Form Plus Function

For the fifth time since its inception, Hubbardton Forge has awarded the prestigious Vermont Governor’s Award for Environmental Excellence & Pollution Prevention.
This prestigious award honors Vermont companies that use innovative approaches
to reduce or eliminate the generation of pollutants and wastes at the source. Hubbardton Forge received the award in 1995, 1996, 1997 and 2005 for several advances they made in their finishing systems.

This year, Hubbardton Forge was recognized for their adoption of automated centrifuge separation technology.  This change resulted in a 97% reduction in water usage, a 150% increase in cleaning efficiency, elimination of a hazardous waste stream, improved worker safety, improved part quality and a reduction in labor.

What an impact a few changes we make in our everyday lives can have on the environment!

I found it amazing what I read today. Seems so trivial, but what a difference a simple change could make!

“If every home in America replaced just one incandescent light bulb with an Energy Star qualified CFL, in one year it would save enough energy to light more than 3 million homes. That would prevent the release of greenhouse gas emissions equal to that of abut 800,000 cars.”

Read more here: Mercury Fact Sheet (PDF)

So, love CFLs or not, I think we all have a spot or two in the house – or outside, where we can replace an incandescent bulb for a CFL.

Personally I can’t take the plunge and live without the warm light of incandescents, but I’m making small changes here and there.

On my recent trip I looked out of the window of the plane at night and was blown away by the contrast of coming from Northern New Mexico and Southern Colorado with its practically solid black nighttime landscape and then flying over Denver, a big city bursting with light. It was breathtaking and I spontaneously fell in love with this vibrant display of lights. Twinkling lights for most of us evoke feelings of festivity, charm and warmth. We are drawn to light. It makes us feel good and safe.

Then I couldn’t help myself, but started to wonder about all that light. As stunning as the sight was from above, I had to confess that this was indeed what we call light pollution.

How much of this beautiful display was actually necessary and how much was a total waste of resources?

What would this landscape look like if everybody would only use exactly the amount of light needed for a task, for safety and feeling good?

It would probably have a lot less of a Wow effect, but be just as beautiful.

Recent scientific studies show that light pollution among many things obscures the stars for city dwellers, disrupts the migration pattern of birds, has adverse effects on our health and is a huge waste of energy. I could go on and on with sound and compelling reasons to make some serious changes to our city light exuberance.

A growing number of cities and towns across the United States are drafting ordinances as we speak that require new light fixtures– both commercial and residential – not to shine any light above a horizontal line, not up into the atmosphere. Instead, everything must be directed downwards unto what needs to be illuminated.

As more and more homeowners are starting to look for ways to reduce their energy usage, the Dark Sky Movement is gaining ground even though
most consumers might never have heard about “Light Pollution” or, as a matter of fact,  “The Dark Sky Movement”. Awareness has luckily been growing among local government leaders, who have been drafting ordinances to bring the night sky back.

More and more pressure is therefore put on manufacturers to come out with more Dark Sky-Friendly outdoor light fixtures and of course they are not only listening but reacting to these new demands.

We still have a long way to go before the last neighbor with the horrible 150W spotlight will understand that a little light goes a long way outdoors and that lots of light does not translate to safety. Great contrasts between bright lights and darkness are actually much more of a safety issue.

With an outdoor wall sconce shielded on top instead of spreading light into the night sky, less wattage is needed to achieve the same amount of light. Where a 100W bulb was needed to illuminate the steps a 40W bulb will  provide just as much direct light.

Hubbardton Forge offers several sconces that have received the Dark Sky Fixture Seal of Approval. One, the Nightfall features a beautiful ceramic shield with natural stone motifs that only allows the light to shine downwards.

Justice Design also features a large selection of outdoor wall sconces that are closed on top and the Minka Group has several outdoor lanterns with metal tops that block the upward light.

“I have this beautiful antique foyer light with exposed bulbs and it will look horrible  with squiggly compact fluorescent lamps. Will incandescent bulbs soon be unavailable?”

We get questions like this almost every week, so here I’ll try to clarify a few things.

The energy bill that was signed end of 2007 does require that all light bulbs use 30% less energy than today’s incandescent bulbs by 2014, which is a good thing.

The phase-out will start with 100-watt bulbs in January 2012 and end with 40-watt bulbs in January 2014. After this a second tier of requirements will become effective which asks for all bulbs to be at least 70% more efficient, which would mean that they will have to be as efficient as the CFLs we are using right now.

Since the manufacturers of incandescent bulbs are probably more aware of this than anyone else they are of course working hard on finding ways of improving the efficiency of their products. It might very well be possible that a next generation of incandescent bulbs could satisfy the requirement of 30% increased efficiency by 2012.

All this said, there are now so many really great CFLs on the market that are good looking and fit a variety of needs: You can get candelabra bulb-shaped CFLs that will fit your foyer light and not change the overall look.

In our showroom we actually now sell more unique CFLs than anything else. (CFLs for outdoor use, dimmable CFLs etc etc).

Another lamp we have now introduced is an LED mR16. It is WONDERFUL.

More about that in a later post.

5 myths about LED lighting

by Residential Lighting (great website worth bookmarking!)

LED lighting is touted as the wave of the future, the great white hope of energy efficient lighting.
But it’s a topic that many lighting showroom owners sheepishly admit they’re still in the dark about.
So how does LED lighting really work? When will it be revolutionizing the lighting industry, and how can you be prepared?

To help light the way, we will present LED-related articles all month long on Residentiallighting.com.

Here, Dave Simon, President of the Troy, Michigan-based LED lighting manufacturer ilumisys, gets to the bottom of five common LED lighting myths.

Myth 1: LEDs don’t use any power, or they are at least 10 times more efficient than any other kind of lighting.

Fact: “LEDs are about 15 percent more efficient than fluorescent lights, and six times as efficient as incandescent — and rapidly improving.

“LEDs are on an impressive development path. In just the past year, we have seen commercially available dies move from 65 lumens per watt to over 90 lumens per watt. Within the next five to seven years, there seems to be a clear path past 150 lumens per watt and a reasonable expectation of approaching 200 lumens per watt.  This represents a tremendous opportunity to provide a real alternative to fluorescent lighting.

“Note that these LED efficiencies then need to be combined with power conversion circuitry efficiencies, optical efficiencies, etc., to come up with a total LED lighting system efficacy. For example, a product using a 90 lumens per watt LED may have a total system efficiency of 60 lumens per watt when everything is accounted for. Unfortunately, it is common today to find an LED product advertising well over 100 lumens per watt, leading to buyer disappointment.”

Myth 2: LEDs last forever.

Fact: “With proper thermal design, LEDs can achieve 60,000+ hours of life while maintaining 70 percent of original light output.

“The number one reason that properly manufactured LEDs fail prematurely is overheating. Note that we say “properly manufactured” because not all LEDs are the same, and there are certainly a lot of very low-quality products out there. However, given a top-shelf LED product, it is vitally important to manage the junction temperatures in order to maximize the lifetime.

“The failure criteria on LEDs has been established as the output equal to 70 percent of the rated light at the original rated power draw. This criteria recognizes the failure mode of LEDs as being one of a slow fade versus a sudden burn-out.  This offers some good safety advantages in that a dim light is usually preferable to no light at all.

“At ilumisys we use a rigorous combination of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and testing to develop our mechanical designs in support of LEDs.”

Myth 3: LEDs don’t give off any heat.

Fact: “LEDs don’t give off radiant heat, but they do need to get rid of conductive heat in order to achieve long life.

“You can hold your hand in front of a bank of LEDs and not feel any appreciable heat. However, touch the back of the circuit board or heat sink and you will certainly feel quite a bit of heat. Even though LEDs are many times more efficient than incandescent lighting, the overall efficiency is still quite low. Energy that goes into a light source can either make light to create heat, to effect a chemical change or convert to mechanical motion. Lacking a chemical change or mechanical movement, what doesn’t come out as light needs to come out as heat.

“The need to dissipate conductive heat leads to the need for proper thermal design, which is the reason that many LED products have somewhat elaborate heat sinks attached to them. As LEDs become more efficient, more light will be put out per unit of energy, thus there will be less heat and less need for the intensive heat sinks found in today’s well-designed LED products. As LEDs become more efficient, the thermo-mechanical design becomes simpler and the amount of material used in LED products is reduced.”

Myth 4: LEDs are really cheap.

Fact: “LEDs are really expensive — and getting cheaper at an impressive rate.

“We have seen the cost of LEDs, as measured in dollars per lumen, come down 50 percent in the last year and a half. That still leaves LEDs many times more expensive than incandescent and fluorescent. In the next four years, though, we will see another 80 percent price reduction in LEDs. At that point the price/performance of LEDs will provide payback periods of well under two years, even against fluorescent lighting.”

Myth 5: LEDs can only produce blue light.

Fact: “White-light LEDs can produce very nice color temperatures ranging from 2,700K to 6,500K, with color rendering index (CRI) numbers of 90+.

“The ability to control light to very specific spectra is unique to LEDs and the consistency of the light output has improved markedly in the past few years. There are some undesirable, blue-yellow LEDs on the market — but products from the top suppliers provide wonderful light quality. The best suppliers can provide a full range of spectrographic data — insist on it.”

We finally got our LED pendants up over the counter in our showroom. They are amazing!

From looking at them you actually can’t tell that they are these state-of-the-art fixtures with a minuscule carbon footprint.  We have hung them from a monorail mixed in with the exact same fixtures with conventional halogen bulbs and it’s a true eye-opener!
Each fixture uses 5.8W and produces a light output equivalent to a 35W halogen bi-pin. They  have a life expectancy of about 30,000 hours or up to 8 years and will pay for themselves in 2 years.

After years of research, development and testing, Tech Lighting just introduced two unique, proprietary LED solutions that integrate their LED modules into over 40 signature pendants and one new head design – Helios LED head. Both solutions are available for use on the Tech Lighting industry leading architectural grade low-voltage lighting systems, including MonoRail, Wall MonoRail, Kable Lite and FreeJack.

We are elated to have them on display – and in use – in our showroom.

Read an article in Home Lighting and Accessories today and stumbled over this interesting question:

Which car would would you buy? The one that gets 14 miles per gallon or a car that gets 70  miles per gallon??  With the question put like that it of course seems like a no-brainer.

So looking at the common household bulb versus the squiggly CFL it should be an equally easy choice.
An incandescent light bulb produces 14.4 lumens per watt compared to a whopping 70 lumens per watt for a CFL, so you could actually save quite a bit by going greener in your lighting.

You noticed my “greener?” As I have said before, I think it’s extremely important for us to be aware of the changes we as individuals can make to the environment, so I am all for promoting ways to save energy. But personally I still love the warmth of an incandescent bulb. There, I said it!

The CFL lighting technology is evolving at a staggering pace and new products are hitting the market on a daily basis, so I know that the day will come when I won’t have to feel guilty for throwing money out the window and ruining the environment with my old fashioned and self-indulgent ways .

At my home I have replaced all the light bulbs that are covered by shades in warm tones  and all bulbs in our wall sconces with CFLs. The more exposed bulbs are still the “good” (ok, bad)  old kind.
In our showroomwe have completely switched to CFLs and it’s actually looking very good.

It amazes me to hear what a great impact a few little changes in we make in our everyday lives can have on the environment.

I just read today that if every household in the US replaced just one conventional incandescent household bulb with an energy star qualified CFL, in one year it would save enough energy to light more than 3 million homes. That would prevent the release of greenhouse gas emissions equal to that of about 800,000 cars.
(read more here: www.energystar.gov)

With CFLs now available for exterior use, I decided to exchange the bulbs in our outdoor wall lights. Can’t tell the difference!  Same warm, welcoming light at the front door.  Probably won’t notice anything on our utility bill either- yet. But I’ll keep going on my project, one CFL at a time.

Go Green one CFL at a time

The answer is – yes and no.

Ceiling fans can definitely save money on your air conditioning bill if you use them the way they are intended.

Ceiling fans make you feel comfortable when it’s hot by blowing air over your body and increasing the evaporation, which is how the body cools itself. You feel the reaction just like a wind chill factor.

In theory this makes it possible to set the thermostat at a higher room temperature, which of course translates into energy savings.

Makes sense. Statistics, however, unfortunately show that most people keep the same thermostat settings no matter if they run their ceiling fans or not.

So now you come in from the hot outdoors, enter a chilled room and on top of it get blasted with a wind chill factor that has you grab for a sweater. The same people (not anyone in this room, of course) often leave their ceiling fans on even when nobody is around, oblivious to the fact that ceiling fans only do their duty when the air they circulate actually moves across a warm body. Operating alone in a room ceiling fans are useless and only consume energy.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not putting down the virtues of a ceiling fan. As a matter of fact I like the nostalgic feel they somehow evoke. From our miserable cooling conditions at our old showroom I also know for a fact that ceiling fans definitely help keep a large crowd of people more comfortable, when the air conditioner is having trouble keeping up. There’s no doubt about that.

In the winter using a ceiling fan in reverse can help push the heated air that collects at the ceiling down to a level where it is useful.
Again, it’s important to remember that air movement feels chilling, so it’s better not to overdo the air circulation in winter to a point where it ends up feeling drafty and uncomfortable.

So, used the way they are designed, ceiling fans can indeed help cut down on your energy bill.

Shown: the Flute Ceiling Fan and the Cirrus Ceiling Fan by The Modern Fan Co.

A New Product We Like

At Form + Function we are always looking innovative lighting solutions and we are especially excited when we come across products that “just make sense”, like the Dark Sky light bulbs designed by Bulbrite.
These energy-star rated compact fluorescent lamps have a shielded base that aims the light only where it is needed. This eliminates the need to replace or retrofit an existing fixture to comply with dark sky regulations.
Using a 15W compact fluorescent lamp it produces the same amount and quality of light as your conventional 60W incandescent lamp.
Even if your neighborhood does not call for dark-sky-friendly lighting you might still want to consider these innovative bulbs as a responsible and at the same time aesthetically pleasing, glare-free solution for your outdoor fixtures.

Less Is More
Outdoor lighting is important not only for decorative reasons, but also to improve safety and security.
Many homeowners, however, are not aware that a little light goes quite a long ways outdoors. They think more is better and install an excessive amount of light sources, or – almost worse – a few harsh spotlights with high wattage that bathe their driveway (and half of the neighborhood) in a bright light.
Aside from these commercial spotlights just looking plain ugly and making your front yard resemble a prison camp, they are not a very neighbor-friendly or environmentally responsible solution.
Some people say they feel safer when their property is properly lit. However, light alone does not provide security. In brightly lit spaces you are exposed to glare as well as harsh shadows and the abrupt transition between these areas feels uncomfortable (someone lurking in the shadows?).
Good outdoor lighting design on the other hand defines the space in an aesthetically pleasing way. It just feels comfortable and safe. It is indirect, discreet and subtle. You know it when you see it, you feel it a sub-conscious level, but you don’t stop to think about why.
That’s the reason we recommend to light where you need it, when you need it, and no more.

Tip: If you live in an area where you feel there’s a need for a bright spotlight at times (just in case) put it on separate switch that you can turn on from inside your home – and keep it off unless it’s an emergency.

Having moved from Germany to New Mexico many years ago I still can’t get over the beauty of the starlit sky. For that matter I didn’t really know that there were THAT many stars before we moved here. Living in a large metropolitan area I had never actually seen them.
I therefore welcome the efforts our community is making to avoid or fight light pollution.
The phrase Light pollution was first coined by astronomers in the 1970s. It refers to the sky glow mainly above major cities that obscures our view of the night sky.
One could say that if light pollution were the inevitable price of progress, we’d just have to live with that loss and accept it, but it is not. Most light pollution is totally unnecessary, caused by inefficient light sources and lack of awareness.