wiring lighting inside a valance

[tom mann]

How do I wire a series of florescent fixtures together for lighting inside a valance?  How do I know how much an outlet can handle?

Should I use LED's instead?

[Philip H]

most, but not all, wall outloets are on 15 Amp circuits, and its the load in amps that will trip the circuit breaker.  So you first need to determine how man amps your fixtures will add up to, not the voltage.  LED's may use fweer volts, but if they are 20 AMP fixtures, and you add too many of them together, you will trip the breaker all the time, especially when you plug in your toater.

[BCR 570]

Tom:

I encourage you to give LEDs some consideration:








The 20 inch light bars are powered by an electronic 12 volt power supply and each light bar draws 350 milliamps.


Tim

[mmyers]

15 amps x 120 volts = 1800 watts so a 15 amp circuit will handle a maximum of 1800 watts.
To be safe never exceed 80% of that so figure no more than 1400 watts.

[Nelson]

In another month or so, the stores will be filled with the LED Christmas lights. They are cheap and already wired to run end to end.
If you prefer the softer and dimable lighting of incandescent, the rope lights are a great way to go. (also available cheap at Christmas time)

Nelson

[GaryHinshaw]

15 amps x 120 volts = 1800 watts so a 15 amp circuit will handle a maximum of 1800 watts.
To be safe never exceed 80% of that so figure no more than 1400 watts.

That's a good rule of thumb, just remember to count everything on the circuit, not just the lights.    A standard 4ft T8 (1" diameter) fluorescent bulb is 32 watts.  I have about a dozen 2-bulb fixtures (~800 watts) in half of my 25x25 basement and it's very bright, but not overly so, IMO.

Before you take the plunge, you should try out a few bulbs types, including LED's, to make sure you like how colors are being rendered,  as I'm sure that is important to you.

-gfh

BTW, I think you want to wire them with feeders off a main trunk line.  I tapped two feeds per junction box along my trunk.

[Walkercolt]

My nickel's worth for the USAF's training me on wiring. I would feel more comfortable with a dedicated 20 amp breaker for my lighting, wheather it's fluorecent or LED's or whatever. I also would like a 20 amp dedicated circuit with GFI recepticles for everything else. (Spilled coffee into a power strip or extension cord ever?) Most houses in the US have about 122 volts. If your skin isn't bone-dry, 110 milliamps can stop your heart. It usually won't, but it HAS happened. If you run strip fluorecents, use a 12 gauge "buss wire" with wire rated at a minimum of 70* C for extra safety. The Chinese made 4-packs of CFL's for $6 at the big-box home stores have made them a viable option too. I have experimented with what are called "high flux"(very bright) white LED's. Now mine were surplus, and I ran a "destructive test" of operating them 24/7. In 3 months, they have dimmed over 50% by my Minolta Flashmeter IV (reads to 1/10th of a stop of light). Just something to consider, but LED technology is improving by leaps and bounds. If you get them cheap enough, (like I did) then replacement isn't any more than replacing an incandent light bulb. I have replaced all but two of the interior lights in my RV trailer with LEDs to cut-down the heat and the current draw when I'm not plugged into 110. Replaced all the marker lights with LEDs too, and the running/stoplights. Brighter, no current draw to speak of, last a long time.

[DKS]

LEDs are great, about 10-15% more efficient than fluorescent, which in turn is 25-30% more efficient than incandescent, but you need to consider one last thing: cost per lumen to install. LEDs are improving rapidly, but the good ones cost quite a lot of money. And don't get sucked in by the "Christmas tree lights" idea (been there, done that); the LEDs used in these strings are not very bright, and their color temperature is all over the map.

You may end up with a really cool (literally and figuratively), "green" layout using LEDs, but you may also need to take out a second mortgage to do it, depending on how much you need. Also consider the cost and logistics of having to provide an outlet for each unit, as opposed to fluorescent units which can be daisy-chained together. Cost per lumen to install, fluorescent is dirt cheap, and it's close enough to LED in terms of lumens per watt that you probably won't need a dedicated circuit for it. Plus, you'll be able to better control light temperature; with LEDs, you pretty much get what you get.

One last thing, with respect to photography: LEDs constitute strings of individual point sources of light, and without diffusion (which can reduce light intensity drastically), sometimes they can cast really odd shadows and create strange highlights on shiny surfaces. Fluorescent lighting casts nice, even, natural-looking shadows, and don't produce patterns of bright spots on shiny objects. I know, I went with LEDs; it cost me a fortune, and I'm not really thrilled by the photographs I get using them.

Notice the odd shadows near the station on the platform:



Also notice how olive the vegetation looks--it doesn't look like that in real life. I've had to dye it all to correct it. And... Silflor grass that hasn't been painted goes nuts with LEDs. Touch-up takes forever.

[Nelson]

Yeah, David is correct about the Christmas lights, I should have mentioned that. You don't want to use them for your source of light for photography. You can eventually correct the white balance in your photos, but it takes a lot of experimenting and work to get it right. Most cameras and image processing software have flourescent settings that are near perfect, and you can get full spectrum bulbs that give excellent color rendition.

If your lighting is a straight run, standard flourescent fixtures can be fastened to each other end to end and the wiring passes through each fixture to the next. If you have curves, you can connect them with short pieces of pre-bent conduit.

If you are not into wiring, you can buy daisy chain ready flourescent fixtures that come with a short cable to plug the fixtures together end to end, but they are more expensive than standard fixtures. 

[tom mann]

The efficiency of LEDs are attractive, but the cost is prohibitive.  I like what Tim has done, but the suppliers I found charge too much for it to work out.

David brings up a good point about the multiple sources of light.  Also, since I will be doing a lot of photography, (as opposed to operations), I need to be able to control shadowing.

[wm3798]

Not sophisticated by any stretch, and the light is pretty blue, but you can get narrow tube fluorescents at Walmart for about $10, and they include an adaptor for string-along wiring. (one plug can run up to 3 lamps, I think... check the label.)  They're available in a couple of lengths, I think 18" and 24".  The tube is enclosed in a diffuser, so you could use some sort of color gel to adjust the color of the light.



I threw this one up as a work light over my yard.  I don't use it for photography, though.

Lee

[Hiroe]

In another month or so, the stores will be filled with the LED Christmas lights. They are cheap and already wired to run end to end.
If you prefer the softer and dimable lighting of incandescent, the rope lights are a great way to go. (also available cheap at Christmas time)

Nelson

While i personally prefer fluorescent lights for most general layout lighting, i've been contemplating getting several batches of the LED christmas-light strings specifically to use for "evening" and "night" lighting. I figure full sets of Yellow, Red, and Blue should accomplish it reasonably well. (and at $2 per string of 60 at wally world, i'm not out too much if it doesn't work out.)

Not a layout (liquor cabinet actually), but useful for understanding how photography looks with them:


--Drew

[asciibaron]

i am in the process of deciding what lighting i will use for my layout.  i have a drop ceiling over 2/3 of the layout, but there is very little space above the ceiling due to plumbing and A/C duct work.  i might be able to use some drop ceiling florescent lights - need to look into that.  really want to get the lighting sorted soon.

for the staging yard, i'm planning on using LED rope light - it's easy to work with and will be plenty bright for seeing what's where in the staging.

above the final 1/3 of the layout, i'm planning on using a single 4' florescent tube lamp on each side of the back drop.  there will be a valance to hide the lamps.

wiring them up is pretty simple, think of the mains as a bus and then connect the lamps for the bus.  

[DKS]

In another month or so, the stores will be filled with the LED Christmas lights. They are cheap and already wired to run end to end.
If you prefer the softer and dimable lighting of incandescent, the rope lights are a great way to go. (also available cheap at Christmas time)

Nelson

While i personally prefer fluorescent lights for most general layout lighting, i've been contemplating getting several batches of the LED christmas-light strings specifically to use for "evening" and "night" lighting. I figure full sets of Yellow, Red, and Blue should accomplish it reasonably well. (and at $2 per string of 60 at wally world, i'm not out too much if it doesn't work out.)

Not a layout (liquor cabinet actually), but useful for understanding how photography looks with them:


--Drew

I had a similar system some years back: three sets of lights on sequentially-triggered motorized dimmers: white layout lights, "sunset" lights (a string with yellow, orange, red, purple and blue lights arranged to "paint" a sunset on the backdrop) and "twilight" lights, strings of blue above the layout and along the backdrop.

http://whiteriverandnorthern.net/clinic_29.htm

The problem with 100% blue lights is that they are "too blue" and the effect isn't quite as realistic. Blue LEDs makes it worse because they are so incredibly pure. What I did back then was scratch the blue coloring on the lights to let a little white light leak out and soften the blue. Using LEDs, maybe you could just sprinkle some cool-whites into the blue string; you'll have to experiment, especially since cameras don't perceive light the way our eyes do.



Wish I had a pic of the sunset machine--it worked really well. The yellow lights were bunched tightly together, and they were progressively spaced out further to the sides to blend into the blues.

[BCR 570]

Tom:

The LED installation costs more, but to be fair, over the lifetime of the layout one has to factor in the absence of costs related to replacing ballasts and tubes, and the energy savings.  My hand was forced by the fact that I used shelving brackets to support the layout, and the standards were located on the 24 inch stud centres.  The shortest available fluoerscent fixtures available locally were the 24 inch T5s which I could not accommodate between the brackets.  I also needed a very shallow fixture which could be hidden under the shelf type benchwork.  So there were some non-lighting issues at play for me.

Back to cost:  when I prepared the article for MRP, Tony Koester asked me to find some U.S. suppliers to mention in the sidebar.  I was stunned at the U.S. prices which were in the $45-50 range per fixture  -I am paying less than $20.00 CAD per light bar.

I will respectfully disagree somewhat with the comments regarding multiple point sources of light.  That they may be, but with 100 degree angle of dispersion along their length the light bars become a linear light source, and placing them six inches apart eliminates most of the unwanted shadows, even on the backdrop.  Those that I have not been able to eliminate would be there regardless of the light source.  I have been pleased with the evenness of coverage.

I do know what David is referring to - Tony forwarded an e-mail from an MRP reader showing a pen standing on end with about eight shadows radiating out from it which had been taken under LED lighting.  I was unable to replicate the effect under my lights.

Regarding colour, you have to experiment a bit to find a colour temperature which works for you.  I eventually settled on 3500K; 4100K seemd a bit harsh to me.

Another issue for me was negligible heat generation as my layout is located in a small room, and I have  alot of resin models which don't react well to heat.

I would consider this to be an emerging and developing technology, but I wanted to see if it could be done.  That is what makes this hobby so interesting - there are so many different  ways of doing everything!


Tim