watts were a lot more useful in the days when lights at home were pretty much only incandescent. 45 vs 60 vs 100 vs 120+ etc. But once CFL, and even LED were thrown in the mix, lumens should've been made a bigger point of.
I had read once that the early incandescent bulbs numbering system was based on gas lights. So if you had say, a #10 gas tip that lit up your living room, a 100 watt incandescent was comparable in light output. The 25, 40, 50, 60, 75, 100, 150, 200, and 300 watt bulbs were meant to replace other gas light orifice sizes. Now a standard 100 watt frosted bulb was rated at 1750 lumens, now I remember that as that was what we used most at home. The CFL'S were junk, they were in noway comparable to incandescent s. Horrible pinkish/orange to purple/blue, and they were dim. They would say "equivalent to 100 watt bulb" when in fact they were as bright as a 60 to maybe at best 75 watt incandescent bulb. LED's were the same, awful color and way over rated output. But they are starting to get better. About a year ago I installed LED stripes under the kitchen cabinets, 24, 18, and 12 inches long. The 2-footer is 25 watts and putts out 2,000 lumen's of 4,400K pure WHITE light. That is 250 lumen's more output than a 100 watt incandescent and 75% less power consumption!
Since us old farts pretty much knew how much light your standard 40, 60, 100, 150 and 200 watt bulb would light up a room. It would have been nice when the CFL and LED lights hit the market there would have been better packaging information. IE our 1600 lumen bulb is similar to a 100 watt incandescent bulb. Packaging made it difficult to figure out how many lumens you needed for that two bulb fixture hanging in the center of a room.
I'm normally a big fan but you kind of blew it on this one. Mostly kidding! A few clarifications if you don't mind. 1. You left out that MOST fixtures(luminaries) before LED are rated in specific watts or maximum watts. 2. A 120 volt lighting branch circuit that is 20 amp rated, can be connecting up 1920 watts, not 2400 watts. Lights are considered in NEC a continuous load and circuit breakers are rated at 80% for continuous loads. (20x.8= 16x120=1920). 3. Us (as you called us) old timer" designers did care about lumens! We had to do the lighting calculations as well as branch circuit calls! We had to make sure the correct amount of light was in the right places!! 😊😊. Having some fun with the last one. Be careful, I'm watching to make sure you do not mislead someone. Respectfully, Kevin
Watts is a function of the applied voltage & the current through a circuit. A heating element in a ceramic sleeve might be rated at 500w but there would be no light emitted because the energy is radiated as Infra Red heat, beyond the visible part of the spectrum...Lumens or LUX indicate how much of the applied energy is converted into light in the visible part of the spectrum.
You made good points on lumens and the kelvin scale, but you understated the importance of watts the first thing to say when making recommendations for light bulbs should be watts. Wattage Max labels on fixtures are important to avoid fires or overheating to understand how many lumens you want In that fixture you have to understand the max that it can handle in terms of watts before lumens.
Really good stuff. Yesterday my buddy and I filmed our first sketch and I used some random lights from home to make a 3-point lighting setup and after everything was filmed and I imported videos to my laptop I discovered that a lot of the shots were underexposed. So I started to google lightning specific stuff and found out my poor little lights had 500 lumens. This video helped me clear out some stuff. Since studio lights go way higher in lumens, then it now makes sense.
Dead serious ran across this today while going to the twenty fourth floor of a building uptown. Thanks for the clarification. Do a video on ballasts vs drivers.
Ballast are auto transformers,drivers are for led bulbs on a 277 or 120 commercial circuit. They have plug and play led bulbs so you don't have to disconnect the Ballast, but you still energize the Ballast, not much energy saving only on the actual bulb. But a led fixture with a driver will save you wattage for even better lux to foot candle
studying for my NCIDQ exam and you just helped me tremendously understand this topic I was struggling with. Since my field is mostly visual, I've been struggling visualizing how lighting systems work, but your trickle to flooding reference is *chef's kiss* thank you!
A big thing to note... Bugs like the higher Kelvin light. I learned the hard way. I installed some new lights on my back patio that were very very white. Swarms of bugs would go around that light
I'm old and trying to wrap my head around lumens. A "40 watt equivalent" I understand but if you were to only tell me "this bulb outputs 450 lumens" I'd have no idea what that would look like.
I use a higher wattage ( brighter ) light with dimmer . Problem is sometimes like a daylight or whiter light rather warm or yellowish light . Bought a changeable bulb at Costco . I’m old also but worked in electric warehouse with many light types .
Hey, Good video btw. Quick question. So my parents have some lamps and light fixtures hanging from the roof (In the kitchen) that say "60W Max To Avoid Fire Hazard" or something like that. I bought an LED Lightbulb with the 100W written on the outside. Can I use those light bulbs (LED's 100W) even tho the roof fixture and one of the lamps say "60W Max" for example? I'm just afraid to install them and use them and then a fire breaks out jaja. Idk. I'm just sketchy about using them. I thought maybe since the house was built like back in the 50s it wouldn't handle the new Lightbulbs (LED Lightbulbs) measuring 60W, 70W, Or even 100W+. Thanks in advance and I hope my question made sense to you😅
The original design of a dimmer, would use select points in the voltage vs time waveform, to periodically turn the power on and off, in order to only allow the light to consume a fraction of its rated power. You generally wouldn't want to just put in a variable resistor in series with the light, because then half the power would be consumed in heating up that resistor. It would work to dim the lights, but it wouldn't be efficient.
Can't comment on the accuracy of the labels, each manufacturer is different, i have seen lamps labeled the same Kelvin from different manufacturers that look completely different. Standard labels are 2700,3000,4100,5000,6000. The scale is based off thermal radiation (light) given off an object based on its temp. Like when you heat up steel, it starts as a redish color and works its way through orange, yellow, white as its temp rises. Same principle for lamp colors but they don't use the steel temp scale as the guide, im not sure what material is used.
@@SupperDadder The material is a hypothetical black body. There is a physical theory behind the black body spectrum as a function of the black body's temperature. It is a limiting behavior of any material that glows, as a result of being hot enough to emit visible light. It the function of light intensity vs frequency (color) of light, assuming the material has no bias to any particular color. "Black" in this context, means full participation in radiation heat transfer. Meaning it never reflects anything, and always emits as much as it possibly can. As a package deal (Kirchhoff's radiation law) to emitting as much as it possibly can, it always absorbs any incident light it possibly can as well. Stars like the sun, initially emit according to the black body spectrum from their plasma interior, and the corona gas absorbs the frequencies specific to the "flavors" of gas within. Mostly hydrogen and helium. The sun's overall spectrum is very close to a black body at around 5800 K.
Great video!! Well spoken with clear information. I’m just getting started about lights and I clearly understood the concepts. Question: So, when calculating how much light I need to illuminate a space, do I simple add up how many lumens outputted by each light bulb or is there a special formula for that?
Please do not get offended by my suggestion, I'm only one opinion out of all your followers and viewers. But here goes, pro's, this is great, I can use my imagine the way you use your arms when you explained 40,000 lumen Niagara falls truly give a great idea of how bright lumens in lights is. Con's I think you reslly do not need to use such profanity to describe or explain how good something is or how great it is. I wanted to subscribe to your channel but I dont appreciate the foul language, though you do a wonderful job of explaining electrical lingual.
So I have a light fixture attached to my fan and each spot for a bulb (there’s three spots) says 4W max… I just ordered some led light bulbs that can change color and stuff from Amazon and there rated at 5W each… does this mean I can’t use these bulbs or since they are leds and the bulbs that are in there I’m pretty sure aren’t leds mean I can use these. Or could I use only two of them so in total it would be less Wattage? Thanks I’m advance and sorry for the long comment/question!
Damn it Justin! You sure know how to say what you mean, and mean what you say...and I can definitely relate😂🤣. Hi Justin, I'm feeling that same energy as it relates to the term "Luxes" as it relates to desk led light swing lamps, but also, blacklight UV flashlights for authenticating documents. However, I notice that lux numbers are hardly acknowledged (hidden), but strongly considered when purchasing work tools for the field of work described above. Is there a way to determine "lux" measurements based on the amount of lumens "advertised" without having to purchase a lux meter? Thanks, Linda.
Could you do a video explaining shunt breakers? I’m a first year apprentice and had no idea they existed until a journeyman called me to bring him one.
It means that the breaker has an additional trip mechanism on the side (shunt trip), that is mechanically linked to be able to trip the breaker just like the primary trip mechanisms. The breaker will trip either when the primary trip mechanisms trip from overcurrent, or when there is current in the shunt trip circuit. The shunt trip circuit has a significantly lower trip rating than the primary trip mechanisms. Possibly even as low as less than an individual ampere. Depending on the product, it can also be controlled by a smaller voltage in the control circuit. Such as 120V or even 24Vdc, controlling a 480V circuit thru the primary trip mechanisms. It allows a second circuit to control the breaker, and turn it off. Apply power in the control circuit, and the shunt trip throws the breaker to the tripped position. The advantage is that shunt trip breakers are usually more economical than some of the alternative circuit control devices, like contactors or motorized switches. The disadvantage is that shunt trip breakers always require a manual reset. Shunt trip breakers require adding energy to the control circuit, to shut off the main circuit. Their contactor counterparts by contrast, shut off when you subtract energy from the control circuit.
hey love the video helps a lot. im buying a house this month and they have bulbs in the garage 4. its a 2.5 car garage taller then normal ceiling in a garage. what lumens would u recommend me getting. thank you hope to hear from u soon
I need your advice I. Have a chicken farm i need light for the .chicken s if am using a jackery 1000 how much lights do I need to powers a 2000 square feet space, or let's say am using 40 watt bulbs? And how long could I run it on the jackery for?
I like it to be bright in my room, 150w, so I got 4 x 15w LED bulbs, hacked them down to around 12w, as the people that make them over clock them and they run to hot, I have already taken 2 back as the casing had cracked, after 6 months, that is before I hacked them, I had to get 2 B22 male to B22 female Y junction, they are hard to get, lots of B22 to E27, by hacking the bulbs, they will last around 5yrs plus instead of 2yrs,
Does 400 watts is going to be damage the car battery to run 40000 lumens coz I saw for my Honda Pilot h11 on Amazon company call wiswis if someone wants to help out plz n thx
You're righter than most people, but still not accurate. LED lights aren't as efficient as one another. A quick search on Amazon will show you GU10 7w LED that produce 200% lumens as one another.
Nobody cares about lumens or Kelvinin the field. I worked with led upgrades with the Mass save program for the first few years of my career. They matter a ton.
I think most people don't really understand what these units even mean. Their mental reference point, is the wattage rating of the incandescent bulb. That's why LED's and CFL bulbs indicate an incandescent equivalent Watts (suppose it were 60W equivalent). The energy efficient bulb would produce the same lumens as the 60W incandescent bulb, but only consume perhaps 12 watts of power in its own operation.
Older people were brought up on Watts. U have to do a graph on explaining it on watts verse luminous. U R a electrician and R over people's head on explaining,
