[ale] OT: Office lighting

Transam transam at cavu.com
Thu May 2 12:43:34 EDT 2002


> I'm in the process of finishing up my new home office and was hoping to 
> pick some brains here.

Fluorescents (or incandescents) scattered about create lots of glare from the
monitor screens, even with guards.

The best arrangement I know (that we did at SGI and Stratus) was
to install incandescent track lighting in the ceiling with the strips
located behind our screens and aimed at our desks to the flat surfaces
on either sides of our monitors.  This worked VERY well and when I have
time I'll duplicate this in my current office.

For now we use Torche halogen lights positioned to the sides of our
screens so that they will not reflect into our eyes.

Please let me correct some confusion about halogen lighting.  They do not
inherently give off more heat than regular incandescents.  People are
confusing filament temperature with the heat given off.  The heat given off
by a light (or any other device) is very close to its wattage (or close to
its volt amp rating, adjusted for power factor).

Thus, a 300 watt halogen gives off the same 300 watts of heat as
300 watts worth of regular incandescents.  (The percentage of that wattage
that becomes light is only about 5% but all of that gets absorbed the room's
walls anyway.)

Halogens act like ordinary incandescents in that they can be dimmed.  Most
Torche halogens have a built in dimmer.  Running them off of a X10 dimmer
generates erratic results due to the interaction of the two sets of
electronics unless one or the other is at 100%.

The reason why fluorescents (if you can stand them; I cannot) give off
less heat is because their efficiency is about 25%.  That being 5 times that
of an incandescent, the wattage needed is about one fifth.

Realistically, your boxes and monitors probably are giving off more heat
than your lighting so use what's easiest on your eyes, which are more
valuable.

Of course, if you have a large budget, certainly you should use the
slow glass!

> ...
> -- 
> Until later: Geoffrey		esoteric at 3times25.net

>From the dungeon,

Bob

---
This message has been sent through the ALE general discussion list.
See http://www.ale.org/mailing-lists.shtml for more info. Problems should be 
sent to listmaster at ale dot org.






More information about the Ale mailing list