One of our lighting designers of over 20 years just retrofitted another spooky parking garage - and the results are extraordinary.
We’ve all been there – walking through a neglected parking garage; wandering throughout a sea of dormant vehicles in search of your 2009 Toyota Prius. You rapidly press the lock button on your key fob, listening for a horn to echo through the dark and musty chambers of concrete...
But man, how much less terrifying would this be if the lighting in this place was halfway decent?
Why are Parking Garages Scary?
Well, just ask anyone with Tingchechekuphobia, the fear of parking garages. ;)
In all seriousness, parking garages are generally claustrophobic, damp, and above all else, dark. The first descriptor to come up when talking about parking garages is usually "dimly-lit" or "dingy".
Why are they dark, though? Well, concrete doesn't do a great job of reflecting light - at all. And, up until somewhat recently, fluorescent tubes were the standard form of lighting for these spaces. Now with LED tubes taking over, these spaces can be twice as bright for half the wattage.
That's where the retrofit comes in.
How Does a Retrofit Work?
The Oxford dictionary-definition of the word retrofit is simply, "an act of adding a component or accessory to something that did not have it when manufactured."
Essentially, in the lighting business, this process entails the evaluation of the current lighting job with the intention of replacing any incandescent and/or fluorescent technology with the better LED technology. This saves the consumer tons on electric bills, and also provides a longer lasting alternative to other forms of light.
Oh, and did I mention LEDs are brighter?
Hornig Companies Parking Garage - Jim Swadner
Jim has been with Service Lighting / LightBulbs.com for nearly 25 years, and will be retiring in November of this year. He wrapped up the retrofit of a Hornig parking garage earlier this October, and the before and after shots are stunning.
The motivation for this retrofit job was to decrease/eliminate crime/break-ins at this specific parking garage. Jim details the original layout by saying, "This was a typical under-designed garage with 4' 2-lamp T8 Wraparound Fixtures mounted at 13 feet in between the concrete supports. We took out the dirty lenses as they were not needed and only impeded the output of the fixture."
To replace the original bulbs, Jim used "18.5 watt Type-B LED Tubes in 5000K/Daylight" with a staggering 2600 lumens "to punch it up". And man, did it work!
Congratulations, Jim, on a job well done - both for this project, and for the last 25 years! :)
