Lighting Maintenance and Importance Behind It
Lighting is an investment in your business that requires minimal maintenance for the most part. While lighting is pretty minimal in the upkeep it needs, there are still a few aspects of lighting maintenance and the importance behind it that are always good to know. Here are 4 tips to help you master lighting maintenance with ease.
1. Do an annual evaluation of the lighting system.
This evaluation should cover the entirety of your lighting system. An annual evaluation, regardless of the type of system or fixtures you have in place, will help you to spot any areas that may not be performing at full capacity. It also helps you identify areas that could be improved upon in terms of efficiencies such as an area that would benefit from installing daylight level sensors or diffusers to the fixture for a softer illumination. An evaluation should encompass all aspects related to lighting from whether or not a different color temperature would improve work productivity in a particular area to dealing with fluorescent fixtures that are flickering too much.
2. Start with broken or diminished fixtures first.
If you have a fixture with internal issues, broken bulbs, missing shields or lenses, or in need of relamping, deal with these issues first and foremost. Until these issues are remedied, any other upgrades added to the lighting plan are a waste of time and money.
3. Perform group relamping.
If a bulb burns out, you naturally replace it. This creates a cycle of lighting maintenance that is scattered and seemingly unpredictable. Many large scale and even some smaller operations do what is called group relamping. For example, if you know a bulb will last for an estimated number of hours, you can set up a schedule that means all the lamps in an area should expire around the same time. If your lamps have an average life rating of 4,000 hours and your business operates them 2,000 hours a year, then you will need to relamp every two years. This will also help you determine a cleaning schedule since cleaning and relamping should be done at the same time to create minimal disturbances to the fixture.
4. Verify that all lamps and fixtures meet the specified guidelines.
If a lamp needs relamping outside of the scheduled group relamping outline, chances are you will have it changed. Regardless of when bulbs are changed, a big part of lighting care is to check that lamps are the right type and watt for what the fixture specifies. Using the wrong lamp can lead to inefficient lighting that pulls too much energy or creates more heat than light so make sure you check your bulbs.