Don, Also the most expensive.
We looked at LED when lighting the South Cavern at Natural Bridge. We felt that it's not quite there yet, and at between $60 to $120 per bulb, it simply was not feasible. What we went with is a 12-volt system which does use less power to illuminate the cavern. We are still looking at them as it seems each year the costs keep coming down. Plus there are some incredible systems which would give us interpretive tools which simply haven't existed until now. And going with a full LED system would allow you to run the entire lighting system off of solar panels, thus taking a commercial tour off the grid, so to speak. This is also something we are watching. My experience with halogen is that yes, they burn hot, but if you take the time to design the overall system, your lights are only on when people are actually in a given room or passage and then turned off upon leaving. We also purposefully chose to keep much of the cavern dark. But again, this is a choice made by the installers/owners/operators. We no longer feel it necessary to light up every blessed square inch of cave. If we could go back and relight the North Caverns (and we intend to do so at some point), we would likely remove a significant portion of the ambient light. Doing so is better for the cavern, and we feel it also produces a better experience for the guest. We haven't seen any issues arise with the halogens in the South Cavern. The one drawback with that heat is that calcite will deposit quickly on the lenses of the fixtures. If not maintained, the quality of light from the fixture deteriorates. The fixtures even survived full submersion when part of the cave filled with water back in 2007. I feel that the color of the light gets in to a subjective argument. We feel that halogen actually produces a better color for Natural Bridge over incandescent, and much better than compact fluorescent. To my eye, halogen is more white, thus I feel it produces as "neutral" a light as possible, if that makes sense. But again, this also goes to what you are attempting to illuminate. The color of the light created by a given bulb can actually enhance a cave scene, depending on the natural colors present within the rock. That's one interesting thing about LED bulbs is that some manufacturers will let us create a bulb with different numbers of blue/white/yellow/red LEDs. Personally, I tend to shy away from doing so as it's not too many steps away from full-on tecno-color-rama of red, blue, purple, and green lights found in some show caves. And that just hurts my feelings, along with my eyes. Brian Vauter Natural Bridge Caverns On Sat, Jul 21, 2012 at 6:33 PM, Don Cooper <wavyca...@gmail.com> wrote: > Yeah - I've gone back over it and yes, it is 12V Halogen. > In my experience - halogen lighting produces very yellow and very hot > bulbs. > I don't get it - but apparently, yeah. They are halogen. Not LED, which > it > would seem would be the most efficient and lowest heat producing light > source! > -WaV > > On Sat, Jul 21, 2012 at 9:43 AM, Logan McNatt <lmcn...@austin.rr.com> > wrote: > > Don, > > > > I just called Longhorn Caverns and the person who answered asked one of > the > > tour guides if the new lighting system is halogen or LED. The guide > said it > > is halogen. Same for the description of the new lighting system in the > June > > 21st TPWD press release that can be accessed at the TPWD website or the > > Longhorn Cavern website (link below). > > > > http://www.longhorncaverns.com/pdf/Longhorn_Caverns_New_Lighting.pdf > > > > > > > > On 7/20/2012 7:06 PM, Don Cooper wrote: > >> > >> Apologies for not staying in closer tune with the details, but the > >> KVUE weather channel news ticker mentioned a new HALOGEN lighting > >> system at Longhorn Caverns... I cannot see how that would POSSIBLY be > >> an energy efficient and less-heat generating lighting option. > >> Please confirm that they are as clueless as they seem - and the new > >> light system is LED based! > >> -WaV > >> > >> --------------------------------------------------------------------- > >> Visit our website: http://texascavers.com > >> To unsubscribe, e-mail: texascavers-unsubscr...@texascavers.com > >> For additional commands, e-mail: texascavers-h...@texascavers.com > >> > >> > > > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > Visit our website: http://texascavers.com > To unsubscribe, e-mail: texascavers-unsubscr...@texascavers.com > For additional commands, e-mail: texascavers-h...@texascavers.com > >
