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[DSLF] Digest Number 1308
There are 5 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1. Re: Holophane and billboard update
From: BGSTARLITE@aol...
2. Sebastin Florida Public Pier Lighting
From: Mysids@aol...
3. Re: Holophane is Dark-Skies Friendly
From: patric@ghostriders...
4. Re: Holophane is Dark-Skies Friendly
From: Steve Davis <w2sgd@juno...>
5. Re: Holophane is Dark-Skies Friendly
From: ctstarwchr@aol...
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Message: 1
Date: Fri, 19 Mar 2004 11:37:21 EST
From: BGSTARLITE@aol...
Subject: Re: Holophane and billboard update
It is interesting that Holophane should be brought up on the list today.
Just yesterday I was talking to the company that owns the sole billboard in
town to determine their mind-set. The owner mentioned that the lights on the
board are holophanes and he knew about IDA. All this before our conversation
really got started. I hadn't mentioned either to him. I just expressed a concern
about light pollution.
To make a long story short, what I achieved was a shut down of the lighted
billboard at midnight rather than the usual 12:35 a.m. Remember, no matter how
small a step forward is, it's better than a step backward. I also established a
good communication with this company and had some other billboard questions
answered honestly.
It's always good to keep the lines of communication friendly. The fewer
enemies we make the farther we'll get in the LP battle.
Bill
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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Message: 2
Date: Fri, 19 Mar 2004 12:03:14 -0500
From: Mysids@aol...
Subject: Sebastin Florida Public Pier Lighting
Recently I had the opportunity to visit Sebastin Florida where we took advantage of an Intracoastal Waterway pedestrian trail. While on a midnight walk on the waterfront, we came upon a small city park with a pier with an excellent lighting technique. The small halogen lights were mounted and shielded under the 3' ft high handrails. The lights were directed down upon the pier deck. This would give the visitor enough lighting on the pier walkway without restricting visual access to the nightsky and waterway. Even from the shore and water, there was no direct visibility of the lights until you got up close to the pier. All this made the pier more inviting to sit and observe the nightsky on the waterway. For a boater, it made for safer conditions to approach the pier.
Good job Sebastin. Anyone from the City Parks Department on this listing? Good photos for the IDA website is welcomed for public educational purposes.
JNoles
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Message: 3
Date: Fri, 19 Mar 2004 10:32:55 -0600
From: patric@ghostriders...
Subject: Re: Holophane is Dark-Skies Friendly
nancybiv <nancybiv@yahoo...> wrote:
> Holophane is a
> company that for over 100 years has provided lighting solutions.
>
> http://www.holophane.com/product/pdfs/HL-2012.pdf
Some in the lighting industry hook civic planners with green talk and
Dark-Sky jargon, then use half-truths and misinformation to steer buyers
away from Full Cutoff luminaires by pushing their main stock of glary
100-year-old 'acorns' to the limits of eye tolerance. Call it "Dark-Sky
Bait-and-switch" if you will.
Being dark-sky friendly involves more than just having a few *good*
fixtures in the back room -- it involves embracing a philosophy of
improving both the physical and visual environment by earnestly
promoting luminaires that compliment how the eye works, and that do so
in the most efficient and ecological manner possible.
The best lighting engineers use only the minimum light necessary only
when and where needed, and proper use of FCO tends to be one of the more
useful tools toward accomplishing the goal of safe, visually appealing
yet low-glare, low-waste outdoor lighting.
Sorry, Holophane is still one or two epiphanies away from fitting into
the 'Dark-Sky Friendly' category.
Patric.
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Message: 4
Date: Fri, 19 Mar 2004 12:33:40 -0500
From: Steve Davis <w2sgd@juno...>
Subject: Re: Holophane is Dark-Skies Friendly
<nancybiv@yahoo...> wrote:
>Here are a list of links to the Holophane website that may prove to
>be valuable information about outdoor lighting. Holophane is a
>company that for over 100 years has provided lighting solutions.
... and lots of light polution.
For REAL information -- without the company propaganda see:
http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/cfa/ps/nelpag.html
http://www.crlaction.org
http://www.darksky.org
and a host of other regional and national LP websites
around the world dedicated to stamping out acorns,
globes, floodlights, sag lens, dropped refractors, uptilt,
overkill, including the *FALSE* prophets -- which can't
pass "The TEST".
Steve, w2sgd@juno...
Dark Skies for the Adirondacks
http://www.timesunion.com/communities/darksky
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Message: 5
Date: Fri, 19 Mar 2004 16:14:33 EST
From: ctstarwchr@aol...
Subject: Re: Holophane is Dark-Skies Friendly
In a message dated 3/19/2004 8:04:13 AM Eastern Standard Time,
nancybiv@yahoo... writes:
> Here are a list of links to the Holophane website that may prove
> to be valuable information about outdoor lighting. Holophane is a
> company that for over 100 years has provided lighting solutions.
>
> http://www.holophane.com/product/pdfs/HL-2012.pdf
> http://www.holophane.com/product/pdfs/HL-2064.pdf
> http://www.holophane.com/product/pdfs/HL-2014.pdf
> http://www.holophane.com/school/tech/IESC.PDF
Thanks Nancy and thanks also for using the operative word *may*
when providing the links above. I appreciate this information
and promise not to jump on your first posting to the Forum because
it came with your efforts to help us learn more about good quality
outdoor lighting products. There are some fair ones, some very bad
ones and some outstanding ones when it comes to luminaires that can,
if applied correctly, mitigate direct uplighting impact to bedroom
windows and the night sky.
Holophane is trying very hard to provide a wider selection of high
quality outdoor fixtures in efforts to offer more products that do
not cause *as much* damage as previously available products we have
seen installed in the near distant past and that still continue to
perpetuate. It is big a step in the right direction, but please also
understand some of the literature by many manufacturers can be very
misleading and inaccurate when it comes to achieving dark skies.
For instance the IESC.PDF has some very good information, but there
are technical errors in the fact it does not list any of the IES
cutoff definitions correctly for emissions below horizontal with
exception of the noncutoff. They do, however, properly list the
potential percentage of lamp lumens allowed to stream directly
skyward by the four different IES cutoff classes and that aspect
should be greatly admired. Some of the cousins under the Acuity
Brands umbrella and other manufacturers are not quite as advanced
in their level of knowledge yet, so like Ben Franklin said, don't
believe everything you read. We're all still learning and we still
have a very long way to go.
What I greatly admire about this company is they now provide full
field 180 degree vertical photometry for all of their new fixtures.
It is a performance report allowing researchers and the more advanced
designers among us to accurately assess light emissions for all of the
horizontal and vertical angles around the luminaires. That information
above the horizontal plane is vital and it has been sorely needed for
many years. I have mercilessly hounded many manufacturers to offer it
at every possible opportunity and would like to thank the Holophane
company for coming to the call so we can now (if we have the technical
ability) *look before we leap* for a purchase or product endorsement
so to speak.
Sorry if this sounds like an infomercial, but two years ago Holophane
began an outstanding new program they called "Operation Cutoff" in
an effort to modify and improve their existing decorative product
line and they have achieved full cutoff decorative fixtures in some
cases. That is an admirable achievement we all should have great
respect and gratitude for. On the discouraging side, however, there
are some products being marketed as *dark sky friendly* whose
performance is not quite as exemplary yet and they still need to be
improved.
One example is the Granville with Lunar Optics in the elegant
brochure you provided that URL for. It is a very attractive high
quality reproduction of an ancient gas fixture offered by the company
in the late 1800s to early 1900s. Its original debut with conversion
to an incandescent lamp had very similar (lunar) optics shielding
designed by General Electric to use the Holophane Granville globe
back when the original fixture operated with gas mantles prior to
1918. It is featured in a photograph in their publication, "The
New Era in Street Lighting" on page 24, copyright 1918. That was
the first street lighting manual in history.
If anyone can find that document online PLEASE submit the URL because
it has some fabulous information in it. In 1918 Holophane advised all
designers that any light sent above the horizontal was waste and should
therefore be conserved. They also stated any fixture distributing light
to the road and nearby areas was extravagant and should be avoided if it
shines glare regardless of how efficiently it is being distributed.
They even hinted about light trespass but it was not called by that
term directly. It is all really great stuff most people thought IDA
invented, but it has been around serving as common knowledge to cogent
low impact lighting designers for nearly 100 years now.
According to factory photometry the Granville with Lunar Optics *dark
sky friendly* IES cutoff fixture emits a total of 8.3% of its lamp
lumens and 14.1% of its fixture lumens directly above the horizontal
plane (ref: 101438.IES). That is 53% of the maximum IES uplighting
allowance for fixtures in the cutoff classification. As outrageous
as this may seem to the grand majority of people fighting against light
pollution, it is in my opinion an outstanding improvement over the other
noncutoff Granville fixture cousins like the GV150HP00XX3RX that emits
a whopping total of 25.8% of its lamp's lumens and 33.3% of its
fixture's lumens directly into the night sky and bedroom windows (ref:
47218.IES). If that much air leaked from our tires every time we drove
our vehicles we would never get very far and it wouldn't be long before
we bought better tires that did not leak, don't you think?
When we see product improvements like this happen it is not something
to take lightly. Those achievements should in my opinion be complemented
with requests to give us no light directly above the horizontal in future
iterations. It should not be granted the IDA seal of approval yet because
in my opinion it still sends way too much of its direct light skyward.
I believe zero uplight (tolerance of 0 fc, not 0.00000 fc) can be
achieved with decorative fixtures using a different (and maybe more
expensive) molding technique incorporated with supplementary opaque
shielding, but it will very likely never happen with a single integral
casting using refracting lens technology. I was invited to the Holophane
headquarters in Newark, Ohio, by a high ranking official to explore these
possibilities with the company's top optical engineers two years ago, but
that endeavor has not come to fruition yet.
My point is, please always check the photometric IES data performance
reports carefully before blindly believing marketing literature and
endorsing or embracing any fixture being marketed as dark sky friendly.
It might be an eye opener to most people and some of the products are
truly excellent -- meaning I wouldn't go ballistic if they were installed
sensibly at adjacent properties near my back yard IF they were not
lamped with anything over 175 watts. You need to know me a lot better
to understand the spirit of that statement, however.
Thanks again for your participation Nancy and I'm proud to welcome you
to the Dark Sky List Forum! Hope the information and others responses
did not hammer your dreams or hurt your feelings because I'm sure that
was not the intent. Many of us have developed a high sensitivity with
zero tolerance for direct uplight because there is far too much of it
happening already and we are trying very hard to fix that problem.
Good full cutoff and fully shielded products (i.e., noncutoffs, semi-
cutoffs, and cutoffs with 0% direct uplight) will help achieve the goal
for a calory-free Milky Way everyone can enjoy right from their homes
just by stepping outside and looking up. :-) Keep that information
coming!
Clear skies and good seeing,
Keep looking up!
Cliff Haas
Author Light Pollution Awareness Website (LiPAW)
http://members.aol.com/ctstarwchr
http://www.crlaction.org
Member: IESNA, CRL, NELPAG, AARP
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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