Even though the 100w mercury recessed cans were disconnected in the mid 90s, many still remain installed. As you can see they're quite closely spaced so I can imagine this hallway would been bright with all the mercs going. They got replaced with the 2x32T8 wraparounds.
Wow, I would have added more wraps, or better yet, just connected the recessed cans right to line voltage (assuming its 120V) and then used CFLs or LEDs, but back in the 90s those weren't really options (PL adapters are out but they're not exactly that effective).
A 100W MV, when new, gives about 4000 lumens, roughly equivalent to two F32T8s. I'm assuming with these they probably made the specifications with the dimming-out factor in mind.
I think that many 100w mercury cans were overkill....though if they didn't have the expensive & rare reflector lamps, a lot of the light was trapped in the fixtures. It looks quite dark now, though!
The old lamps were overkill. The amount of light may actually be equivalent to the amount of light the mercs were giving off at the time they wre disconnected. Joe rescued one of the lamps and it's quite dim, possibly original to the fixture too! I think he said it was about as bright as a 40W incandescent at best.
Yeah, they more of less all still have the original GE A23 /DX lamps from 1974. Some had newer lamps so I'm guessing they only spot relamped during the 20 years that they were used. Personally instead of installing the wraps, I would have retrofitted the fixtures to 50w CMH..maybe even every second fixture and just disconnect the others. LED or CFL would have been nice but the fixtures were wired for 347v so I guess they would have had to use either PLs with 347v ballasts or LED retrofit kits with a 347v driver.
Ah I see. Here it seems all the lighting at my schools (besides gymnasium and maybe parking lot lights) is 120V. If these were 240 or 208V, you could run a neutral and convert them to 120V but with 277 and 347 (and probably 480V) you can't do that. I'm curcious what it would look like if the mercs were reconnected and just left as-is without the wrap lights. Must have been dim. And it would be cool to see them all relamped again. An idea came to me: perhaps the cans have a narrow lamp beam, which is why they're so close together?
Ahh, I think the older buildings at my school have 120v lighting but for the most part, the lighting is 347v. Yeah even though so many fixture were used, the mercs at the time of retrofitting were as dim as a 40w incandescent. The bulbs were set pretty far back in the fixtures so I think they did have a pretty narrow beam. It would have been neat to go back to 1974 and see how this place looked with new lamps.
Most of the cans still had lamps inside but some floors had the lamps removed.
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A 100W MV, when new, gives about 4000 lumens, roughly equivalent to two F32T8s. I'm assuming with these they probably made the specifications with the dimming-out factor in mind.
Most of the cans still had lamps inside but some floors had the lamps removed.