From day to night – lighting done right

Posted on April 20, 2011 by 33social

One of the things we offer is a free nighttime demonstration so that you actually get to see what a particular lighting design will look like for your home and property – prior to an installation.  That eliminates all of the guesswork and surprises – and you will know exactly how much you will have to invest to achieve that desired lighting effect.

Most of our typical lighting installations in Colorado range in price between $3,500 and $6,500. Not surprisingly, most homeowners have no idea how many lights they may need or want – or what their investment range might be until we do the evening lighting demonstration.  And that’s perfectly OK because we do not want you to purchase a lighting system sight unseen.

Additionally, we do our nighttime demonstration for these other reasons:

  • It is your house, not our’s – and you know best how you would like to have your house and property illuminated in the evening.
  • Exact placement of the fixtures can be determined in order to safely light steps and other hazards, and to effectively light architectural features.
  • We can show you several different lighting options that you may not have considered previously.
  • The evening lighting demonstration is an event that your entire family can participate in and provide input to the lighting design.

Here is what you will see.

 

Outdoor lighting Colorado before and after
Outdoor lighting Colorado before and after

Filed under: Free outdoor lighting demonstration, Garden Lighting, Home-Community Security/Safety, Residential Lighting, Security/Safety | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

Landscape Architects Select Lighting as Top Outdoor Living Feature for 2011

Posted on March 2, 2011 by outdoorlightingofcolorado

Landscape Lighting Makes Outdoor Living Spaces Warm and Inviting

A recently published survey conducted by the American Society of Landscape Architects asked residential landscape architecture professionals to rank the relative popularity of a wide variety of design features to be included in outdoor living spaces in 2011.  Lighting was selected by 96.2% of the landscape architects, making it the most popular feature to be included in upcoming outdoor living projects. Ranked below lighting were fire pits/fireplaces, seating/dining areas, barbecue grills, and installed seating. Based on our experience, we know that most homeowners also need landscape lighting after dark to safely reach their outdoor firepits and seating areas, and to have adequate  lighting for both barbecuing and dining outdoors.

Landscape lighting not only makes your outdoor setting warm and inviting but it also allows you to enjoy your outdoor oasis from day into evening.

Filed under: Design, Garden Lighting, Home-Community Security/Safety, Residential Lighting, Security/Safety | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

See Our Lights at the Colorado Garden and Home Show

Posted on February 13, 2011 by outdoorlightingofcolorado
OLP’s Exhibit Showcasing the Latest in LEDs

The 52nd Annual Colorado Garden and Home Show started yesterday, and Outdoor Lighting Perspectives is proud to be making its 12th appearance in this important show.  Our exhibit is centrally located in the Colorado Convention Center Exhibit Hall in booth # 1442.

Outdoor Lighting Perspectives Showcases the Latest in Internet-Based Lighting Control Automation(TM)

Several new products and services are being launched at this show including new internet-based Lighting Control Automation™, new LED products and LED retrofits, Do-It-Yourself Kits, and Lighting Energy Audits/Retrofits for both the residential and commercial markets. We can show you how to have beautiful outdoor and indoor lighting, while decreasing your carbon footprint and your monthly electric bills.

Residential and Commercial Lighting Products on Display at the Colorado Garden and Home Show

The show continues for eight more days – through Sunday, February 20th. With the 60-degree weather expected to last through much of this week, now is the time to start planning your outdoor projects for the upcoming year. So enjoy the show and we look forward to seeing you at the Outdoor Lighting Perspectives exhibit.

Filed under: Commercial Lighting, Community Events, Do-It-Yourself Lighting, Garden Lighting, Green Energy, Home-Community Security/Safety, Installation Techniques, LEDs, Residential Lighting | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

What Is the Best Lighting Design for Outdoor Steps?

Posted on January 11, 2011 by outdoorlightingofcolorado

     The answer to that and just about any other lighting design question is that it just depends. While that answer may not be satisfying to most homeowners, it’s the best answer that we can provide until we’ve fully evaluated the site and have fully understood how the homeowner intends to use the space after dark.

Typical Recessed Step Light

     Most homeowners immediately think that the commonly used step lights shown at left are the easiest and best way to illuminate the stairs leading to their deck or raised patio. With any good lighting design, however, the final design should be based on the bulb itself and resulting lighting effect. In other words, the fixture selection and type should actually come last in the design process.
     These lighting fixtures are relatively easy to install on a wood or Trex deck – either during or after construction. However, if the lights need to be installed in poured concrete steps, then a lot of pre-planning needs to be done before the new steps go in.
     During the last twelve years we have been in business, Outdoor Lighting Perspectives of Colorado has only installed a handful of recessed step lights. The primary reason for that is because there is a much better way to proper illuminate the steps for after-dark safety – and that design effect is commonly called downlighting or sconce lighting.

Entrance to Property Requiring Proper Lighting for Steps

     We recently completed a lighting installation at a home built in the 1920s near the Governors Mansion in Denver. The property is accessed from the public sidewalk through a large wrought iron gate. To reach the upper terrace and front entrance to the home, you can access the steps immediately to the left or right side of the gate. With an existing and historical home with stone and concrete work quickly approaching one-hundred years old, the last thing you would want to even consider would be recessed step lighting. The good news is that installing these  copper BB08 sconce lights is much easier and they provide much better lighting as well. A close up of the completed installation is shown below.

Close Up of Completed Sconce Light Installation

     That being said, there have been a few occasions where recessed step lighting was our only option for providing any lighting to steps. In those situations, the steps from side to side were over ten feet wide, with no handrails or any other possible location to mount any sconce lights. In that situation, we made sure that we installed at least three step lights on each riser so that the steps could be safely illuminated. 

     The last photo shows the lighting effect of these copper BB08 sconce lights (made in the USA at our factory in Nashville) on a deck with many steps among the pines.

Deck Lighting and Step Lighting Among the Pines

Filed under: Design, Home-Community Security/Safety, Installation Techniques, Residential Lighting, Security/Safety | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

Park Lighting Project Completed for Piney Creek

Posted on August 21, 2010 by outdoorlightingofcolorado

LC40 Lamp Post at Entrance to Piney Creek Picnic Area

Our company, Outdoor Lighting Perspectives of Colorado, just completed its latest lighting project at a community park – the Piney Creek Park near the intersection of East Orchard Road and South Joplin Way in the City of Centennial.

The picnic area next to the beautiful lake and water feature in the Piney Creek Park had been without functioning lighting for several years. The six four-foot tall bollard lighting fixtures  that had been installed there previously were vandalized and damaged beyond repair. The home owners’ association (HOA) realized that they needed a different lighting solution that would not only deter vandalism but also enchance the beauty and usability of the park throughout the year.

What we specified and installed are the 14-foot tall, LC-40 pole lamp posts (150W Ceramic Metal Halide (CMH)) manufactured by our national company in Nashville, Tennessee. The lamp posts are made of cast and extruded aluminum – and for this installation they were powder-coated black for an elegant and traditional look.

What really sets these lamp posts apart from any other installation you’ll see in Colorado today is the use of the Ceramic Metal Halide (CMH) bulb technology. These CMH bulbs with a life of 18,000 hours generate 12,000 lumens while producing a Color Rendering Index (CRI) ABOVE 90! What that means is that the flowers, trees, and rocks, etc. look the same way illuminated at night as they would appear during the daytime. What a concept! And unlike regular metal halide bulbs, CMH bulbs never experience any sort of color shift; i.e., the CMH bulb will always provide a pure white light from the first day it is turned on until the day it burns out.

As a comparison, the current LED technology can generate at best only 50 lumens per watt while the current CMH technology can generate 80 lumens per watt. LED technology is rapidly improving but it still has a way to go to compete with CMH technology where you need to have a lot of light (lumens) at the ground level.

All of the lamp posts were mounted on four-foot deep, two-foot diameter concrete caissons with engineered rebar cages to withstand the higher wind loads that we encounter along the Colorado front range. I’ve attached some additional photos of the construction phase as well as some additional nighttime photos taken after the installation.

LC-40 Lamp Post Closeup at Piney Creek Park

 

Raising the First of Three Lamp Posts in Piney Creek Park

Piney Creek Park Lighting

Outdoor Lighting Perspectives LC40 Lamp Post - Piney Creek Park at Sunset

Filed under: Ceramic Metal Halide, Commercial Lighting, Green Energy, Home-Community Security/Safety, Installation Techniques, LEDs, Lighting for Recreation, Park Lighting, Security/Safety | Tagged: , , , , , | Leave a comment »

Innovative Lighting for Backyard Sport/Game Courts

Posted on July 10, 2010 by outdoorlightingofcolorado

Sport-Game Court Illuminated with Low Voltage Lighting

People who live in Colorado are very active and many families throughout Colorado have installed sport-game courts in their back yards for family fun. Many communities, however, have very stringent regulations as to the placement and usage of these courts. Additionally, many communities do not allow the courts to be illuminated in the evening with line voltage (120V) lights (typically 150W metal halide).

Several years ago a homeowner approached us in this predicament and we performed an evening lighting demonstration with our low voltage quartz halogen fixtures.

Close Up of Low Voltage PAR36 Lighting Fixture

Our copper BB-01 copper flood lights with glare shields were painted black to blend in with the court’s fencing and netting – and the lights were conveniently controlled by the use of an all-weather switch next to the court. In previous years we have also illuminated a back yard ice rink in the mountains by mounting these same fixtures in trees and other strategic locations for very-spirited hockey games.

Our most recent installation was illuminating the sport court (with the Colorado Avalanche logo) shown at the beginning of the blog. Interestingly, the previous homeowner who had this court installed was one of the best goalies in NHL history – and he will forever be known in these parts as Saint Patrick!

The current homeowners use the court extensively and now they can actually see the volleyball net as well as the basketball nets at each end of the court! The low voltage lights and the anti-glare shields direct the light only where it’s needed – totally eliminating glare or light pollution into neighboring properties. As always with lighting, less is usually best in there’s absolutely no reason to light up a back yard court to the same lumen level as Invesco Field at Mile High. With this low voltage lighting system, the people using the court can see just fine thank you – without blinding their neighbors next door!

Low Voltage Fixture at Sunset

Filed under: Home-Community Security/Safety, Installation Techniques, Lighting for Recreation, Residential Lighting, Security/Safety | Tagged: , , , , | Leave a comment »

Veterans Memorial Lighting Project Completed in Time for Memorial Day

Posted on May 28, 2010 by outdoorlightingofcolorado

Lighting for Veterans Memorial – Piney Creek Park

One of our most rewarding lighting projects was completed this week as we installed a new low voltage lighting system to illuminate a veterans memorial at Piney Creek Park located in Centennial, Colorado. The memorial consists of six flags – the U.S. flag as well as a flag for each of the 5 branches of the military – Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force, and the Coast Guard. The flush mounted well lights with 35W quartz halogen bulbs were installed with tempered glass lens covers.

Since a grass lawn surrounded all of the flag poles, the lighting fixtures were additionally protected by poured concrete caissons to protect them from lawn mowing damage, etc.

Veterans Memorial Lighting - Flags in Motion

Another photo to the right shows the flags in motion due to a brisk wind last evening. In fact when our crew was on site earlier this week installing the lighting, they experienced wind gusts approaching 70 miles per hour. In fact, the flag contractor was there at the same time to replace two of the flags which required that the flag poles be lowered to a horizontal position. Because of the wind, it took the flag contractor along with some of our crew to help raise the flag/flag pole back to a vertical position.

With Memorial Day a few days away and with the recently completed HBO series The Pacific that was produced by Tom Hanks, the flag raising evoked images of the raising of the U.S. flag on Iwo Jima during World War II. The ultimate sacrifices that our young men and women have made in the service to our country for over the last two centuries cannot be overestimated.
 
As we enjoy time off from work with our friends and family this Memorial Day weekend, please reserve some time to remember the millions of Americans who served our country both in war-time and peace-time, who were severely injured and/or are still suffering debilitating injuries, and those who paid the ultimate price of giving their lives. And if you encounter a vet during your daily activities, please extend the courtesy of thanking them for their service.  Or better yet, attend a Memorial Day Parade where some of the few surviving World War II veterans may be marching. I recently heard that 1,000 WWII vets are dying daily.
 

Filed under: Commercial Lighting, Community Events, Home-Community Security/Safety, Installation Techniques | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

What Does it Cost to Operate a Landscape Lighting System?

Posted on May 12, 2010 by outdoorlightingofcolorado

Over the years a lot of homeowners have asked us how much their monthly electricity bill would increase after their landscape lighting system was installed. The short answer and the good news is not very much!

Most recently some townhome owners in Denver needed to share a low voltage quartz halogen landscape lighting system to illuminate their front entrances. The as-built configuration of the townhomes dictated that only one of the townhomes would have the low voltage transformer installed – and subsequently would have to provide all of the power for the entire lighting system. The respective homeowners agreed to split the annual electricity bill/usage for the system and asked me to compute how much that would be.

For this system, there were a total of two uplights (well lights at 35W each) and four path lights for the walkways (at 20W each) – for a total energy usage of 150W. For safety and security, the homeowners wanted the lights to be on from dusk to dawn throughout the year.

By accessing the U.S. Naval Observatory website and doing some computations, I was able to determine that there are a total of 4,306.29 hours of darkness for the entire year in Denver, Colorado. By multiplying 150W times 4,306.29 hours you get 645,943.5 watt-hours or 645.9 kWH. The average cost per kilowatt-hour in Denver is projected to be 11.3 cents through the year. By multiplying $.113/kW-H times 645.9kWH, you end up with a total operating cost of $72.99 per year, or $6.08 per month or $.20 per night. Most police departments will tell you that this is a small price to pay to enhance your home’s safety and security every night of the year.

Ken-Caryl House Lighting

The house on the left (also using a low voltage quartz halogen lighting system) has a total of 8 uplights (35W each) and 3 path lights (20W) each – for a total of 340W. Dusk to dawn operation costs $165.44 per year or $13.78 per month or $.45 per night.

If this same low voltage quartz halogen system is replaced by a low voltage LED lighting system in the future, the total power requirement would only be 80.7W and would result in annual energy costs of $39.26 per year or $3.27 per month or $.11 per night – a 76-percent energy savings over the quartz halogen system.

So in other words LEDs are the future but even with a low voltage quartz halogen lighting system, you’re still saving money with operating your outdoor lighting in comparison to line voltage lighting.

Filed under: Green Energy, Home-Community Security/Safety, LEDs, Residential Lighting, Security/Safety | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

Flying High with CAI – Spring Showcase and Trade Show

Posted on April 30, 2010 by outdoorlightingofcolorado

Outdoor Lighting Perspectives (OLP) of Colorado will be exhibiting at the Rocky Mountain Chapter of the Community Associations Institute Spring Showcase and Trade Show with this year’s theme FLYING HIGH WITH CAI. Being billed as the biggest trade show in the chapter’s history, the event will take place on May 5 from 7:00 am to 6:00 pm at the Wings Over the Rockies Air and Space Museum located at 7711 East Academy Boulevard in Denver.

OLP of Colorado will be showcasing the latest energy efficient lighting products for illuminating community entrances, parks, clubhouses and common areas. LED, ceramic metal halide, and quartz halogen fixtures will be on display, and multimedia photos will show what actual installations look like after dark.

The event provides an opportunity for hundreds of community/HOA managers, property managers, and contractors to interact and attend the trade show and educational sessions.

Between the hours of 4:00 pm and 6:00 pm, friends, family and business associates of OLP of Colorado are welcome to come visit us (Booth #74) and stroll throughout the air and space museum to view the historical aircraft and aerospace exhibits. As a former aerospace engineer, I know I can’t wait!

We look forward to seeing you there!

Filed under: Bulb Technology, Ceramic Metal Halide, Community Events, Green Energy, Home-Community Security/Safety, LEDs, Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

Celebrate Earth Hour Today!

Posted on March 27, 2010 by outdoorlightingofcolorado

Tonight from 8:30 pm to 9:30 pm in each local time zone around the world, supporters of the World Wildlife Federation’s annual EARTH HOUR campaign will turn off their lights to take a stand against global climate change. While the energy savings for this one-hour effort may be minimal, more important will be the global show of support by making a visual statement for the sustainability movement.

Started in Australia in 2007, EARTH HOUR’S support has grown worldwide and some of the most famous buildings will go dark for one hour during their local 8:30 to 9:30 pm time period including Toronto’s CN Tower, San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge, Rome’s Colisseum, and Paris’ Eiffel Tower.

In Colorado, both the Governor’s Mansion and the State Capitol building will go dark for one hour. Governor Bill Ritter said that Colorado has become a great example of how a state can implement aggressive energy reduction goals while growing a New Energy Economy. I am proud that Colorado can be a part of this worldwide effort to bring attention to the dire consequences of global climate change.

Please join Outdoor Lighting Perspectives of Colorado in supporting this worldwide effort. We of course are trying to do our part by reducing the energy/carbon footprints of both our residential and commercial lighting installations. By introducing and installing energy efficient LED lighting systems for residential applications as well as Lighting Control Automation™ – we are greatly reducing our customer’s usage of electricity. On the commercial side, we are installing energy efficient Ceramic Metal Halide fixtures.

Filed under: Bulb Technology, Ceramic Metal Halide, Commercial Lighting, Community Events, Green Energy, Home-Community Security/Safety, LEDs, Lighting Control Automation, Residential Lighting | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

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