Greetings... I have 17 year old 250 watt metal halide wall packs, in my 8 bays (4 per bay) and looking into making the change/upgrade to LED.
Have any of you made the conversion to LED, and did you do retrofits or rip out and replace...? The rebates, or lack there of, seem like a racket. The more I look into it, the whole project seems shovel ready!
Anyway, thanks for your time & thoughts!
sjb
sjb,
Cmawash is saying something that one should consider. In 3 of our bays we replaced a bunch of 4' 2 bulb (water resistant len covers) fixtures with the KR G&G LED strips. G&G Jason Baright was good to work with. It was around $4K cost. Advantages: more directional, 100% waterproof, zero maintenance. Since 24VDC was brought into the bays from the equipment room area ... we felt the rewiring was easier than some other higher voltage layouts.
Probably ... not as fancy as Cantbreak's lighting controls ... but knowing the potential lull periods & since we had to rewire anyway we went with what we feel are better controls than the norm. We used a PLC with a very precise analog light sensor mounted on a south interior window away from the wet car wash bays. The analog sensor has proven itself for over 11 years on our old computer driven controls for the old lights. Does anyone ever feel that their lights come on too early or too late? From our experience the photocell sensors from the average electrician are not nearly as precise. We left the lessor sensors in place though & can bypass to them if we have a temporary PLC down situation along with being able to bypass all sensors & just turn the lights on & off manually with plain jane toggle switches.
As I have posted before in previous posts, we like the idea that we have it so one third of the LEDs come on during a standby period & the other two thirds making the full light condition immediately as the
coin box starts up with a 5 minute delay before turn off. The 5 minute delay makes it so the customer does not think we are rushing them too much with less light. Based on our clamp on amp meter tests ... if there is a lull in all three bays ... we are using only 2 amps vs 6 amps for all 3 bays. The LEDs are positioned in such a way & the quality is such that the customer from the street has never been deterred from driving in ... based on about 3 months of experience so far.
The other parts of the new PLC controls which are less relevant to the post is that we have our backup (low air pressure condition) air compressor not ever come on during hours we are closed. We also have the words BLODRY come on with extra bright blue LEDS when the meter goes on with them going off with our chosen 6 minute delay. The China-Ebay webpage allowed us to select whatever lettering for the back car window intended (automobile brake light replacement) assembly.
Hopefully, this post is understandable & does some good because that is what the intent was & is!
mike walsh
http://kingkoin.com/USA_Deficit_Reduction.html
