Advice sought on Residential Street Ligh
I was wondering if anyone out there had some advice or experience on street lights for a residential neighborhood.
My neighbors and I have inherited the ownership and maintenace of the street lights. They use Philips MHC50 Metal Halide bulbs. These bulbs have on average been lasting only about a year. One of the neighbors has been suggesting that we convert over to a cheaper bulb, such as a Halogen type. In doing this we would remove the ballast as those are not required for these other bulbs.
Well it turns out there was some kind of major power disurbance the other day, and all of our street lights ( 8 total) quit working. Upon inspection, we smell the strong odor of electrical smoke. The ballast appear to be bad. One of the neighbors computers got fried.
So now this neighbor wants to try this conversion, which I believe we are going to try on one light. He says these Halogen bulbs, which are rated for outdoor use, cost a buck each. the Metal Halide bulbs are costing us $20.00 each.
Anyway, I have reservations that these Halogen will be bright enough.
Anyone gone through something like this and have any words of wisdome?
Thanks for reading.
Replies
i had car lot with lights,for just general light i used sodium,very yellow light but that is also what our city use's on the the really tall poles. metal halide i used on front line because they were bright. i can't imagine you can buy any halagen for a buck,but for a buck i'd try one. by the way are the wattage of these lights.larry
hand me the chainsaw, i need to trim the casing just a hair.
Look at the life time of the halogen bulb and the lumens/watt of the two bulbs.
The halogens will end up bening very expensive and require frequent replacements.
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Hey every group has to have one. And I have been elected to be the one. I should make that my tagline.
I would be skeptical as to whether the halogen would operate nearly as cheaply per lumen as the metal halide. I'd guess that the metal halide is 2-3 times more efficient, in terms of lumens per watt. And it's not clear that the halogen would give a longer service life. (Check the rated operating hours on the halogen and compute how many days that is, based on how long the lights are on.)
You may, of course, want to consider whether you need as much light as you were getting with the old lamps.
Be aware that the photocell mechanism may be integrated with the ballast in the existing units, and you may have to get a new photocell if you change lamps.
Look at the table here and compare life and eff.
http://www.pnm.com/customers/tech_guides/PDF/P_PA_43.pdf
The lights should be lasting longer than that.
I am guessing that the lights are on an average of 12 hours a day, more in the winter and less in the summer. That is about 4400 hours.
You should be getting 3-5 years out of a bulb.
I would check with Philips and with the fixture manufacture about what could cause short life.
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Hey every group has to have one. And I have been elected to be the one. I should make that my tagline.
Why not check with your local muni street dept. and see if they have a recommendation? Our local muni has been changing over the old lamps to down focused lamps, nearly eliminating sky glare, putting more light on the road, and I don't see them replacing bulbs.
Another option is to contract the whole thing to your electric utility. Most will supply street lights for a fixed per-month charge and handle all maintenance.
make sure the lamp and ballast are matched, a larger lamp would be underpowered and have a shorter life...but a smaller lamp would fail as well, just more violently.
check the lamp specs to verify it can operate in the mounting position.in your fixtures
THERE IS NO NEED TO CHECK THE VOLTAGE AT THE LAMP SOCKET......it is High Voltage and not something you or your neighbors should be sticking your noses and fingers in..
some MH fixtures use a pulse start, I doubt your fixtures use it but the starting voltage can be as high as 30,000 volts, and it WILL "jump" to anything near the socket..
.the socket, BTW will be pink if you DO have pulse start ballasts and lamps..but I don't think Philips makes PS lamps
hire an EC to check things out.......
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.Wer ist jetzt der Idiot
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Take a serious look at uninheriting this mess, sounds like there may be multiple underlying electrical problems, Betting they were awhere of this, and were happy to stick you folks with it. Maybe seek legal addvice.
Thank you all for taking the time to read about our troubles and offer some advice.
I'm skepitcal as some of you that these halogen bulbs are not the answer to our problems..just a bandaid or work around.
And the advice to check with the utility company is a good idea..I will call them tomorrow.
As always there is more to the story here...I'm quite embarrased to bring it up..but you guys have been so helpful..so here goes.
The developer that built the develpment is either the biggest or second biggest Mechanical Contractor here in Cedar Rapids, IA..while they do the excavating and plumbing on big commercial jobs..a few years back the owner decides to get into residential development and the one I'm in was his first. They laid the wire , #2 along the bottom edge of the street curb ( they did the streets), and then backfilled it, so the wires are only 6 -8 inches deep. ne of their employees told me that every driveway that was put in got into the wires and so there are multiple splices up and down the street.
We've had a couple of times were these spices have failed and corroded and we had to find them and made repairs (the workmanship on the splices done by the developer were very poor). And the fuses protescting the street light circuits ( there are two on my street) have 60A fuses, which never have blown and i question whether those are too big?
Anyway most all the neighbors are buddy buddy with this guy and would rather just pay out dollars to make these constant repairs and bulb replacement. I guess to me the money is more important..I built my own house, only one out here to do that, ( I mean did the drywall, electrical, siding, finish, landscaping, painting, etc..me and my wife many, many evenings and weekends), anyway I think maybe I built in the wrong place..my neighbors are nice, but most are business owners and thay are quite wealthy so there is only about 3 or 4 of us who will do any maintenance out here to save money.
Anyway, we got no documentation or schemnatics on any of the infrastructure out here. And I'm concerned that maybe what we have has so many issues that maybe we are fightng a loosing battle.
I've informed the neighbors that this 120v/60A circuit is only 6-8" deep along the very edge of the road, and they still have their landscaping companies pound in snowplow markers along the curb and dig holes for plants along there.
Whenever any ground activity is done the local locating service will not mark this circuit, cause it is private, so we've had the gas company and water sprinkler folks get into and damage this wiring. No one knows for sure how many splices we have. And to make thing worse this cable is not in any conduit and it has alot of big rocks around it in the backfill.
sounds like your neighbors have their heads in the sand
or some other warm spot, and will only care after the the lights go out permanently and their nice yards get torn up to lay new cable....resi street lighting is done as quick and cheap as possible... meaning interduct or in your case DB cable which is always subject to damage as the project gets older I am surprised that it is 125v though.
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.Wer ist jetzt der Idiot
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That setup is in violation of code seven ways from Sunday. I'd argue that the existing cable should be abandoned and a new one installed properly. If you can't get the developer to pay up you'll have to assess the homeowners.
People never lie so much as before an election, during a war, or after a hunt. --Otto von Bismarck
Streetlights often have fuses in the base so they're individually protected, but running them on 120vac is pretty unusual. It does sound like the whole thing should be re-done.
Disregarding the condition of the wiring for a moment, I had a streetlighting project a couple years ago where there were all kinds of problems with the lights burning out prematurely. After a lot of messing around it turned out the streetlights came from the factory with a bad batch of ballasts and replacing them seemed to take care of the problem. Also, a lot of people use generic metal halide lamps that may or may not be as good as the name brands, it may be worth trying a different brand. As Bill mentioned earlier, they really should last three to five years.