4 Days Remaining to See the LED Makeover at the 2013 Colorado Garden & Home Show

]There are only four days remaining to see the 2013 Colorado Garden and Home Show – and to see the Outdoor Lighting Perspectives exhibit (#1442) where we are showcasing the latest LED products that are truly transforming the landscape and architectural lighting world.

Please enjoy the videos below that will provide you with a short tour of our exhibit.

We hope to see you at the show!

Mead Signature

$2 Off Coupon for the 2013 Colorado Garden & Home Show

2013 Full Page CouponThe 2013 Colorado Garden and Home Show is only four short days away – and Outdoor Lighting Perspectives of Colorado would like you to take advantage of the $2 Off Coupon that is shown on the right. Just click on this image, print out a full-size coupon, and take it with you to the ticket windows at the Colorado Convention Center.

With the 14 landscaped gardens, the convention center will be filled with the bright colors and scented flowers of Spring. Be sure to stop by the OLP exhibit (#1442) to see the latest in LED products and services for landscape, architectural, and special event lighting.

We look forward to seeing you at the show!

Mead's signature

See the Latest LED Landscape Lighting Products at the 2013 Colorado Garden and Home Show

CGHSLOGO-4cThe 2013 Colorado Garden and Home Show starts two weeks from today – so plan to visit our Outdoor Lighting Perspectives of Colorado exhibit (Booth #1442) to see the latest in LED landscape and architectural lighting products and services for your home and property.

The show details are:

  • Colorado Garden and Home Show
  • Colorado Convention Center – Downtown Denver
  • February 9 – 17, 2013
  • Hours:
  • Saturdays 10:00 am – 8:00pm
  • Sundays 10:00 am – 6:00pm
  • Monday – Friday 12:00 Noon – 8:00 pm

The 9-day long Colorado Garden and Home Show is the oldest, largest, and most prestiguous garden and home show in the Rocky Mountain West – with over 600 exhibitors, 14 landscaped gardens, and educational seminars. The show is run by a non-profit organization that provides horticultural scholarships to students as well as grants for landscaping projects throughout Colorado.

Outdoor Lighting Perspectives of Colorado is a full-service outdoor lighting design, installation and maintenance company for residential, municipal, and commercial projects – and we design and install lighting automation controls as well. Of course we still design and sell low voltage quartz halogen systems, and the great thing about our lighting products is that we can retrofit any of the fixtures we have already installed to LED whenever the homeowner is ready. We are also happy to provide lighting energy audits to show the homeowner how much they could save in electrical costs by converting to LEDs. We are glad to do this for any OLP or non-OLP systems.

We are proud to be exhibiting for the fourteenth time at this wonderful show – and we hope to see you there.

Mead's signature

New Outdoor Lighting LED Fixtures on Display at the 2012 Colorado Fall Home Show

There is still one day remaining to attend the 2012 Colorado Fall Home Show – and to see all of the new LED lighting products in the Outdoor Lighting Perspectives exhibit.

To take a tour of our exhibit and learn more about our company’s products and services, please take a minute to watch the video below:

 

 

 

Outdoor & Holiday Lighting Specials at the 2012 Colorado Fall Home Show

 

The 2012 Colorado Fall Home Show is underway and Outdoor Lighting Perspectives is running some exciting outdoor and holiday lighting specials for those folks who stop by to see us at the show.

We are exhibiting the latest in outdoor lighting solutions and technology including –

  •  Architectural & Landscape Lighting – LEDs and quartz halogen
  • LED retrofits for gas lanterns
  • Lighting Control Automation™ to control interior and exterior lights
  • SmartPhone control of your lights – or of any other devices
  • Holiday Lighting including LEDs, LightLinks, laser lights, lightsculptures and snowfall lights

 7-Light Special (Halogen)  

  • 7 well lights with acrylic lens covers
  • 300W multitap transformer
  • Timer controls
  • Wiring and complete installation – total price installed=$1,499 (Regular price $1,985) – offer good thru October 31, 2012

10-Light Special (Halogen)Holiday Lighting Special

  • 7 well lights with acrylic lens covers
  • 3 copper path lights
  • 600W multitap transformer
  • Timer controls
  • Wiring and complete installation – total price installed = $2,100 (Regular price = $2,995) – offer good thru October 31, 2012

Holiday Lighting Special

Get a free 3-foot lighted wreath with each turnkey holiday lighting package at or above $1,500. This special cannot be combined with any other holiday lighting offers. Offer good through October 31, 2012.

In order to qualify for these specials, you must register at our exhibit at the show. We look forward to seeing you there.

See the Latest Landscape, Architectural and Holiday Lighting at the 2012 Colorado Fall Home Show

The 2012 Colorado Fall Home Show is less than 3 weeks away – so plan on visiting Outdoor Lighting Perspectives (OLP) of Colorado (Booth #514) at the Colorado Convention Center in downtown Denver. 

 

Show Dates and Hours

  • Friday, Sept. 7           10 a.m.  –  8 p.m.
  • Saturday, Sept. 8      10 a.m.  –  8 p.m.
  • Sunday, Sept. 9         10 a.m.  –  5 p.m.

Multi-Color Glowing Christmas Orbs

At the show, OLP of Colorado will be exhibiting its latest energy-efficient products for architectural, landscape, and holiday lighting including new LED landscape lighting fixtures and LED retrofits, internet-based Lighting Control Automation™, LED retrofits for architectural lighting, and the latest LED holiday lighting products such as the glowing orbs shown at left, as well as wreaths and lighted sculptures.

Discounted tickets are available at King Soopers, at the ticket counter at the convention center by donating canned food, or by clicking on and printing the discount coupon below:

2012 CO FAll $2.00 off Online Coupon

Stay tuned to our blog to see a listing of our show specials. We hope to see you at the show!

National Night Out 2012 in Colorado

Please join your neighbors and other community members in Colorado on Tuesday, August 7th to help celebrate National Night Out 2012. Please click on Local Registered Sites to see if your local Colorado community is listed.

Started in 1984 by the National Association of Town Watch (NATW) (a non-profit anti-crime and anti-drug organization), National Night Out is also known as America’s Night Out Against Crime. Over the years, people have participated by turning on their porch light and other outdoor lights and standing watch by conducting front porch vigils. Sometimes it’s as easy as strolling down your street on a warm summer evening and introducing yourself to a new neighbor – or to someone who’s lived there for ten years that you never got around to meeting.

In recent years, these events have  become more all-encompassing with neighborhoods and communities offering block parties, BBQs, parades, neighborhood walks, and anti-crime and safety talks by law enforcement officials. We at Outdoor Lighting Perspectives certainly appreciate the role that proper lighting can play in deterring crime, but we also know that knowing your neighbors and being aware of any suspicious activity can go a long way in making our Colorado communities safer.

LED Makeover – the Outdoor Lighting Perspectives Way

LED Replacement for Path Lights

In a recent blog posting, I mentioned that we were retrofitting one of our customer’s low voltage quartz halogen landscape lighting systems to LED. We originally installed the system in June 2001. Our Outdoor Lighting Perspectives’ (OLP) copper BB-07 path lights manufactured by our factory (B&B Manufacturing in Nashville) had used the 20W quartz halogen G6 bi pin bulbs with corresponding sockets. The retrofit is as simple as sliding out the old socket and wiring harness and replacing it with the new LED (4W Cree), electronics, driver, and wiring harness assembly.  

With the introduction of OLP/B&B’s PAR36 LED (6W Cree) bulb retrofit earlier this year, our company can now offer customers a truly sustainable way to upgrade to this new, energy-saving technology – without having to discard the old quartz halogen fixtures. The customer’s system that we recently converted to LED was initially installed in 2001. That system included a total of 17 fixtures – eleven 35W quartz halogen well lights and six 20W quartz halogen path lights, for a total power usage of 505W. For the new installation/retrofit, we added 11 new LED fixtures to the 17 existing fixtures that we retroffited, for a total power usage of 176W. Interestingly, we increased the size of the system (total number of lights) by 65-percent while at the same time we reduced the energy usage by 65-percent.

PAR36 LED Bulb

Heat is the number one factor that can adversely affect the life of an LED. As you can see in the design for the PAR36 LED bulb as well as the path light LED replacement, the thermal heat sinks are a prominent part of the final manufactured product. As a former aerospace engineer who performed thermal analyses of jet and rocket engine, high-energy laser, and orbital spacecraft, I wholeheartedly give these products a two-thumbs up sign of approval.

The other important thing about these LED retrofits is that our customers are in no way sacrificing the actual lighting effect. In fact, our factory (B&B) conducted an experiment by taking nighttime photos of the same house. On one evening, the lighting fixtures had quartz halogen bulbs installed and on another evening, the fixtures had been retrofitted to LED. Interestingly, most people viewing the sets of photos side by side guessed wrong. The LEDs actually looked better.

 

 

 

Saving Energy Increasingly Becoming More Important for U.S. Families

In a recently published study by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research entitled ENERGY EFFICIENCY AND INDEPENDENCE: HOW THE PUBLIC UNDERSTANDS, LEARNS AND ACTS, has indicated that American families rank energy issues very highly after the economy, education, and health care.

As reported by Dina Cappiello of The Associated Press, she writes that

as summer beckons, it seems Americans are thinking more about the stifling cost of energy than about making tracks to the beach.

In the bar graph above, you can see that saving money on energy costs is the second-highest ranked priority by the respondents to this survey. At Outdoor Lighting Perspectives (OLP) of Colorado, we have seen a very strong demand by both new and existing customers for the latest LED lighting fixtures. In almost every case, the homeowners expressed a strong desire to decrease their energy usage.

In the U.S., previous studies have determined that residential lighting accounts for as much as 15-percent of a household’s total energy budget. Until recently, almost half of this energy usage dedicated to lighting had been wasted due to the use of inefficient bulbs (incandescent), the use of higher wattage bulbs than needed for effective illumination, and the fact that lighting systems were not automatically controlled.

The low voltage LED lighting systems (new and retrofit) that OLP of Colorado has been installing will provide a homeowner an energy savings of as much as 82-percent over the previous quartz halogen system. Later this week our crews will be retrofitting an existing customer’s lighting system to LED, and I will report our progress in a future blog post.

Outdoor Lighting Again Ranked in Top 5 by 2012 Landscape Architecture Trends Survey

Landscape Lighting Makes Outdoor Spaces More Inviting after Sunset

While it’s certainly no surprise to those of us here at Outdoor Lighting Perspectives of Colorado, a recent survey of residential landscape architects has again ranked landscape and outdoor lighting as one of the top 5 trends for outdoor living features. In the 2012 Residential Landscape Architecture Trends survey conducted by the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA), lighting (outdoor and landscape) was ranked #5 (93.1-percent) as being somewhat or very much in demand. The list of the most popular features across all categories follows below:

  1. Grills                                                  97.4%
  2. Low Maintenance Landscape      96.6
  3. Fireplaces/Firepits                          95.8
  4. Dining Areas                                    95.7
  5. Lighting                                             93.1
  6. Water Features                                89.9
  7. All-Weather Outdoor Furniture      81.2
  8. Pools                                                 79.2

We’re very pleased of course to see that residential landscape architects are beginning to stress the importance of professional landscape lighting to their clients. Surprisingly, most college bachelors degree programs in landscape architecture only require one course in lighting, and most of the students we’ve spoken with tell us that they wished their programs included more. Typically, landscape architects receive more exposure to lighting after they’ve begun their career and taken advantage of the outreach and educational programs offered by ASLA and lighting companies such as Outdoor Lighting Perspectives. The good news is that whatever we’re doing, both landscape architects and homeowners are becoming more aware of the importance and necessity of good landscape lighting.