LED Explosion Proof Lighting in Manufacturing Facilities

Lighting is one fixture of a manufacturing facility that has impending dangers. In the industries that operate with hazardous elements such as flammable gases, chemicals, dust, and vapors, lights may cause an explosion and fire. These fixtures may blow and let off a spark that will explode when they ignite any flammable elements.

Therefore, the National Electric Code has set protection techniques that prevent an explosion that is caused by lighting. They involve the installation of LED Explosion Proof Lighting, which helps to avert a fire or explosion.

LED Explosion Proof Lighting

The LED proof lighting involves encasing the light fixtures, to prevent them from being the source of ignition. Their design can withstand an internal explosion and will not spread any sparks from the enclosure. The LED products are of different wattage’s, sizes, and styles, and safeguard everyone in the industry.

Where to install LED Explosion Lighting

The LED explosion proof lighting techniques are approved in specific working environments which are;

Class I Division 1: These are the areas in the industry where flammable vapor, gases, and liquids are applied and always present.

Class I Division 2: These are areas with ignitable vapors, gases, and liquids that are not regularly present in the daily operations.

The Class I ignitable elements include propane, acetylene, benzene, butane, hydrogen, and methane.

Class II Division 1: These are the areas wherein the normal working conditions there are flammable specks of dust.

Class II Division 2:  These are the areas where combustible dust is present during unusual industrial operations.

Class II combustibles include; carbon, charcoal and metal dust, flour, wood, and plastics.

The other is the Class III areas, which are operations where ignitable fibers and materials such as sawdust and cotton are present.

Keep Safe with Explosion Proof Lighting

Keep your industrial facility safe for everyone by installing LED explosion-proof lighting. They will lessen the risks of fire ignition and explosion that cause workplace injuries and accidents. To learn about the ideal light explosion products and have professional installation, contact us. We will help you improve safety and meet the National Electric Code (NEC) requirements at the manufacturing facility.

Why is LED lighting more energy efficient?

What makes LEDs more energy efficient than other types of lighting? LED lighting uses a completely different physical process than previous lighting technologies, and this is what makes it more efficient.

Incandescent Bulbs

Incandescent bulbs heat a piece of metal to a high temperature so that it glows white hot. Unfortunately, a lot of energy is lost as heat, as you can easily notice by putting your hand near an incandescent bulb.

Fluorescent Bulbs

Fluorescent bulbs actually operate by two physical processes in sequence. The first of these happens by running an electric current through mercury vapor, which causes the mercury atoms to emit ultraviolet (UV) light. This light is not visible, so fluorescent lamps require another step, and this is where fluorescence comes in.

Fluorescence is the process where a material absorbs light of one color and emits light of another color. In the case of fluorescent lamps, a material coating the bulb absorbs the UV light and emits visible light. This process is more energy efficient than incandescent bulbs because there is no need to heat a material. However, because it is a two-step process where each step is not perfectly efficient, its efficiency is still limited.

Another issue with fluorescent bulbs is that the mercury they contain is hazardous, and has to be disposed of properly.

LEDs

LED stands for light emitting diode. The diode is the physical object which emits light. This is a one-step process, which helps explain why LED bulbs are more efficient than fluorescent bulbs.

The material at the at the heart of an LED is a semiconductor. This material is able to directly absorb electric energy and emit light, which also helps keep efficiency high.

LEDs are not perfectly efficient. Their efficiency depends largely on the type of semiconductor material used. Scientists are constantly exploring new semiconductor materials to improve LEDs and provide better energy efficiency.

If you have any questions about LED lighting, please feel free to contact us.

Get Your Hospital Ready for the Future of LEDs Now

LEDs hit the lighting world by storm, and there are several good reasons for that. Not only are they energy-efficient and produce less heat, but they’re also customizable. Everything from dimness to color and direction can be programmed into LEDs. But while that makes LEDs a smart bet for new hospital constructions, it used to be another story for retrofits. Here are three reasons why your administration should make switching to LEDs a priority:

1. The current infrastructure will support future bulbs.

Early adoption of technology is always risky. Switching to the last data storage medium or buying the latest devices can be expensive or an investment in a fleeting trend. But LEDs are here to stay, and their current support systems are built to last. Whether you want to start retrofitting your hospital in sections or you want to overhaul the whole property, switching to LEDs is a safe bet.

2. Dimmable, programmable bulbs help people do their jobs.

LEDs in hospitals don’t just have the general benefits like in other commercial settings. They also have specific benefits for your employees and your patients. You can automatically program LEDs to duplicate daylight with bright white light so employees on the night shift are more alert. You can also add dimmable bulbs to waiting rooms and patient rooms. Even color-changing bulbs are being studied for their positive impacts on people’s healing rates.

3. Save on variable expenses.

Hospitals cost a lot of money to run. You have to keep the lights on 24/7, and even a single hospital room has a lot of specific lighting requirements. But LED bulbs will cut down on electrical costs. Because they have long lifespans, you also save on replacement bulbs, or diodes, over the years.

Contact us at Relumination to get started. We can help plan, implement, and analyze your hospital’s lighting systems.

Is Your Restaurant Lit?

Accessibility means visibility. When people think about ADA compliance and accessibility issues, they often think of wheelchair ramps. While making sure customers have wheelchair access throughout your dining room and restrooms, it’s also important to have the right lighting. Make sure your customers with visual impairments are also comfortable, and add signage that improves everyone’s experience. Here are two ways to do it:

Light up the sides of ramps and main aisles.

Many steps and ramps are required to have warning tape along the edges for general safety compliance. But that tape gets worn, torn, and obscured by dim lighting. Make everyone safer (and keep traffic moving in the best way for your restaurant) by adding smooth lighting along the edges of ramps and main aisles. Not only does this help highlight where the ramp is, it helps people know where to walk in a crowded space. It also implicitly reminds patrons to keep their bags out of the aisle so servers and new arrivals have an easier time getting to the tables.

Have multiple, lit signs pointing to the restrooms and exits.

Many restaurants have a split floor space. Whether it’s a wall dividing up the space, a central bar, or just decorative features, there’s usually some sort of barrier. But that means not everyone can see the sign above the restrooms. Make sure you have a clear, lit sign near the ceiling for maximum visibility. Have an additional sign and arrow visible from any point in the restaurant where the actual doorway is obscured. Many Applebee’s restaurants have made a point of hanging neon signs with a directive arrow on opposite sides of the restaurant, which are not only helpful but fit in with their decor.

Choosing Light: Revitalizing Your Business Through Relighting Your Environment

Light affects everything. Light is how we see and interpret how inviting, or uninviting, a situation is. This applies to nearly everything we experience, but it particularly affects our retail experience, both for those who work in retail and for shoppers. Proper lighting can make the difference between lethargic, disconnected employees and active, attentive ones. Studies also show that store lighting has a heavy influence over the amount of time that customers shop as well as how comfortable they are making purchases. Changing over from older forms of lighting, such fluorescent lighting, to LED lighting can have a big impact on the cost of doing business as well as change the way customers perceive your company.

Changing The Environment

Switching to LED lighting can seem daunting, but the benefits far outweigh the initial struggles of change. LED lights come with many benefits, the most obvious being decreased energy costs. LEDs can reduce lighting cost by up to 75%. That is a game changer. Not only that, but they can also reduce cooling costs. Traditional lighting gives off the majority of its light through heat, LEDs do not. They run much cooler, which naturally reduces the overall temperature of the room. This change of temperature can affect the comfort of your employees and customers, creating a more inviting environment.

Then there is the light itself. LED lights give off what is often referred to as white light, or a cleaner light. This cleaner light not only increases visibility, but it can impact the health of those experiencing it. Studies show that proper lighting in the workplace can affect mood, alertness, and productivity as well as decrease the chances of some physical ailments such as eye strain, headaches, and even high blood pressure. The health and well-being of your employees can change the efficiency of your company; giving them proper lighting is definitely worth it.

Shopping Through Light

Light is how we see; if the lighting around us is bright and clear, then we can see and enjoy the details of our environment. In a retail setting, seeing the details can make the difference between shopping til we drop and dropping our shopping and running out. A university study done in 2013 shows that the lighting in a store can completely change the way a shopper views both the store and the products in it. Dimly lit shops were described with adjectives such as ‘shady’ or ‘untrustworthy’, while well-lit, bright stores were thought to be better organized and to carry better quality products. The light makes all the difference. The brighter clean light of LEDs can give customers the assurance that they are truly seeing what they are purchasing and make them more comfortable spending more time in the shop and buying more.

Choosing Light

Not only does proper lighting affect your electric bill, but it can also affect your employees in their attentiveness and safety, as well as your customers and how and where they choose to spend their hard earned money. Taking the time to retrofit your older lighting systems to LED lights will not only save you money, but it will also make you money. Clearly, updated LED lighting is a smart business decision all around.

If you would like more information about retrofitting the lighting in your business, feel free to contact us.

How to Keep the Lights on in Your Hotel

In today’s economy, hotels and motels are a thriving market and the demand for these will continue to grow as time moves on. We find them convenient for business, leisure, and sadly even in the occasional emergency. Either way, hotel and motel owners gain a lot of guests in any given week. A huge factor in keeping the lights on literally has to do with lighting! More business is always desired as a hotel or motel owner, but also comes along with high energy costs due to lighting. Energy efficient lighting is also an attribute for safety and most importantly, it can bring back guests.

According to Energy Star, the U.S. Energy Information Administration reports that the top use of hotel’s energy is used for lighting. No matter what the size of the establishment may be, there will always be a need for various types of lighting. With that said, why not choose the most energy efficient type possible to reduce the bill? Most businesses nowadays have chosen to use energy efficient lights and can benefit from them.

In addition to cost efficiency, let’s discuss safety. As an owner, safety is a top priority for running a business let alone a lodging establishment. Obviously, there’s the importance of having great lighting in order for your guests to be able to get around their rooms. Nobody will want to struggle to look for a simple lamp or light switch. Also, your guest’s safety is not at risk when using energy efficient lights. They are entirely environment-friendly which means they’ll be safe for your guests.

Above all, you want your guests to want to come back. Guests, in general, feel comfortable with plenty of lighting available to them in their rooms. This makes the rooms more inviting and is a valuable factor that your guests will certainly remember.

Contact us for any of your commercial or industrial needs.

Sustainable Lighting Options for Businesses

Currently, most business owners are working towards achieving sustainability in their daily operations because customers prefer engaging enterprises that prioritize the need to conserve the environment. One of the best ways to create a sustainable workplace is by opting to use eco-friendly lighting. Energy saving bulbs will not only improve the working conditions for your staff but also reduce your energy bill considerably.

Various regulations are pushing companies to lower their carbon footprint and for that reason, opting to use eco-friendly lighting within your enterprise is a wise idea. However, the proliferation of sustainable light fittings in the market makes it difficult to identify the right option for your business. Here are some of the viable business lighting options that can offer excellent value for your money.

Architectural Modifications

The discovery of new lighting technologies for businesses is gathering momentum as more and more business operators focus on acquiring the right option to support their operations. If you do not want to delve into the aspect of visiting various vendors as you seek to identify appropriate lighting for your company, you can consider modifying the architectural design of your office space.

The idea behind the architectural modifications is to maximize natural light to make your office brighter as you seek to reduce reliance on artificial lighting. For instance, you can arrange the light shafts, windows, and skylights of your company premises to maximize natural light by adopting the daylighting design.

LED Lighting

One of the challenges of the previous variety of LED bulbs is that they are quite dim and therefore unsuitable for commercial buildings. The improvements on LED bulbs today makes them one of the best options for businesses because they are currently brighter and their lifespan is longer.

If you opt to invest in LED lighting as a business operator, you will cut down on the cost of replacing light fittings from time to time since LED bulbs last longer than ordinary bulbs.

CFL Light Fittings

If LED bulbs are an expensive option for your organization, you can consider buying CFL light fittings because they are both cheaper and energy efficient. You need to note that CFL light fittings are difficult to recycle because they contain traces of mercury, which means they are less sustainable for your office environment, in comparison with LED bulbs. If you need more information on viable lighting options for businesses, contact us today!

University Lighting: Providing An Energy-Efficient Campus Environment

A university’s campus is like a small community filled with a variety of people with varying interests. However, one of the areas where the interests are aligned is safety. One of the best ways to ensure safety and security on campus is to improve university lighting.

LED lighting will provide a safe, secure, and energy-efficient environment on campus at all times. LEDs also reduce the cost of operation while satisfying the needs of faculty members and students who can appreciate the benefits of eco-friendly solutions. LEDs also provide outstanding durability in the environments that can place an incredible amount of stress on light bulbs and lighting fixtures, such as a university campus.

Due to the high-quality energy efficiency, LED lighting allows universities to save a significant amount of money on repairs, operating costs, and maintenance costs. When compared to a traditional light bulb, an LED light bulb can consume less than half the energy that the traditional light bulb can. Although an LED light bulb will not consume as much energy as a traditional light bulb, the quality of the LED bulb will not be negatively impacted.

A university needs to have safe walking areas across the entire environment, and college administrators can save a significant amount of money by lighting the campus with LED lights instead of the traditional lights. LED lighting for universities will typically last longer and they will be more reliable and durable than other lighting options your university may have used in the past.

All areas on a university campus can benefit from LED lighting fixtures, and there are different types of fixtures that will fit your university’s classrooms, parking lots, offices, dorms, walkways, etc. With students preparing to head back to campus, now is a great time to make improvements to your university lighting in order to ensure the safety of your university.

For more information on the benefits and advantages of LED university lighting, please do not hesitate to contact us today.

3 Reasons to Light Up Your Cold Storage with LED’s

Everyone is moving towards LEDs. They’re energy-efficient, brighter, and increasingly cheaper. But if you need niche lighting, don’t just look into the general benefits. Here are three reasons why cold storage specifically needs a lighting update.

1. Traditional lights waste space.

A lot of light bulbs give off heat. Even traditional bulbs that are built with cold storage in mind give off too much heat for products near the ceiling to maintain the right temperature. That means your storage is organized with a hefty buffer around the hot bulbs, and that’s bad for business. Every inch of warehousing space matters, especially if your warehouses are competing in the evolution of fast supply lines. You just don’t have room for traditional lights anymore.

2. LEDs work better in the cold.

Traditional bulbs and cold temperatures aren’t a good mix. Fluorescent bulbs need more voltage to get started in low-temperature environments like your cold storage. They also don’t give off as much light. While the bulbs themselves might fall within OSHA guidelines, the reality is that the cold storage may be too dim. Even if your cold storage is organized to allow for heat output, the main problem with cold light bulbs, traditional bulbs aren’t good enough.

LEDs, on the other hand, prefer low temperatures to high ones. They even work more efficiently below freezing than they do at summery temperatures, and that’s on top of LEDs’ general efficiency.

3. It’s easier to make LEDs smarter.

Traditional bulbs burn out all the time, especially in adverse conditions. But you and your site manager don’t always know when that happens. If the bulb for a sensor goes out, you won’t know without a manual inspection. If the overhead lights go out, someone has to stop what they’re doing and replace them. But LEDs can be attached to an internal Internet of Things system. Not only will you get an alert when the LEDs go out, you can get an early warning when the bulbs start to dim.

Contact us to start retrofitting your system and getting the best benefits of LEDs.

Good LED Illumination is Essential for Safety in Multi-level Parking Garages

All parking garages must have good lighting for safety and security. LED lighting provides safe illumination that eliminates shadows and guides drivers through any parking structure. This is extremely important for parking and safely navigating the maze of lanes and stalls in multi-level parking garages.

Underground parking

Your parking garage may be a subterranean parking lot with multiple levels below one or more buildings. This type of garage may need excellent illumination 24/7, especially if it is part of a hospital complex. People park their vehicles in an area that does not receive daylight. They need sufficient light to read signs and find elevators, stairs, doors, and escalators that will carry them into the buildings. Drivers and passengers will also return to their vehicles that must be located easily.

LED illumination will provide the light necessary for all parking levels to help drivers find their way into and out of complex underground parking structures that have marked directional lanes. Drive lanes often appear to be narrow and drivers backing vehicles out of parking spaces must be able to see oncoming traffic. LED overhead or wall lights will help all drivers judge distances from other vehicles. The lights are designed to provide good illumination without a glare.

Structures above ground

Multi-level parking garages above ground can also be a labyrinth of lanes leading in and out of the structure. While these structures may receive some light during the day, they are often used at night. Lighting must be adequate for your clients, shoppers or residents to park and return to their vehicles.

Good lighting is a deterrent to vehicle break-ins and theft. Security cameras are usually placed in strategic areas of parking garages. Good LED illumination helps the cameras see and often record vehicle and pedestrian movements.

High-performance LED ceiling lights can be placed over parking stalls in all parking structures. Special LED light posts are often used for the uncovered rooftop parking space. LED lighting uses semiconductor technology that consumes less energy than standard fluorescent or incandescent lights. LED fixtures last much longer than conventional lights. This results in saving money on utilities and maintenance.

Contact us at Relumination to evaluate your specific needs for LED lighting in parking structures. We will design a lighting solution that will keep drivers and passengers safe and secure in your parking garage.