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High Efficacy LED's - California

Davida

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Joined
Dec 19, 2010
Messages
11
I'm having a new garage built in Southern California and I was told that I need to have high efficacy LED's for the exterior lights. I'm having trouble confirming exactly what this means. I was expecting to get some lights from steellightingco.com and just put some LED bulbs in them. Does anyone have experience with the building code that requires these "high efficacy" bulbs? Can I just put LED bulbs in a traditional fixture and meet this requirement?
Thanks,
Dave
 
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cybrdyke

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Californistan has their own rules, set by the California Energy Commission. They include not only efficiency, but warranty, life ratings and the types of light sources allowed. The rest of the country abides by different rules and codes that vary between states. Many states have no rules at all.
You can start by being sure that your new lights are qualified by Design Lights Consortium (DLC). This group has become the watchdog for lighting products, ensuring that they are as efficient as they can be. Energy Star is another such group. If you see either of these groups logo on the products that you want to use, they will probably be among the most efficient out there.
To be sure, you can google the CEC and try (good luck) to decipher their legal-ese and lighting gobbledygook.
Good luck,
CD
 

CitadelBlue

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Aug 1, 2009
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Northern VA
I havent been impressed with CFLs or LEDs with respect to the length of time they are suppose to last. I have 10 year old incandent flood light bulbs that have outlasted LEDs by 8 or 9 by years and are still burning.
 

Ralf11

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Feb 29, 2016
Messages
2,275
Well made LEDs will outlast incandescents by orders of magnitude.

LEDs from a 'suspect country' will fail quickly
 

Showkey

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Aug 9, 2014
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Wausau WI
Our maybe you should be able to go to the store and buy the LED of your choice like the other states. Going to bet those special CA spec bulbs are not a $1 a piece like the market place price is trending. Yes, there are some really “poor quality cheap bulbs” but the market place has a way for fixing that too.
 

dogdog

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Nov 15, 2011
Messages
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Well made LEDs will outlast incandescents by orders of magnitude.

LEDs from a 'suspect country' will fail quickly

LOL... Almost all LED lights are manufacture from the "suspect country". Not sure what you mean Jelly bean. But apparently there is a difference in efficiency of the LED bulbs by their drivers. Dependents on who markets it to you. Although I don't know what efficiency does OP referring to .... Light efficiency or power factor or something else.

 
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eystein

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Oct 4, 2012
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Location
Oslo, Norway
I live in Norway and always get fed up by all this talk about energy efficient bulbs. Outdoor OK, but here where it is cold most of the year any change to a more energy efficient indoor bulb will only make the thermostatically controlled electric heater work correspondingly harder. - No gain !
 

adrenalinejeeper

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Joined
Jan 30, 2018
Messages
191
Location
Ventura County, CA
I'm having a new garage built in Southern California and I was told that I need to have high efficacy LED's for the exterior lights. I'm having trouble confirming exactly what this means. I was expecting to get some lights from steellightingco.com and just put some LED bulbs in them. Does anyone have experience with the building code that requires these "high efficacy" bulbs? Can I just put LED bulbs in a traditional fixture and meet this requirement?
Thanks,
Dave

We should have our Title 24 and HERS inspection in the next month or two, and we have Steel Lighting Co gooseneck lights with some basic big box store LEDs. I'll let you know how it goes, but I don't anticipate any problems. So far the inspectors we have asked respond with "are they LED? Good." and that's it.

On a side note, we LOVE our lights from Steel Lighting Co. They are true made in USA steel barn lights and you can tell they really care about the product. From the packaging to the actual light, they do it right. You won't regret the purchase. We went with "The Gardena".

View media item 108764
 

Ray-CA

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Jan 6, 2007
Messages
3,451
Location
San Diego CA
When we "finialed" our build in 2014 we had to have solar controlled dusk/dawn lights. This was required, not sure why. So, I hung cheap, open bottom fixtures with the dusk/dawn screw in adapters. Once we got signed off, I put the lights and bulbs we wanted on the building.

Ray
 

adrenalinejeeper

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Joined
Jan 30, 2018
Messages
191
Location
Ventura County, CA
When we "finialed" our build in 2014 we had to have solar controlled dusk/dawn lights. This was required, not sure why. So, I hung cheap, open bottom fixtures with the dusk/dawn screw in adapters. Once we got signed off, I put the lights and bulbs we wanted on the building.

Ray

I thought we were going to be in the same boat, so we wired for a photocell sensor that would control a lighting contact for an outdoor light circuit. But after reading the notes on our plans more carefully, it seems it was high efficacy OR photocell.

This is our guidance:

Outdoor lighting attached to a building: (150(k)13.)
Provide high efficacy luminaries. EXCEPTION: Permanent, low efficacy luminaires controlled by a manual on/off switch, motion sensor without an override or bypass switch, AND one of the following three methods:
a. Photo control without a disabling override or bypass switch.
b. Astronomical time clock without a disabling override or bypass switch.
c. Energy management control systems (EMCS) without a disabling override or bypass switch that permits luminaires to be always on.


Since OP is also in CA, he may be under the same requirements for outdoor lights, depends what his county/city is enforcing.
 
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OP
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Davida

Member
Joined
Dec 19, 2010
Messages
11
We should have our Title 24 and HERS inspection in the next month or two, and we have Steel Lighting Co gooseneck lights with some basic big box store LEDs. I'll let you know how it goes, but I don't anticipate any problems. So far the inspectors we have asked respond with "are they LED? Good." and that's it.

On a side note, we LOVE our lights from Steel Lighting Co. They are true made in USA steel barn lights and you can tell they really care about the product. From the packaging to the actual light, they do it right. You won't regret the purchase. We went with "The Gardena".

View media item 108764

Thanks for all the replies.

adrenalinejeeper, thanks for the details on your experience with Steel Lighting Co., I was looking at getting the Gardena also and probably the Hawthorne to go next to the front door of the garage. I'm in Long Beach (Los Angeles County), where did you get the specific guidance for the requirements for your build that you quoted in your other comment? My contractor has given me some general guidance, but I'd like to get the specific requirements somewhere in writing.
 

cybrdyke

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Joined
Sep 9, 2014
Messages
3,444
Location
USA
where did you get the specific guidance for the requirements for your build that you quoted in your other comment? My contractor has given me some general guidance, but I'd like to get the specific requirements somewhere in writing.

The TCP link that Ericm posted above gives you the guidelines in a nutshell.

If you need the exact wording in legal-ese, you can start here: https://www.energy.ca.gov/programs-and-topics/programs/building-energy-efficiency-standards/online-resource-center

CD
 

13mo

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Joined
Mar 10, 2020
Messages
78
Location
Missouri
I havent been impressed with CFLs or LEDs with respect to the length of time they are suppose to last. I have 10 year old incandent flood light bulbs that have outlasted LEDs by 8 or 9 by years and are still burning.

Incandescents' lifespans largely vary based on how hot the filament is run. The hotter the filament, the more lumens you get and the higher the color temperature, but the shorter the lifespan. The only conventional "normal-sized" tungsten incandescent bulbs available around where I am are the rough service bulbs where the filament is run so cool that a 100 watt bulb makes about the same light a 60 watt bulb did back in the day, but they are rated at about 10,000 hours and seem to last forever. But they are pretty dim.

I have actually had good luck with the regular self-ballasted CFLs, to be honest. All of the ones I have seen have said to not use them in enclosed fixtures (where the heat would cook their ballast electronics), so I didn't/don't. I have some of these which have lasted for well over 10 years in service where they are turned on and off several times per day. This is pretty consistent with linear fluorescents, as long as you don't cook the ballast or have them on an occupancy sensor, they last for a very long time.

LEDs are a different story. I have had to replace more than a few LED screw-in bulbs after a few years. Some had portions of the LED arrays die off, yielding a dim bulb. Others have driver failures where they will sit there and flash. Others just were totally dead like a burned-out incandescent. I have had to replace screw-in LEDs more than once while the old CFL that was sitting next to it in the same or adjacent fixture keeps on going. I'd rate the lifespan of an LED as similar to at most twice that of a halogen or conventional incandescent (such as a BR30 flood light.)

This is why I use LED lighting pretty sparingly and most of my lighting is electronically-ballasted fluorescent. Particularly with HPS outdoor lighting, HID isn't dead either, it's a good long-lived, reasonably efficient option and is still a good option as long as the warmup and hot restrike times are acceptable for its usage situation.
 

adrenalinejeeper

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Joined
Jan 30, 2018
Messages
191
Location
Ventura County, CA
Thanks for all the replies.

adrenalinejeeper, thanks for the details on your experience with Steel Lighting Co., I was looking at getting the Gardena also and probably the Hawthorne to go next to the front door of the garage. I'm in Long Beach (Los Angeles County), where did you get the specific guidance for the requirements for your build that you quoted in your other comment? My contractor has given me some general guidance, but I'd like to get the specific requirements somewhere in writing.

What I quoted is directly from the "Energy Notes" section of our approved building plans. It looks like the architect got it from the Building Energy Efficiency Standards Reference, 150 (k) 13.
 
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