When Legere Group Ltd. began a renovation of their Avon, Connecticut manufacturing facility, new brighter, more efficient lighting was an important part of the plan. The 175,000 square foot building is home to Legere Group’s two divisions: Legere Woodworking and Ricketson Sash & Door. The Legere Woodworking division manufactures commercial architectural woodwork; Ricketson produces custom wood windows and doors primarily for the high-end residential and high profile institutional markets. The Group has been active in the woodworking market for 24 years, and an impressive list of customers includes Nine West, General Electric, Pepsico, and Yale Law School, among numerous others.

High quality, real wood doors and accent paneling add luxury and elegance to any home or office décor. Crafting beautiful wood products that meet exacting design specifications requires skill and rigorous attention to detail. In any woodworking shop, good lighting plays an important role in the ability to perform this high precision artistry. It provides the necessary visual acuity and also adds to a safe workplace environment where the use of hand and power tools can lead to serious injuries as well as costly errors. Signs, labels and precautions required on shop equipment by ANSI and ISO standards are more noticeable and more easily read under lighting with good color rendering. Moreover, bright lighting can contribute to a more upbeat workplace and provide the right creative atmosphere for woodworking activities.

Legere facility manager Bill Bruneau along with electrician Ray Vincent not only wanted better, brighter lighting for their manufacturing facility but they were also seeking energy efficiency, long lamp life, and reduced maintenance costs.

"Our building is in use from 5:00 AM to 6:00 PM five days a week plus an additional half day on Saturday," said Bruneau, "and energy costs were high for the old metal halide lighting system we inherited when we bought the building. That system was between 10 and twenty years old, and it was providing only 40 footcandles of light for the warehouse area using 400 watt fixtures. We needed uniform focused, overhead lighting that provided 60 to 70 footcandles with minimal heat generation."

Bruneau and Vincent had at first considered using fluorescent lighting, but at the suggestion of their lighting consultant Michael LoGiudice, with Lighting Systems, Inc., of West Hartford, Connecticut, they compared this light source to the high light output and energy efficiency of metal halide lighting.

They discovered that metal halide lamps are highly compact white light sources that offer a high light level without glare using a smaller fixture. The white light of metal halide is closest to the natural light of sunlight that people prefer. Metal halide lighting lends itself well to precision facilities like Legere where the light needs to be directed or controlled. Conversely, linear fluorescent lamps are low brightness sources with relatively large surface areas. This source is good for general diffuse lighting, but is hard to direct.

In addition, metal halide lamps radiate much more light per square centimeter of surface area than do fluorescents. A fluorescent lamp at the highest output has only the total lumen output of a 175 watt metal halide lamp.

Once Bruneau and Vincent made the decision to use metal halide lighting, LoGiuduice once again turned to Venture Lighting International, located in Cleveland, Ohio, to supply the Legere facility with their state-of-the art Uni-Form® pulse start metal halide technology. He recommended that Legere install Venture’s MH 250W/HBU Uni-FormÒ pulse start lamp along with their energy-saving pulse start ballasts.

Venture is the leading manufacturer of advanced pulse start metal halide lamps, ballasts and controls. Their revolutionary Uni-Form pulse start system includes lamps ranging from 50 to 450 watts in open or enclosed styles; clear or coated versions; 3000K and 4000K color temperatures; and CRI options of 65 and 70. The Uni-Form pulse start lamp incorporates Venture’s exclusive formed body arc tube. The precise geometry of this unique arc tube is accurately reproducible from lamp to lamp and produces a metal halide lamp of greater efficiency, improved color uniformity, longer life, and faster warm-up/restrike times than those with the older standard pinched body technology.

The 250 watt high output Uni-Form pulse start lamp Vincent and Bruneau selected, based on LoGiudice’s recommendation, provides 15,000 hours of life, 50% longer than standard 250 watt metal halide. It offers 21000 lumens, 25% more lumens than standard metal halide, in the enclosed, clear, base-up version chosen by Legere. It has a color temperature of 4000K and a color rendering index (CRI ) of 65. The CRI is a measure of a light source’s ability to render colors relative to a standard. The higher the CRI, the better and more distinctly individual colors appear.

The Legere facility required 362 of the 250 watt Uni-Form pulse start lamps in enclosed Uniglow® luminaires from GE Lighting Systems, replacing the same number of the original GE fixtures.

"The project was completed in November 1998 with all lighting retrofit objectives accomplished," said Bruneau. "We went from 2.6 watt per sq. ft. to 0.89 watts per sq. ft. Legere has realized energy savings amounting to a 34% reduction in energy use over our old lighting installation. We anticipate a remarkable payback period of only 1 ½ years for the new lighting installation."

Moreover, Bruneau reports that both customers and Legere employees have been impressed with the brighter atmosphere created by the new metal halide lamps and fixtures.

"There is really a noticeable change," said Bruneau. "The metal halide lamps have definitely brightened our working environment. We know we made the right choices, and our employees are happier working under these higher light levels."