Help! Building with mercury vapor fixtures...

[BrianKilpatrick]

Hey Guys, first of all, I am an audio guy but helping out where ever I can. We have been at our building for about 4 years, and the house lights have been very cold, sterile, and uninviting. Just figured out that these are mercury vapor fixtures. Is there any inexpensive way to replace these, covert these, or are there other colors/types I can get that will work with this type of fixture? What color temp is usually used in churches? The lights we have now are GE R175 - HR175DX39. Please help! lol

[Esoteric]

Inexpensive? Probably not, but it depends on your definition of inexpensive.

[BrianKilpatrick]

Less that $2K?

[RickR]

Less than $2k per fixture, sure! In total probably nothing unless you have less than 15 fixtures.

You have a whole list of options but few of them are very good. You have to keep in mind the uses that you WANT to do, not just what you currently do. No church sanctuary should be built these days with anything like this system. Gymnasiums and parking garages usually have better lights!

The basic choices revolve around control of the lights.

• Yours and other "high intensity discharge" types, take time to warm up and have that "interesting" color
• Fluorescents switch quickly and look better but are physically large for the same light (currently full size FLs can be the most efficient)
• Incandescents are energy hogs but dim and switch nicely and look good too.
• LEDs can dim and switch well, can look good, but are REALLY expensive

Don't go for the cheapest thing around - you have that. Find out what you should have and raise the funds to get it done.

[D.R.HADDOCK]

That tells us what type of lamp, but what type of fixtures do you use ?
You might be able to bypass the ballast and instal incandesant,
Instal dimmers and you have completely different atmosphere.
But it depends on the fixtures !

I did an change over from 400w mercury vapours,
And installed 2 x 300w tungsten halogen lamps in the fixtures.
Worked real well too.
Used dimmers.
No buzzing, and no drop outs.
The lower color temp, produced a much nicer atmosphere.

[waynehoskins]

Another possibility is to add incandescent houselights in addition to the discharge lights that are already there. The discharge fixtures can still be useful as worklight, so you don't have to turn on the real lights when you're in there working.

[BrianKilpatrick]

Originally Posted by D.R.HADDOCK

That tells us what type of lamp, but what type of fixtures do you use ?
You might be able to bypass the ballast and instal incandesant,
Instal dimmers and you have completely different atmosphere.
But it depends on the fixtures !

I have no idea how to figure this out, I thought the bulb model would have told it all... . But I have gotten the elder team's attention with this so we will invest into this which brings me to another question which ill start another thread. Thank you all for your suggestions!

[D.R.HADDOCK]

What are you confused about Brain ?
And whats the new thread ?

[BrianKilpatrick]

Originally Posted by D.R.HADDOCK

What are you confused about Brain ?
And whats the new thread ?

Well you asked what kind of fixtures they were. Once again, im an audio guy so I really don't know. I thought saying that they were Mercury Vapor fixtures and giving the model number of the bulb used would be all the info one needed. So im not sure what other description applies to answer your question.

[JoshGuerette]

Is there any way to add color correction to the bulbs with gels or something? Maybe even pre-corrected bulbs?

[Steve Vanciel]

Mercury Vapor lamps are characteristically a very greenish-blue color of light. The human eye/brain perception process will usually accept the light as white-ish but cameras are less forgiving. The specs below say that the color temp is 3700K and the CRI (Color Rendering Index) is 45. However, part of the problem is that arc sources are not continuous across the color spectrum. The output is very "spikey" with many wavelengths such as red being completely missing. Filtering will not restore something that just is not there. The better solution is to have a secondary set of lights for production (services) and reserve the mercs for work light.

The specifications for the "GE R175 - HR175DX39" are:
175W Mercury Vapor Lamp Mogul Base White,
Lumens7,900Wattage175Lamp Life24,000+ HoursColor Temp3700KShapeED-28BaseMogulLength8.3125"FinishWhite
CRI
45

[Esoteric]

How many fixtures we talking here? For $2k you could probably convert 3 fixtures in any given format.

The last gym setup we did with sodium vapor lights was for 35 units and the budget was $200,000 for dimmable LED.