Here we go. . .

[jthtiger]

Okay, so I've been talking to my pastor about turning house lights off during the music service then back up during the sermon. He agrees and wants to do this. However, we have flouro's. Not going to work. I think you know why. No dimming, blah blah blah. Anyways, Here's how everything is set up. We have four light switches downstairs that control all of the tubes. The four sections are as follows

L Front R
E I
F G
T Back H
T

(I hope that comes out right.)

EDIT:*** Okay, it didn't come out right, the room is split into three sections. Left, middle, and right. There is a circuit for the left and right sides, then the middle section is split into front and back. There is a circuit for these, respectively.***

On the left and right sides, there are only two fixtures each (i think, either two or four).

The front has six? Back has six? I think that's right, I can't remember exactly, but it's not to far off from that.

Now, each of these fixtures houses four lovely tubes. Woot.

Through trial and error, we found that having just the back section on, provides enough light for the sermon. So we keep that section on, and everything else off. However, both he and I want this one off for the music. He likes the look of completely dark, I really like it. So, what I want to do, is try and find out how many PAR cans can replace the output of the flouros. We'll say PAR 64's at 500 watts each? 1000? Get some dimmer packs and rig those suckers. I don't know. You guys like it, hate it, want to kill me? Give me some input.

Thanks!
-Tyler Herron

[Esoteric]

Depends on what kind of tubes, how many, etc.

It would be easier to decide if you would just provide the dimensions of the room and ceiling height.

I use PAR units for houselights in all my installs (PAR simply refers to parabolic aluminized reflector, any self contained lamp that fits this description in a can is a PARcan). You can use normal PAR64 or 56 units or you can use standard commercial units.

The only way to do what you want is with dimming. Otherwise the flickering on and off is really, really distracting. You can use shoebox dimmers but you will need to go with 500W cans.

Mike

[jthtiger]

That's what I figured. The room is a gymnasium. At the lowest point, the ceiling is. . .20ft? maybe, it's two stories at the lowest point. The highest point is roughly 30ft. Or to be exact, as tall as our lift will go, plus an 8 foot ladder on top. That's a whole other story though.

As far as dimensions go, i don't know exactly, but it is a standard basket ball court plus 4 foot boundaries all the way around. ish.

We will probably want to go with shoebox dimmers, just to save getting electrical stuff run everywhere. We already have circuits up on the ceiling where our stage lights are(source fours) so we'll just plug the shoeboxes into those extra circuits and have the cans rigged. If that makes sense.

-Tyler Herron

[[Admin] osborn4]

Just to let you know, you can wrap code tags around text whe you want to preserve extra spaces.

L Front R
E       I
F       G
T Back  H
        T

[jthtiger]

Dimensions are roughly 110' x 70' and the height is 30' at the highest and 20' at the lowest.

-Tyler Herron

[Esoteric]

And do you need house lights to cover the whole area?

Mike

[prochlea]

you put an 8' ladder on top of a lift? Please tell me that was just for reference sake, and you don't actually put a ladder on top of the lift...

[jthtiger]

Um, I guess technically we don't need them to cover the entire area. Just the seats, in theory right? The way the seats are set up right now, they cover about 3/4 of the area. The gym is running sideways, so the width of the room is 110' with the stage on the long wall, embedded in. I don't know if embedded is the right word. Here is a computer rendering that I did of the room. Disregard all the fancy lighting around the edge of the room. That was something we did for a Christmas concert one year.

I hope this helps explain it a little better.

Oh, and prochlea, we actually did place a ladder on top of a box lift one time. But don't worry, we had safety precautions in place. The lift only goes up to 21' and I was running a DMX line from the media booth to the stage. We ran it straight from the center of the back wall, over the peak, and down to the stage. The peak is 30' so I needed just a little more height. I'm roughly 6' tall so I just stood on the 3rd rung, just below the railing. I also had a lanyard attached to the lift, in case I fell. . .I didn't. It was probably not the best thing to do, but we needed to get it done, and we needed it done right then. Don't report us

-Tyler Herron

[prochlea]

But don't worry, we had safety precautions in place.

That makes me feel much better about it... sarcasm aside - unless you had a proper harness and were tied into the roof rafters while doing this, it is not something that should be done regardless of how much it needed to be done. Even tied it, I'm sure you're breaking regs somewhere. This is the kind of thing that gets people killed or paralyzed. Believe me, I understand needing to get something done, but there has to be limits. If you're in a situation and if something goes wrong and you could die, I'd be a little more discerning in weighing your options.

[jthtiger]

I understand. It was a stupid thing to do, and I do regret it. But it's in the past and I can't change it. I can just learn from it. Which I have.

It's tough trying to get awesome things done without a budget.

-Tyler Herron

[Esoteric]

Originally Posted by prochlea

you put an 8' ladder on top of a lift? Please tell me that was just for reference sake, and you don't actually put a ladder on top of the lift...

I have done that before. Actually in college I put a ladder on top of a piece of plywood across the top rails of the lift (cherry picker) bucket with it extended to its full 30' and stood on the top wrung of the ladder. Do not try this at home kids!

Of course we also used to stand on the top wrung of our fully extended 30' A-Frame, took the outriggers out of the lift and rolled it with people in it, used a boatswains chair without a harness, wrapped our legs around a post and hung backwards off an catwalk, and used pipes spanning the catwalks to take shortcuts across them if we needed them. I have also walked ceiling steel in arenas without a harness.

I would not recommend any of this and will not do it anymore, but we do dumb things when we are young.

Mike

[Esoteric]

But back on topic, I would do 7 rows of 8 1kW PAR64 WFLs. So, 56 cans, which would mean 28 shoebox dimmers, which to me is a point at which you should look at using a real dimmer rack.

Mike