Domestic Lighting: 12/24 V: Color Hue

Does anyone know a source of near "Natural Light" fluorescent for a

12V or 24V system?

Friends of mine are building a Finnish style country house on a remote island in Australia -I love the concept!

I suggested Kerosene Lamps but they want to go solar low voltage. Much of it is about color hue.

A red apple at night should look red not blue/greenish.

Thanks for any suggestions.

Rod

Reply to
Rod
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Frankly I wouldn't bother, with the costand efficiency of inverter being so good these days I'd just buy an inverter, then you can use any of the mains type lamps available. TTYL

Reply to
repatch

Please define what you mean by "Natural Light". Various independant properties which spring to mind are: a) Colour temperature b) Colour rendering index c) Continuous spectrum d) Intensity.

12V fluorescent lamp control gear is available.

That would be Colour rendering index mainly. Look for lamps with a hight CRI. Note that you do not want high colour temperature lamps (sometimes go by the Marketing mis-term of Full Spectrum), as that will look completely wrong unless you also get the intensity up to midday Sun levels, which is going to be completely impractical. At lower lighting levels, lower colour temperatures look more natural (this effect has a name which I've forgotten).

Reply to
Andrew Gabriel

Thanks -my friends are sold on using a 12v or 24v system. I have hunted around the internet but can't seem to find a supplier of these voltages -let alone CRI values. Any suggestions of a source?

Thanks again.

Rod

Reply to
Rod

Rod, Glamox or Aquasignal have a huge range of 12/24V lighting (including fluorescent) available - mostly for marine use. (I guess an island would qualify ;-)

I assume you are in Australia too? If so, have a chat to the people at Versalux in Melbourne - (03) 9894 1749.

Cameron:-)

Reply to
Cameron Dorrough

Thanks very much for the leads I will follow them up today.

Thanks again.

Rod

Reply to
Rod

In article , rod3567 @yahoo.com says... | | Thanks -my friends are sold on using a 12v or 24v system. I have | hunted around the internet but can't seem to find a supplier of these | voltages -let alone CRI values. Any suggestions of a source? | Caravan equipment is designed to run on 12v DC and small boat equipment. The small florescent lights used in these are 12v and consume 7w or less. For less frequently used lights, ordinary car bulbs can be made use of. On 24v, two 12v bulbs could be wired in series, but I would not advise trying to do this with the 12v florescent units.

If consumption is not too much of a problem, 12v Quartz Halogen lamps are quite common for home use on the mains supply. These are designed to be operated via a mains to 12v transformer, but they would work equally well on 12v DC.

Reply to
Harry Bloomfield

Most of the small tubes (older T5) are now available in only a very limited range of colours, typically just 'White' (~3500K colour temperature) and probably not very high CRI, but maximal efficiency. You might need to go up to larger tubes/power ratings before you find any selection of colour temperature and CRI available. For evening/night time residential use, 2700K is better and will match filament lighting (this is what most of the compact fluorescent retrofit lamps are). 3500K is more suited to high lighting levels and/or supplementing daylight (e.g. in offices). At lower lighting levels used in the home, it will look rather on the blue side.

Reply to
Andrew Gabriel

Why are they sold on 12/24v? Does this mean they won't consider an inverter with 12 or 24v at the source?

At 12 or 24 volts. They'd have to run heavy wire around to each lamp or there would be quite a loss in efficiency due to line loss. Inverter loss can be much less. The line operated fixtures/lamps will be easy to find.

John

Reply to
jriegle

Andrew,

I'm in the US and I see that Phillips is selling the T5 F4,6,8,13 watt lamps in a Tri Phosphor version (confirmed by spectral analysis). They call it "Soft White. The output is higher than standard warm white, cool white versions and much more than the terrible daylight versions. Color temp is around 29K, but without the pinkish look of standard warm white tubes of this size. I replaced all the bulbs in my battery operated lanterns because I get so much more light with these. John

Reply to
jriegle

They are designed specifically for marine/transport use. Trucks, cars, caravans, ships, yachts, that sort of thing, all have either 12V or 24VDC (depending entirely on how large they are) available for use by something somewhere.

Although some people do run inverters, on most small craft/vehicles it's an unwarranted expense... and for a 25W fluoro, the wiring is not nearly as heavy as you make out.

Cameron:-)

Reply to
Cameron Dorrough

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