own ballast, and transformer. The transformers are powered via a relay. The relays are closed by a couple of light switches on the wall in the room.

Can this be done using mostly the same cable and hardware, and what lamps and parts would be needed?  I imagine more info and pictures might be needed on these parts, so just ask and I'll hunt it down.
Thanks

[Kevin Hoober]

hey Kelsen,

It's been my experience that mercury vapor/metal halide lights don't dim.  I'm thinking that the retrofit would be pretty serious--as in removal of the ballast and socket, and putting in some sort of incandescent lamp.  But to get similar light output to the metal halide's, it will take close to twice the wattage(Googled to double check this number--it's really more like 5X the wattage)...which will probably mean adding new circuits to reduce the number of fixtures on a circuit.

That said, I just had dimmers put on my gym lights...BUT, the lights in my gym have 2 lamps in them; one metal halide and one quartz incandescent.  The dimmer is on the incandescent.  The manufacturer's intent of the incandescent lamp is to provide light during the metal halide's warmup time.  Lucky for me, they originally ran separate circuit's to the incandescents--needless to say, the change was pretty straight forward.

I have a feeling that your worship guy's previous church had some similar luck.

What about adding a second set of house lights?  Like S4 pars on dimmers.  Keep the metal halide's for b-ball, use the pars for church.

Kelsen, I could be dead wrong about the conversion process.  Your best answer is going to come from an commercial electrical company; those guys will know the tricks, and have contacts with the manufactures.

adding more murk to the water,
Kevin

[Kelsen Depp]

Thanks Kevin, that could be the case.  But I'm thinking not, mainly because I talked with the dealer who did the upgrade at that other church and he did not think it would be a problem.  However he lost interest in doing the upgrade for us, I think because I would not purcahse a speaker upgrade from him as well.  I think it was too small a job to be worth it for him.  

I was expecting at least changing the ballast and socket, but keeping the shell of the fixture.  Avoiding running new wire is really the main concern.

I was expecting a slight drop in total light output and maybe a slight orange hue, but not a fifth.

Anyway, if there are any other ideas, please fire away.
Thanks

[Kevin Maxwell AKA TheMAXX]

Around here I have seen a lot of school gyms removing the mercury vapor lights for florescent fixtures. I think they get funding from the electric companies because of the lower energy usage of the florescent fixtures. With the right equipment florescent can be dimmable and the tubes are available in different color temperatures now. Contact your local electrical supplier (power company) and see if they offer any kind of deal. If I am remembering correctly they use more florescent fixtures to replace the mercury vapor fixtures but the light output is the same intensity and the energy usage is less.

I have also seen dual florescent and incandescent installs for more lighting control. Use the florescent lights for the athletic events and use the incandescent for more subdued lighting.

If you are looking to just replace the lamps in the mercury vapor lights (I have no particular expertise in that area) you should contact an electrician and talk to them about it. I assume that each fixture has standard 120v feeds to them so you may need to just wire in new fixtures. Since this is a gym be sure to use fixtures with impact resistant covers so you don’t have a shower of glass crashing down if a ball or other object hits a light. But I think you will have a problem with getting enough diffuse light if you do it that way.

If you are planning to install any dimming just remember that each circuit needs to have a dedicated neutral run from it.

[David Sumrall]

Hey Kelson,

I think there is a newer mercury vapor lamp that strikes faster and is somewhat dimmable. I believe it does involve a ballast and lamp change out.

How complicated a conversion to dimmable incandescent will depend on the current wiring, number of fixtures, number of circuits, the new load and distribution etc.

Like the other guys have said, your best route is to find an experienced commercial lighting  company to help you out.

You might try the install forum or ChuchSoundcheck.com.

Good Luck!

David Sumrall
Technical Director/A1
First Baptist Orlando

[Karl P(eterson)]

For what its worth, I was talking to our electricians about house lighting in multipurpose rooms, particularly going over the differences, options, and pricing for Metal Halide, Fluorescent, Incandescent and LED this week.

There is a new Metal Halide ballast out which David was talking about that when combined with the new bulbs, can strike in just a second or two and once on (at full) can be dimmed in 10% steps to 50%. These are also reasonably pricey.

I could be wrong, but I doubt this is what you really want.

I (and our electricians....) would agree with the others who say that if there was a "cheap" option to take a metal halide system and make it fully dimming with no strike/restrike, it would have been based on a parallel incandescent or fluorescent system rather than a "magic" ballast and lamp, if this system already existed then it would have been pretty cheap to get where they needed to be.

Also remember that most metal halide as found in high bay applications such as this are 208V single, or even 3, phase. If you are in a larger building with "real" high voltage power, there is a very good chance they are as high as 408 Volts.

Using Incandescent to out-and-out replace Metal Halide, you will need about 5x the current, at anywhere from 1/2 to 1/3 of the voltage, which means a completely new wiring system. This whole plans also falls apart if you don't have the power available to run it.

Fluorescent is a fantastic option these days and since the good ballasts will run any voltage between 110 and 408, could be used as an almost drop in option to metal halide. With the new ballast options you have instant start and great dimming options (clean up and down to 5% ), but this isn't a cheap option either. A quick question to my electrician says a complete retrofit from halide to dimming fluorescent would run around 40~50K for the average gym. That would include everything, including a wall control, and an adapter for DMX can be purchased for about 1K


Hope this helps,

Karl P

[Kevin Hoober]

Karl,
Irregardless, but...
I believe you're thinking of a 277/480 or a 347/600 system (I can't think of 377 being used anywhere in the states, at least).  And the only place I've actually seen a 347/600 in use was at a plant, and it only ran big motor loads...A/C, cranes, etc.

The new dimming metal-halide sounds like the cat's meow... way cool!  

Kevin, I was thinking that the metal-halide's were more efficient, hmmm, time to waste more time on the Internet

-Kevin H

[Karl P(eterson)]

Slip of the fingers (or is that brain?.... ehehe......

Thanks.

Karl P

[Karl P(eterson)]

If you want to talk about the ultimate Metal Halide, Entertainment Technology in association with VariLight has a fully dmx controlled, color changing, strobing, 150W metal halide. Now, in truth it uses shutters and other funk-itry to make this happen, but what the heck, it is what it is.

http://www.etdimming.com/clientuploads/downloads/27714A_Colo r_FX_Brochure.pdf
http://www.etdimming.com/clientuploads/downloads/87-0534A.pd f

Pretty cool, eh?

[Kelsen Depp]

Ok, I'll just have to check with a few electric and lighting suppliers this week.  Thank you for your input.  It gives me more common ground with the contractors.

[ProSoundWeb Community]