Q: Is there really anything on the market which can replace a PAR20 or PAR30 that is energy-efficient and has a long life?
A: There are a lot of LED products coming into the market and it is tough to sort them out. I can’t just take manufacturers’ claims as hard fact; I need to test them out. For this particular type of LED lamp there is one company, EarthLED (www.earthled.com), so far that I like best. It is certainly not the only company, but so far it is the leader from my personal experience. Their PAR lamps are dimmable and come in two color temperatures, although they are not inexpensive. The PAR30 runs $90, but will pay for itself in energy savings in four-and-a-half years (eight hours a day, 365 days a year at $.10/KWh). They claim a 50,000-hour lamp life, but I won’t be able to confirm that for another 12 years. (Mark it on your calendars; we’ll all do lunch.) If other manufacturers want me to test their products, I am always happy to do so.
Q: We have a customer who is building a new home that has 22-foot ceilings in the dining room. A hanging fixture is not desirable due to the height of the ceiling. Do you have any other suggestions for lighting the table? We did suggest wall sconces, but felt additional lights would be needed since it is a dining area. The clients did not like the idea of track on the side walls because they thought it would be in their faces as they were sitting at the table.
A: Are people still building McMansions? A room with that ceiling height is more of a cathedral than a dining room. Will they bring in a priest to say grace before dinner? Perhaps they should just put in another floor and have two levels with 11-foot ceilings. Okay, I’m done ranting.
A good way to go is to add a series of box beams at about 14 feet above the floor and running parallel to it. This will start to give the room some human scale by visually adding a secondary ceiling line. They can then run wiring within the beams for hanging fixtures and have them hang down 3 feet below the beams, which is still 11 feet above the floor level. You could also install recessed adjustable, low voltage fixtures in the beams or install low-profile low voltage monopoints with shielded heads on the side of the beams for accent light. I agree that sconces will make this enormous room more inviting. They should be larger in size to be in scale with the room dimensions. A baptismal font would be a nice touch, too.
