Mandating LED job site lighting?

Hi Nadav, Thanks for the nod.  Yes, I'm very happy to have Columbia formalized this requirement for LED Temp Lighting during construction.  I'm also curious if others have already done this, or what their timeline is to so if they haven't. the rest of the post provides some context for environment health at large, and human health and safety on the jobsite: Sustainable, energy-saving strategies are at the foundation of many projects today: they make sense both for clients and for the world-at-large. But energy-efficiency is also important during the build project. Lighting choices on the job site can reduce energy use, improve employee safety, and support the environment.  It's a simple fix with big benefits, including: -Lowered energy consumption
-Lowered Greenhouse Gas emissions (associated with lower energy consumption)
-Elimination of Mercury from temp lighting (Mercury is considered by the World Health Organization as one of the top 10 chemicals of major public health concern)
-The most durable lighting option (no filaments, and bulbs available without glass housing)
-The lowest operating temperatures, reducing the risk of accidents
-Burnt out or broken LED bulbs are not a hazardous material handling situation  

I saw Conor’s post. Nice work! I passed it around our office suggesting we follow suit. We’re mostly LED now but don’t have an official policy. The electricians are typically in charge of temp lighting and most use LED now without being asked, but not all. As you note, the cost difference is minimal and lots of benefits. This would still be typical string lighting with an in-kind bulb replacement. Some projects go for more energy savings and use a low-voltage system (like Celar-Vu Lighting) or wide area LED lighting (like Lind), but these are still the exceptions for us. The former has a big cost premium. The latter is more cost effective, but requires some extra planning. We only use these when the project team prioritizes energy savings during construction. Nathan Gauthier, Director – FM Integration and Sustainability E ngauthier@shawmut.com | C 617-515-6305 From: N

Hi folks, first time poster here. Love the conversations happening in this group! Turner is in the process of company-wide adoption of LED temp lighting. We've got a few more folks at the top to convince, but as with many sustainability topics, education is sometimes the biggest hurdle. Right now it is voluntary across our business units, I'd say around 25% of our projects do it. I second Nathan's observation above: many of our electricians are starting to use LED without a GC mandate based on life span and durability alone (fewer replacements to buy/install). We've found the payback for the LED these days to be roughly 3-4 months, a no-brainer regardless of who foots the utility bill.

It's a new quarter.  Any updates on LED Jobsite Lighting Policies? ra-ra sis-boom-bah, let's go team!

I asked our operations group if they use LED temporary lighting (supplied by the electrical subcontractor), and the answer is no. I asked why. We self-perform concrete work. The laser screeds do not work correctly with LED temporary lighting. I thought the was interesting. Anyone have any suggestions what to use? Or know why they don't work?

How recent was this problem?  and what type of bulbs were used?  years ago some cheap LEDs had a flicker effect, i'm not sure if that would cause an issue with a laser screed, but probably worth re-visiting if this is not a current anecdote.

Hi Conor - Have a question for you. Are you using 100% LED lights for job trailers and construction site both? How about projects with no power supply or that need wide area lighting in the night? 

Hi Vandita, Our LED temp lighting requirement does not currently include job trailers, it includes Temp lighting in the electricians scope.  However, regarding job trailers, I am initiating talks with the companies we rent job trailers from to make the LED change and more importantly, wire the trailers electrical panels so that EV charging is either already included completely or a 240 volt NEMA 14-50 outlet is included and we can provide our own plug-in EV charger and should be installed with a 50-amp circuit breaker. We've successfully piloted EV charging on one jobsite and had to do all the wiring independently of the job trailer company, but they should obviously be doing these upgrades at some point. I hope you all have these talks too so we can speed up the transition to an electrified construction site. Ford is working on an electric F-150, and there are a few Luxury pickup trucks coming out soon too (Rivian, Tesla, Atlis) plus the many plug-in SUVs from all manufacturers.  We need to support our field staff in this transition and enable them to join the plug-in present/future. If power does not exist on any of our jobsites, we bring in temp power. We just rolled out the LED temp lighting requirement in contracts on new jobs since January 2019 and have not yet had a need for wide area lighting in the night. I did some quick googling and there appear to be some options.

Conor - This is great information. Thank you for sharing. We have been pushing to use LED String Lights (to start with) on job sites and I can say that we are 80% there in our Northern California district. We have discussed internally about talking to job trailer companies about LED lighting, but things move slow (as you can imagine). LED Trailer would be our next big push. If possible, please share your notes from these talks.

I have not used but came across this for outside LED construction lighting: https://youtu.be/a0LmZJLRfdM "Introducing the first tower light built by a lighting company, not a generator company. The Beacon LED tower light by Lind Equipment is the next generation: versatile, portable, affordable. To learn more about our man-portable, ultra-bright Beacon LED Tower light, go to www.beaconledtower.com"

Thanks for the great input everyone.  Talking with some of our trades on site here in WA, it sounds like LED is becoming more of a standard for interior temp lighting on larger build outs as the extra cost and work to get additional power supply to the old metal halide lamps offsets the added up front cost of providing LED lamps instead of halides.  For exterior applications, I've been told that LEDs actually are low on lumen output for exterior site lighting and consequently more lamps need to be provided if you're going with LED outdoors.  Obviously this comes with a cost savings for better energy efficiency for the LEDs. I've also had this conversation with others in this group, but has anyone seen occupancy sensors implemented with interior temp lighting?  I feel like this makes sense with high-rise construction where multiple floors may not have any active work going on.

One of our electricians offers occupancy sensors on the temp lighting. The upcharge isn't high, and he said it cuts the energy usage by an addition 30%. They only use it on interiors.  

That is great! Any details on equipment for how it's controlled and installed will be appreciated.

I don't think he wants to give up his secrets!  5 emails got me this limited info: it cuts energy usage by 80% and it adds about $40 per lamp.

Does anyone have a calculator that they use to help calculate what the energy savings will be on a job if LED temp jobsite lighting is being utilized? This is a powerful tool that can be used to help justify/offset the premium you might pay at first cost.

I reccommend incorporating Carbon into the discussions too. https://www.usa.lighting.philips.com/consumer/led-lights/led-savings-calculator https://lighting.cree.com/resources/payback-calculator https://www.energystar.gov/sites/default/files/asset/document/light_bulb_calculator.xlsx

Thank you Conor!

no problem, good luck! FYI the EPA excel file definitely needs updated costs.  LED bulb prices are way down from when this was made, now $1 bulb! Sylvania Home Lighting 74765 A19 Efficient 8.5W Soft White 2700K 60W Equivalent A29 LED Light Bulb (24 Pack), Count
by Amazon.com Learn more: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0758GXHQK/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_U_ROGUCbM9X58W7  

https://www.milwaukeetool.com/Temp-Lighting-Cost-Calculator-Tool     

What premiums are you seeing from your electricians for LED Temp Jobsite lighting?

We're not seeing any premium from electricians for LED Temp Lighting. Most have been partially migrating that way and our policy just accelerating the inevitable transition. However, I am interested to hear from others to better understand the trend locally and nationally.

I asked if Miron was requiring LED Temp lighting. I was told Miron has tried it, but are no longer allowing LED lighting temp lighting on projects that require a lot of concrete flatwork because LED lighting interferes with the laser screeds - and Miron self-performs concrete and prefers quality. I was told that CFL temp lighting is much less costly and wasteful compared to fixing concrete flatwork errors. I decided to see if LED lights actually do interfere with lasers, so I changed out my CFL on my 2006 garage door opener and tried to open my garage door w/ the opener from the driveway. Sure enough, it would not open. Anyone else have similar experiences with concrete flatwork or any other work that required laser-based equipment?

I did a little research and it appears to be related to the wave frequency of the laser and the particular LED bulb. I submitted a the question to Lind at https://www.ledjobsite.com/. Perhaps they've figured this out. Probably related: https://support.honeywellaidc.com/s/article/Considerations-when-Introducing-LED-illumination-in-to-the-area-where-barcodes-are-being-scanned "...the following rough guidance may apply:

• Laser scanners have a much higher change to suffer from a reduced ability to read barcodes, due to the fact that the LED Flickering is perceived by the scanner as reflected light from spaces in barcodes. Honeywell advices to use imagers in combination with those types of LED illumination.
• For customers with a large population of laser based scanners in the field, it might be good to know the LED’s Flicker frequencies can be altered with a LED driver circuitry or Intensity Adjusters / controllers (dimmers), to a level where they do not interfere with the scanner.
  • Dimmable LED lights when installed in a conventional power circuit prevent modulation of the LED as the modulation that causes LED to appear dim are typically in the switches.
  • Fixed output LED light all modulate and will likely cause interference in reading of the barcode.
• Imagers in general do not suffer from interference due to LED flickering, and their shutter time is to slow to capture a frame with the LED off duty, although rolling shutter devices have more change to capture a 'row' with the LED of duty.
• At close range the LED efficiency output (Super bright LED’s) may blind the sensor, but at normal distances this should not cause issues.
• The color temperature or wavelength of the white LED's is not causing issues."

Thanks Theresa and Conor for these responses. Super helpful to figure out this critical issue.

Absolutely!  I love trying to figure stuff out! Incidentally, the garage door opener likely operates on a radio frequency so that LED bulb may have been interfering with the radio frequency signal and not necessarily the laser. but maybe both.

Thanks Connor! Interesting.

Good morning all, Theresa, were you able to determine any specifics on the anecdotal experience with LED / laser screed interference? Columbia Construction continues to roll out the all LED temp lighting policy and has not had interference issues raised yet. However, I still would like to understand the issue better to make sure we've intentionally resolved the potential issue and that we're not just lucky and tempting fate. I contacted Lind Equipment regarding potential laser / LED interference and this was their response below.  "Hi Conor, Thanks for your patience while I looked into this concern further.  Here is the reply from our engineering team regarding LED lights interfering with laser screeds.  I decided against editing for grammar, as I don’t want to lose the integrity of the message.  I hope this is helpful.  If you have any further questions, please let me know. Thanks, Susan I don’t think the LED light will have any impact on laser readings for this environment. This application is different from Laser Scanner to scan barcode.  In the concrete equipment, laser detector will receive signal from transmitter, not from barcode, a very weak reflective signal, which is easy to be interfered by the environment illumination source, like LED light, sun light in the room. However, when  laser receiver in the concrete equipment receives signal from transmitter, the signal intensity is much more higher than the environment light ( LED light, sun light).  The signal intensity of both Sun light and LED light are too weak compared with transmitter to generate any interference to the laser receiver.  In addition, Laser receiver will get the specific wave length signal from transmitter which is different from the wave length signal of LED light, meaning the Laser receiver will not detect the wave length signal of LED light, not suffer from the interference from LED light. 20  years ago, I was senior Laser Tech. engineer to design and develop laser detector, laser machining instruments. I have hands on experience. So, there is no any concern for the application of LED light in this environment. Susan Azevedo <SAzevedo@lindequipment.net> 1-877-475-5463 ext.234 www.ledjobsite.com

Hi everyone: has anyone looked into the potential safety concerns with LED white light bulbs? Most scientific research we’ve found is inconclusive at this point... that the lights could cause harm to the eyes if exposed to this light for long periods of time. Not unrelated to recent concerns over what they call the “blue” light emitted from phones, TV’s , street lights, etc. I’d be interested to know if anyone’s safety departments have commented on this. Julia Gisewite, LEED AP BD+C | Director of Sustainability Turner Construction Company mobile 202.439.9970 | jgisewite@tcco.com From: Conor

LEDs are more flexible in this regard than other lighting options becuase with LEDs you can select for color temperature and brightness, both independently. LED back-lit computers and phones frequently have "night shift" options for better syncing with human circadian rhythms and yellowing of light as you approach your sleep time. However on a job site, I presume that workers would benefit from white light that aids in alertness and best simulates mid-day natural lighting.