Those energy-eaters must go!
We’ve talked before about the beautiful antebellum homes of Texas, originally lit by candles, gaslight, or oil lamps. The masterful details of tall columns, plenty of windows, orchards, or huge, ancient trees still exist here and there, but mostly we live in smaller, more energy efficient, and much lower maintenance style homes nowadays.
Yet we haven’t left behind the idea of beauty; of owning a showplace of our own taste and style; of making a mere house into our home. Regardless of whether you own an estate on hundreds and hundreds of acres or a modern day city-home, you’ve probably invested some time and effort into creating a visual appeal.
It might take the form of cove-style or hidden architectural lighting to emphasize the best features of your home. Installed correctly, the light goes where it is needed, isn’t excessive, and isn’t wasted going straight up into space to annoy local astronomers. The Moon and stars are already lit—they don’t need your help or energy dollars!
Maybe you need to illuminate a water feature, whether a fountain or a reflecting pool. No matter how simple or ornate, we can bring out its most powerful visual appeal.
Energy Wise
We are landscape and architectural lighting specialists, so we know how to replace power-hungry mercury, sodium, and halogen lighting with long-life LED fixtures and lamps. For professional installers, it is vital to understand the difference between LED lamps which are designed for interior use, as opposed to those designed strictly for exterior use.
Built to be weather resistant, LED lights for exterior applications handle higher wattages (though still less than any competitor). LEDs for interior uses are seldom weather resistant. It is inappropriate to substitute one for the other.
Pressurized gas bulbs have a much shorter lifespan than LEDs bulbs. A Mercury vapor light may be rated to have a 24,000 hour life, but they get much dimmer with age and need to be replaced in about half that time, before they actually fail. Compared to a full lifetime of 50-100,000 hours for LEDs, these traditional bulbs are not much of a bargain after all.
Except for halogen, these gas-pressurized bulbs take between 4 and 7 minutes to get hot enough to turn the liquid mercury into a gas so that an electrical arc can be created. The “starter” inside the bulb requires liquid mercury to create the arc. If the power flickers the arc instantly fails and the bulb goes dark. It takes several minutes for the temperature to come down enough for the mercury to condense to liquid form so the bulb can restart.
So the question arises, how are you going to entertain your evening garden party guests for many minutes in the dark if there is even the briefest flicker in the electrical supply? You’ll be standing around in the dark (hopefully not falling into the pool) until the bulbs decide that you’ve waited long enough.
Other gas mediated lighting such as Metal Halide lamps or Sodium Vapor lamps suffer from the same difficulties with long starting times and very long downtime in the event of a power flicker. For most people this is sufficient reason to rid themselves of that ancient system.
If you need economical and energy efficient LED lighting to replace expensive mercury vapor, high pressure sodium, or halogen terrain-lighting, architectural lighting, or landscape lighting, we can handle that. We have been solving that problem for a number of years!
The Takeaway
LED lighting is extremely versatile, providing options that simply do not exist with other lighting systems. You might try to illuminate steps or small features with overhead bulbs, but you’ll never achieve a subtle, romantic, or beautiful effect like this.
You are not compromising your lighting by changing to this cost-efficient form. LEDs are capable of equal light output compared to the most powerful systems, or the tiniest amount of localized light. But at any illumination level they have the significant advantage of being phenomenally less expensive to operate.
When you combine that with how durable they are, lasting many times as long as their nearest competitor, and they are not full of toxic metals that contaminate our landfills, all the other choices seem to fall by the wayside. In fact, it doesn’t even seem to be a “choice” nowadays. LEDs save so much money and energy, that it’s good for you, good for the environment, and good for the economy.
Take a moment to have a look at our gallery of landscape lighting to get just a hint of the possibilities. Uplights, downlights, art lighting, feature lighting, and architectural lighting—it is all there for you to enjoy.
We are experienced, licensed electricians, not some fly-by-night outfit that wants to turn a quick buck at your expense. There are so many ways do a job poorly, so we urge you to call us, because… We’ll do it right!
While we are located in Houston, Texas, please remember that we provide commercial lighting systems and house lighting plans in Austin, Beaumont, College Station, Dallas, El Paso, Midland, San Antonio, and points beyond.
Give us a call today at 713-863-1133. We’d love to hear from you!
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